Let’s dive in!

Today on the show, we're going to talk about all of the different facets of your ballet training.

We're going to talk about how complicated these stages of ballet are, we're going to talk about even why I'm calling them facets, we're going to really get into a lay of the land here. 

Following this episode, I'll start digging into each one individually, but we're going to kind of talk about all of them, how to lightly acquire each of them and how to take them back to the ballet classes that you are taking in your local studios or in your online classes. 

So to start, let's talk about how complicated these stages and levels of ballet are. 

As we talked about, in the last episode, for adults, zero is very different for each of us. Because each of us is coming to ballet with a very, very different breadth of experience in our lives. 

Some of us come with coordination, some of us come with flexibility, some come with musicality, some come with none of the above and it's a wholly new experience. For each of us, it's a highly individual process. So to even consider putting them into specific levels, or specific chunks of information is a little bit tricky, because for some people, level one is going to look a little bit different. For some people level one, if it's a specific set of 10 different skills, they may already come in knowing nine of them and only need one of them. Whereas some of us will come in not knowing any of those 10 things and needing to learn all of them. So really thinking about how one individual adult could structure or work through the things that they need to learn is a little bit different than just level one consists of these 100 lessons, because for some people, they may need more or less than those 100, they may need different ones in order to achieve the same skills.

The concept of “levels” is really complicated. To call it levels implies that you could move linearly but ballet progression is so nonlinear. For some of us, it takes a really long time to warm up to the idea of turning; for some of us jumping is never something we're interested in; for some of us, we don't want pointe work or we don't want a partner or we don't want different parts of it. So to call it levels is complicated when you get down to the granular individual level.

The idea of calling it a spiral did interest me and that it's still rather linear, although you're just kind of winding through different twists and turns. 

Chaotic mess is also still not quite accurate because there is somewhat of a method to the madness, even though it feels a little bit chaotic in the beginning. 

It's kind of a web. Except not every skill is related in this web, for example, counting music, it doesn't have much to do with strengthening your core. I mean, you can strengthen your core to music, but they are sort of unrelated skills.

There are also many parallel tracks of skills, but there's an interdependency between some of them. For example, strength, flexibility, and technique are all combined to create high extensions.

You want to train them in parallel with each other but there is interdependency with them.

It's not really a stair step either. Stairs also imply linear progression, and sometimes if you picture stepping too big, you couldn't really climb it. 

So in reality, where I've landed is that your ballet training is a collection of different skills with different facets, some related, some not, that must be developed independently. But then they come together to create the beautiful gem that is your ballet technique. 

Within the whole of ballet, there are micro facets such as pure wets could be their own quote unquote jam with many facets, where you're thinking about balance, control, momentum, body awareness, physics, timing, musicality, all of that little pieces of each of those going into a pure wet

Ballet is incredibly unique. In that we need to do two things. Number one, we need to learn how to dance. But number two, we need to learn an entirely new movement pattern, we need to learn a new way to be. We need to learn how to exist with our legs turned out we need to eat, breathe, feel the turnout the whole time with our arms in a specific place and our bodies in a specific posture.

On top of this, we also need to learn to dance, how to move our bodies, how to understand physics, how to get momentum, how to get power, how to remember combinations, how to dance with the music, how to express and all of that.

Other styles only need to remember combinations and dance with the music. So you don't need to learn how to turn out your legs. In jazz class, you do have some technique you need to learn in order to do pirouettes and turns but it's a little bit different in that you don't have to relearn how to stand, you don't have to relearn how to exist with your legs turned out. So in those classes, you don't need the barre work. You go in, you do a quick warm up and you get right to the dancing. But in ballet, we need to learn how to manage and control every part of our body in order for ballet to look and work correctly. So our classes are longer, more in depth and include barre work.

Facets of Ballet

So today, we're going to talk about all the different facets. 

Let's go through them all. So let's say we lump them into four big groups, we have:

1. Breadth, this is the dancing

2. The depth, this is the technique

3. The performing and storytelling

4. Personal and body strength. 

Breadth

So within the breadth, the dancing, this is where we get all the different vocabulary, all the different words. If you like to learn how to spell, knowing how to spell all of them with all of the accents. 

This is knowing all the different words in ballet so you know the few 100 different vocabulary words. Knowing which foot to step on knowing where they would come in a combination. Knowing the lay of the land. 

Arguably, you can know the vocabulary without having the technique: you can know how to do these things. You can know what a tour jeté is without necessarily being able to execute one flawlessly. 

So learning the vocabulary is a separate thing than learning how to do the vocabulary and executing at a higher level. 

Each vocabulary term has its own set of levels within it, where you're going to start with a tendu and how it looks at the beginner level to the pro level is different in each step of the way. 

Each individual vocabulary term has a range and a spectrum of levels. Within breadth and the dancing, you also have memorizing combinations. 

Yes, dancers. This is a skill that gets better with time. Memorizing combinations is something you practice. It is something you learn. We will be talking about it! It has to do with so many different factors that you do get better at you really do you really do learn how to pick up choreography and how to internalize it more quickly.

Depth

Within depth, the technique we have your posture, we have your core control, we have your hip control, and we have developing the motor patterns for turnout. This is what barre work is. 

If you can picture all the ways that your legs can move turned out, that's what you have at the barre: you can bend them, you can straighten them, you can lift them, you can throw them, you can bend them one way, you can bend them another way. 

And this is what barre work is. This is developing the motor patterns for turnout. We have an entire episode dedicated to barre work: what it is, what we're doing at the barre, but that's going to be your depth. 

The depth is what will give us the different levels of breadth that I mentioned. So within each vocabulary word, as we learn a vocabulary word at the surface level, each level of each vocabulary word has a deep trench of technique that will continue to level up that specific word or that specific step.

Performing & Storytelling 

The third area the performing in storytelling. I would put all of this with personal expression, I would put this with musicality, with counting music, understanding how to play with the music, with understanding how dance personifies the music. 

I would put artistry in here. That’s your facial expressions, that's your epaulement, that's your expressivity, that's how well you are portraying what is inside into the outside. 

When it comes to artistry, we're always trying to allow our body to project what we feel inside into the into the outer world. This is where you're going to get your pantomime, the sign language of ballet. 

This is where I would al