formerdancer.com

Category: Classical Ballet

  • What’s the Point of Pointe Shoes?

    This weekend my 12-year-old niece came to visit me. She is taking ballet classes, among other kinds of activities, and she has not yet begun classes on pointe. Often pointe training begins with 15-20 minutes of work at the end of a ballet class so that your muscles are warm. She hopes that she’ll be…

  • Dance As Language

    There are performance standards that dancers must live up to in order to dance in a way that falls within the boundaries of a certain dance genre or practice. One is not “doing ballet”, for example, if one does not make use the steps, positions, and movements that are part of what counts a ballet,…

  • The Dying Swan Lives

    I went to see Swan Lake for the umpteenth time this past weekend in New York City. I went to see the two-act version choreographed by Peter Martins after Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, and George Balanchine. It was performed by The New York City Ballet, with Mira Nadon in the lead role as Odette/Odile. There…