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BALLET LESSONS FOR CHILDREN
by Carla A. Parks M.A.
Be Informed: Make an Intelligent Choice
Of the parents who wish for their children to pursue a career in dance, most of them are totally unequipped to choose a good school and a good teacher. The problem is the inaccessibility of that information. Many parts of the country don’t have a good teacher or a good school. Without the knowledge they need, parents choose the school they hear about or which is convenient to them. There are set criteria accepted worldwide by responsible schools of ballet by which the public can make intelligent choices. These criteria are:
Physical Facilities
- A suspended wood floor to provide the resilience and support necessary to prevent injury.
- Handrail barres necessary for students to orient themselves spatially and provide minimal support
until the body learns to balance correctly on its own.
- Mirrors for visual feedback until the body learns kinesthetically what it looks like in space.
Qualities of a Good Teacher
- A good teacher must have a knowledge of anatomy and principles of human movement.
- A good teacher must have studied with a good teacher.
- A good teacher doesn’t try to teach every dance style. A good teacher teaches the styles he/she knows best.
- A good teacher must give clear directions including counting the combinations.
- A good teacher must be enthusiastic and give every student attention.
- A good teacher must have a good eye for correction, criticize the movement not the student, and teach at the level of the student so that the student has a feeling of success.
- A good teacher should have some knowledge of injury prevention and treatment. The treatment for an injury such as tendonitis or shin splints is much different from the treatment of a joint problem or a muscle strain.
- A good teacher should have a knowledge of nutrition and health.
Techniques to Look For
- The principle of the center. The head, the pelvis and the rib cage must be centered over each other and all centered over the front of the long arch and center of the feet. Proper placement is always more important than range of movement.
- The proper use of turnout—that is the outward rotation of the thighs in the hip joint accompanied by
a downward rotation of the pelvis on the posterior side (back). The teacher should not insist on 180º turnout. Forcing turnout from the lower leg or feet damages the integrity of the knee joint and hyperextends the lower back as in a swayback.
- Proper use of the back in the backbends. This requires lengthening the lower back, lifting the rib cage back from underneath the shoulder blades, and keeping the pelvis centered over the balls of the feet. The neck must also lengthen. Traditional backbends compress the spinal vertebrae and risk slipped disks and pinched nerves.
- The angle made by the inner ankle bone and the heel should be 90º to the floor. If the ankle bone points to the floor or the long arches of the feet compress to the floor, this indicates that the knees are not lined up over the center of the feet.
- The rib cage and the upper torso must lift forward in front of the standing leg when the working leg is raised behind; it must lift forward in proportion to the height of the raised leg.
- Pointing of the feet comes from the ankle and the stretch of the instep. Rib Cage: rotates downward on one’s anterior side (front) thus lengthening the middle-center of the back without raising the shoulders. It feels as if the lower ribs are compressed “in.”
- Use of the arms.
- In the curved positions of the arms, the elbow should never go behind the frontal plane of the body.
- Elbows should be always relaxed.
- Wrists stretched and not flexed—fingers stretch and curve—no tension in arms.
- In grand plies, one’s heel should never rise more than 1½". The reason is that the weight of the body should never be thrust on the knee joints.
- Pointe work should not begin before the age of 12. The bones in the feet are not sufficiently developed before then. After the age of 12, pointe work is a matter of strength and placement, not the length of study. However, a minimum of one year of training taking three to eight classes per week is required. The Royal Academy has postponed pointe work until young students have completed their “growth spurt,” i.e., until 14 or 15 years of age.
Inappropriate Techniques for Children Under 6
- Grand plies, i.e., heels leaving the floor. A child’s body is not strong enough to take the weight off the knee joints.
- One foot balances with the heel off the floor. A child’s torso is not strong enough to sustain the weight without risking muscle strain and distortion of body alignment.
- Full rond des jambes. This is a circular movement of the leg front, side, back or back, side, front. A child does not have the physical control of the body without risking injury to the knee joint and lower back.
- Any backward extension of the leg risks injury to the lower back. At younger ages the myelinization of the nerve pathways to the muscles and the spine is not complete. Push up backbends from the floor are “no-no’s.”
- Standing backward extensions of the spine. The angle of the curve of the spine is not yet set in young children. Doing backward extensions of the spine risks having the lumbar spinal curve set at too severe an angle.
There is a great need for certification standards for ballet instructors because of the risk of permanent injury to the body. At this time there are no standards at all. Anyone can set up a ballet school and call themselves a ballet teacher. A lot of people that have financially successful ballet schools have minimal knowledge of ballet and anatomy, but are good business people.
Certification by whom? The people who are the best qualified to set ballet standards should come from the following fields: ballet teachers from qualified schools and background, physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons, and anatomists specializing in sports and dance medicine who have the knowledge to determine who should be certified.
Bibliography
- Allsen, Philip E., Conditions and Physical Fitness, Wm. C. Brown Co., Dubuque, Iowa, 1978.
- Galebert, Raoul, Raoul Galebert’s Anatomy for the Dance, Vol. I & II, ed. by Wm. Como, Dance Magazine, NY, Vol. I, 1964, Vol. II, 1966.
- Hammond, Sandra Noll, Ballet Basics, Nayfield Publishing Co., Palo Alto, CA, 1974.
- Kristein, Lincoln & Stuart, Muriel, The Classic Ballet, Alfred A. Knoph, NY, 1952.
- Lawson, Joan, Teaching Young Dancers, Theatre Arts, NY, 1975.
- Schwarz, Josephine, Primer for Parents, Dance Magazine, Damag Publishing Co. Inc., NY, Vol. 29 Sept.-Dec. 1955, Vol. 30 Jan.-May, 1956.
- Shores, Karen, Should Your Son or Daughter Study Ballet?, Performance Magazine, Ballet West, Dec., 1979.
- Sparger, Celia, Anatomy in Ballet, Theatre Arts Books, NY, 1971. Reprinted 1976.
- Sweigard, Lulu E., Human Movement Potential, Harper & Row, NY, 1974.
- Vaganova, Agrippinia, Basic Principles of Classical Ballet, Dover Publications, NY, 1969.
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