For a dancer choosing her foods from the supermarket, it is so important to be able to read the “Nutrition Facts” label on the package properly. Unfortunately, manufacturers have come up with all sorts of ways of hiding unhealthy ingredients and tricking you into thinking that something is healthy for you. So the label, which is supposed to help you make better choices about the foods you eat, can actually be quite confusing and...

Read More

The more I interact with other ballet lovers online, the more I find that there are so many people who are either starting ballet late or are getting back into ballet as an adult (after taking a long break to focus on college, getting married, having babies, etc.) and they are wondering, Is it still possible for me to have a career in ballet? What if my body isn’t perfect? Is it too late for me? While it is important to have realistic...

Read More

The Vaganova method of training in ballet is known as the best method out there, and the Vaganova and Bolshoi Academies in Russia, where the method is taught, are hailed as having the finest training in the world. For the vast majority of students, however, picking up and moving to Russia isn’t an option. Even if they did make it all the way to Russia, the academies don’t accept foreign students. Even Russian students are extremely...

Read More

Today in my Ballet 1 class we talked about the correct placement of the pelvis (the bones which make up your hips and connects your spine to your legs), which we practiced by pressing our lower spine into the floor. I thought it would be helpful to see a picture of what your skeleton was doing during that exercise: “A” below shows where the spine naturally falls when you are relaxed. “B” shows the pelvis tilting forward...

Read More

Flexibility is really important for any ballet dancer. Flexibility allows the dancer to turn out the hips and knees, which in turn allows the range of movement necessary for dancing, and getting that high extension everybody wants to have. As Agrippina Vaganova put it, “The dancer without a turn-out is limited in her movements, while a classical dancer possessing a turn-out is in command of all conceivable richness of dance movements of...

Read More