Imagine... and be a (ballet) dancer!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day 2025!

 I never really stopped taking ballet classes, in my head at least. LOL. But throughout my career and afterwards, I loved imagining what a step, a movement, a phrase of action would FEEL like. There weren't any mirrors in the studios where I first learned to dance, and once I joined Paul Taylor, I was dancing once again in studios without mirrors. This for me has always been a good thing. Knowing how movement, line, phrases FEEL, has always been so much more rewarding, in my opinion. 

We are our own worst critics is a sentiment I have often heard, and I know I often "resemble that comment!" So I always loved taking a class where the teacher helped me find the joy in learning and using the prescribed shapes and movements of ballet to form phrases driven by rhythms and melodies in the music. Many of the images offered to me were of likening the carriage of my body as though I was elegantly dressed and that my footwork was to sparkle like I had rhinestones on my shoes.

Photo(2023): Fabrice Herrault

Taking an adult beginning ballet class should be a fun endeavor, and I hope you will share with me what you imagine to be the outcome for you! It could be as simple as relying on me to get you to move after your workday sitting at a desk or in a workroom, or as complex as fulfilling a dream you might have had for most of your life. A beginner ballet class allows us to learn and use a well defined vocabulary of movements and shapes to create repeatable phrases to music, and to aspire to the greater complexity that knowledge gives us.

Building on the very basic idea of bending and stretching in various simple positions can be seen in so many of the classical variations we admire, and also in the use of those same movements as found in more contemporary works.

clip from YouTube: Akane Takeda of London's Royal Ballet from Kitri's variation (c. 2019)

clip: Paul Taylor in his solo variation from "Aureole" (c. 1962)

While my blog may not convince you to come and take a class with me, I hope to share my approach to how I have used ballet in my career dancing in both ballet and modern companies.

Until next time...