Learning Ballet as an Adult - Embrace Your Ballet "Accent"

Photo by Rafa Sanfilippo on Unsplash


by Kate Feinberg Robins, PhD

Embrace Your Ballet "Accent"

I know as a linguistic anthropologist that languages are not made up simply of words, but of grammar, sounds, and cultural understandings. The same is true for ballet. 

Ballet is not about what steps we can do. It’s about how we move. 

If we know a few words (steps) and understand the principles behind them, we can communicate. If we know lots of words but don’t understand how they fit together grammatically, what they mean culturally, or how to pronounce them, communication is difficult at best.

There is a myth that both ballet and languages must be learned in childhood. 

Children’s brains and bodies do have greater plasticity. Children can speak new languages without a foreign-sounding accent. Their bodies can be shaped to the aesthetics of ballet.

But anyone at any age is capable of learning. 

Adults have a lifetime of experience that we can use to learn deliberately and purposefully. Whether learning a language or ballet, we can embrace our “immigrant” accents. We can use the wisdom of age to learn what works for us and what doesn’t, to communicate effectively with both our words and our bodies.

If we look at ballet as a language, we can shift our goal away from performance on stage to performance in everyday conversation. 

It is well within your reach to gain the conversational skills to move through your life with confidence and ease.


Download the book:

View the YouTube series:


Location: Redlands, CA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Stretch for a Warm-Up and Cool-Down

Image
By Kate Feinberg Robins Warm-up stretching  should increase your mobility in preparation for more intense exercise, without putting yourself at risk of pulling a muscle. Be gentle and dynamic.  Move continuously rather than holding a position.  Keep your stretches small and your muscles in motion.  Cool-down stretching  decreases muscle soreness and tightness, and leads to long-term gains in flexibility. Sustain your position for several breaths or at least 30 seconds. Relax the muscles you're stretching.  Stretching for increased flexibility  requires repeated sustained stretches and lots of patience. Choose a moment when your muscles are very warm--like after a long walk or run.  Hold your stretch for several minutes, making sure not to put weight on the muscles being stretched.  Deepen your stretch gradually and with lots of breath.  The longer you hold the stretch and the more often you do it, the more gains you'll see in flexibility.  Never move suddenly into a deeper stre
Read more

You Will Succeed - An Interview with Misty Copeland

Image
By Kate Feinberg Robins In a 2014 piece from NPR's Morning Edition , American Ballet Theatre dancer Misty Copeland discusses her children's book Firebird and how important it is to tell children, "You will succeed." Here are some highlights. On the challenges of women of color breaking into the field of professional ballet: I don't think that every African American or Latino or, you know, have the same body type, but yes, that's been one of the excuses, I think, saying that African Americans are too muscular or just aren't lean enough, and usually they say, "Oh, they have flat feet. So they don't have the flexibility that it takes to create the line in a pointe shoe." When people meet me in person they're usually surprised at how petite I am, because there's this idea that because I'm black I should look a certain way.... They hear those words from critics saying I'm too bulky, I'm too busty, and then they meet me in pers
Read more

To Control Your Center of Gravity - Strengthening Core Muscles

Image
By Kate Feinberg Robins To find your center is to control your center of gravity . The most literal meaning of "finding your center" in ballet and capoeira is to physically control your center of gravity by developing and using strong core muscles. Many of the pains, imbalances, and physical vulnerabilities that we experience in our everyday lives can be addressed by strengthening our abdominal, back, oblique, and hip muscles. Lower back pain is what first drew me to Pilates . Many years after I had stopped training ballet professionally, I took a Pilates class and realized that my back pain was due to weak abdominals. I began to practice Pilates daily, which got my core muscles into shape and all but eliminated my back pain. I continued with low-impact Pilates throughout my pregnancy and post-partum, strengthening and rebuilding my core muscles in correct alignment after the bodily trauma of pregnancy and childbirth. If you'd like guidance in figuring out which of your
Read more