In her seminal collection of wisdom on classical ballet technique and pedagogy, Basic Principles of Classical Ballet: Russian Ballet Technique of Agrippina Vaganova, she states: “The first condition of good tours is an absolutely straight, held-together body. One should not lose the spot of the finish, and should always ‘feel’ the front so as not […]
Looking at the news today can make me feel like the world is in a downward spiral. Sometimes our individual lives feel this way as well. And maybe we’d like for things to take a turn for the better, and just continue along a linear path towards perfection. Well, life seems to follow a more […]
Building Blocks of Dance Welcome to the latest installment of my series on the “Seven Basic Movements” of ballet and classical dancing. Thus far, I have explored Plier/to bend, Sauter/to jump, Glisser/to glide, and Élancer/to dart in blog articles, videos, and podcasts, and created a Playlist on YouTube about the 7 Movements to support learning […]
Joyful movement in general, and ballet in particular, is one of the great passions of my life. I find the movements of the arms particularly captivating, and in recent times it has become more relevant than ever that they are accessible with little available space. As I age, I also appreciate how I can continue […]
Summer can be a fruitful time to advance our craft, with warm weather and time off from school or (sometimes) work to focus on developing dancing strength, flexibility, balance, endurance, skills, & repertory. Even famous ballet pedagogue Agrippina Vaganova remarked on the particular value of working on your ballet technique in the summer months. Back […]
What do a carpenter swinging a hammer, an office worker closing a drawer, a police officer directing traffic, and a ballerina’s storytelling have in common? All of their movements are traveling through space in relationship to other objects (concrete or abstract), taking specific pathways with particular attitudes. The hammer arcs up and then down to […]
How I do love to travel! Sadly due to the global pandemic, I am not able to travel as far afield at present as I ordinarily like to do regularly. Thankfully, I am still able to walk around the city of Cologne, and also dance! Walking, strutting, marching, sliding, under-curves, over-curves, crawling, turning, rolling, grapevines, […]
Given that I’ve been thinking and researching about this blog for a while, it’s serendipitous that I also just learned a new German saying: “Gehüpft wie gesprungen.” It means literally “Hopped as jumped,” or more-or-less “It doesn’t matter if you hop or jump to get there.” Sort of like the English “six of one, half […]
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes are happening, from the inauguration of a new president in the US, vaccinations coming out for the deadly pandemic that has swept the planet, a new calendar year, all of us having had to radically change our lives in some way, recently, if not in every way. The change process is an area I’m […]
Having worked with hundreds of high school, college, adult and graduate students in ballet and modern dance classes, I have learned to balance the stated objectives of the dance course with the expectations and personal goals of the individual students. We all come to dance (or whatever artistic practices we pursue) for diverse reasons, and […]
