Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Refining Your Ballet Technique

By Sarah Wilkiamson

Almost every child is fascinated by the Nutcracker ballet which is a standard during the holiday season. Often this is the first impressions of ballet, but as people get older they are better able to appreciate this form of art. It is only natural that once you love it, you will also feel the need to master it also.

When you want to work on the technique behind ballet you are in for a lot of work. There is a reason that ballet is referred to as the root of all dance. The technical skills that are involved in this type of dancing are really phenomenal, and in your quest to master them you need to put in quite a bit of work.

The first step in improving your ballet dancing is to start with the basics. There is always a tendency to work on the more exciting and fun maneuvers, but if you jump ahead of yourself and start working on more complicated moves without the basic technique you will be learning things wrong. There is nothing more difficult than having to un-teach yourself bad habits. The best thing is to avoid getting them in the first place.

To avoid this begin with the absolute roots of ballet. Review the foot and arm positions, and spend some time critiquing yourself in the mirror. Make sure that each of the standard ballet positions are at home in your body before you move onto pirouettes or grand jete's.

It is also to your advantage to have someone else see how you perform techniques and this is best done by finding a reliable teacher who you can trust to help correct any form errors you are making. This is best, because no matter how you examine your own dancing you will easily miss obvious errors in your techniques. Only someone looking from a different point of view can give you an opinion that will help you improve techniques.

Patience is something you must exercise while learning ballet. You will need to give it some time before you see results. Old habits may need to be broken plus building muscle memory and you need to give your body some time to adjust to better habits and new positions.

If you decide to put your heart and soul into ballet and make a real deep down commitment then you can progress in your craft of ballet. To make improvements you will really need to stretch and apply yourself to learn this craft you have chosen, ballet.

When you were a child may have been the beginning of the dream of learning ballet but do not fool yourself into thinking it is a short time craft to learn. No matter how much you learn there will always be more which is also why it is imperative that you embrace learning ballet with all your heart and soul.

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