Jump to content

drdance

Members
  • Posts

    1,446
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by drdance

  1. Perhaps the dancers who miss one class only feel less confident because it has been drilled into their psyche that if they miss a class their technique will disappear?! It doesn't actually happen. The neuromuscular pathways that have been so carefully trained simply do not start to erode after a day or two. All those dancers who 'feel like everything isn't working right' only feel like this because they believe it is so. If you are told something enough times, you will believe it. If you believe it, your body will feel and act in that way. For example, if you approach a certain step, such as pirouettes, or a pose onto demi pointe, with apprehension, it won't look confident and won't be a success. If you believe you can do it, and approach it as such, it is more likely to be successful. Or if you tell yourself you are ill enough times you'll feel ill. I know professional ballet dancers who miss class at least twice a week (it's not in their contract to attend) to focus on body conditioning, or on a specific skill set of their work, and they are still performing at a high level.
  2. I'm afraid I don't have room at home - I live in a rather small apartment. Also it's a bit more motivating to have a class, and a teacher, and other students to dance with, and there is a small social element to going to a class too. As for 'that old adage'.... "If I go one day without class,I notice. If I go two days without class, my teacher notices. If I go three days without class, everyone notices!"- I ABSOLUTELY HATE THIS!!!! (and it's total rubbish - intricate skills don't disappear overnight, and strength gains are only made at rest). I'm sure many of you have read my posts about dancer health, and my feelings on the 'religion of the daily class'! But I haven't done a ballet class for myself in many many months and I miss it.
  3. On this topic... does anyone know of any adult ballet classes in Coventry/Warwickshire? My own ballet teaching is down to one day a month and I need to get to at least one class a week but can't seem to find many :-( It doesn't even need to be an advanced class as I'm nowhere near in that kind of shape, and all I want is to de-stress after a day at school! HELP!
  4. drdance

    Sickness

    It's not just the kids - I've been forced to take the day off today due to having the start-of-term virus attack! I felt awful last week and kept going through it but eventually succumbed!
  5. Measuring the turnout from first combines the rotation at the hip with the rotation at the knee, as well as a bit at the ankle. Maximising the rotation from the hip is best because the ankle and knee are not designed for twisting, and any twisting at the knee more than a few degrees or so is a sure-fire route to injury.
  6. The second position with knees upwards and lying down frog position are good indicators of a fairly loose hip joint with potential for good turnout - it sounds like it needs strengthening. Passive turnout (as in, something else doing the work, either someone, or the floor in the case of frog position) is affected by inelastic structures like ligaments in the hip, and both depth and angle of the head of the femur as it sits into the hip socket. If a young or new dancer, like you ask, had tight ligaments and tendons at the hip then that IS the potential of turnout - as it is these exact factors that limit turnout (the ligaments can be worked on a little bit up to age 11/12). Someone with good passive turnout but who doesn't appear to be using it will benefit from strengthening the deep turnout muscles (functional footprints/rotating discs are great for this). But if a dancer has tight hips and limited passive turnout then they are always going to be limited to this, regardless of how strong they get, or how much they try to stretch it. Edited to add: NB Standing turnout can also be affected by posture - the angle that the head of the femur sits in the hip socket will adjust depending on the alignment of the pelvis, so if a young dancer is struggling to turn out their thighs, it might be related to their pelvic alignment also.
  7. Hi - This is an interesting area; there isn't a 'gold standard' for this - as the dance medicine/science community are still trying to agree on what should be measured, and how! There are two ways that a physio or similar health professional can measure external rotation at the hip joint, which involves having the dancer either lie face down or on their back, while the practitioner takes the lower leg and passively rotates it. There are several issues with this... Firstly, it measures the passive range at the hip, ie the dancer needs some strength to use this amount! Secondly,it only assesses hip ROM as if the dancer was standing ie the thigh bone is in line with the body. Thirdly, it only measures hip rotation - which accounts for around 75% of standing turnout - so it's not ideal. If one wants to measure the dancers' standing turnout that they can get themselves - Functional Footprints (http://www.functionalfootprints.com/) are a brilliant tool - complete with protractor-type scale which is great for self-assessment of gains or losses in strength. What are you looking to measure?
  8. As for whether it is dangerous to push oneself through stretching, I'm afraid this is a rather generic question and there will be no right or wrong answer. As far as I know, streching to increase muscle length, at any age, isn't dangerous to the muscle itself IF DONE SAFELY AT THE TIME - dangerous stretching methods will always be dangerous and can cause muscle injury there and then but as for whether there is any delayed danger to the muscle fibres from stretching, I genuinely don't know the answer to this question but will check with a colleague of mine who works in this area. As for the age question - increasing flexibility by increasing muscle length can be achieved at any age. Increasing flexibility by stretching ligaments can only really be done up to around age 12 - and I say 'around' because all children are different! It is worth pointing out here that flexibility as a term, refers to the range of motion at a joint not just the length of the muscle. Altering muscle length is the most productive way of working on increasing this, as the other factors (of which there are many) tend to be less easy to alter.
  9. Anjuli is so very right - I have never been naturally very flexible but always managed to hold my own among my peers as a youngster as I could use my skills in musicality, and I had a good strong jump. Having said that, flexbility is an element of dance fitness that needs to be good, in order to be successful as a professional dancer. It's another of those 'Darwinian' elements that separate those destined for professional careers from those who despite wanting it and working for it, and despite having wonderful musicality etc, just aren't made in the right way.
  10. A lot of flexibility is not related to the muscles, but to the surrounding structures eg bone, tendon, ligament etc. Most of these are inelastic and cannot be stretched anyway. Tendons are totally inelastic. Ligaments can be stretched up to about age 11/12 which will give a bit more flexibility but after that stretching the muscles is the only way to increase flexibility (other than dealing with anything else that might be hindering flexibility like an overweight person who can't touch their toes because their belly is in the way - which I'm sure is a problem none of our young dancers have!). Joints such as the hip are more flexibile if the socket is shallower, and also the angle that the head of the thigh bone is at will affect turnout. There are ligaments at the hip that also restrict/allow turnout although as I said above, they can be stretched up to about age 12. As long as a dancer strengthens the muscles that he/she stretches there won't be an issue. Overuse Injuries come from imbalances - dancers often have thighs that are strong but tight, and hamstrings that are loose but weak. That's an imbalance. As Pas de Quatre wrote - loose joints do tend to be a bit weaker and therefore more prone to acute injury (eg sprains, strains, twists) but again, as long as you strengthen what you stretch, and stretch what you strengthen, you're ok! (That's one of my 'golden' rules, by the way!)
  11. It's worth checking before applying as some of the larger universities have dance societies but some don't. I went to Middlesex and was really gutted I couldn't carry on dancing. I ended up going to a dance school nearby that had high level classes but it cost me a fortune! I know that Warwick has good dance classes, as does Sheffield.
  12. Do they not do chemistry to GCSE?!
  13. If you join the Foundation for Community Dance you are automatically covered by their insurance, I believe. This is what I have and it's pretty cost-effective too. There are others - IDS has a scheme with a company (can't remember who) and RAD and ISTD both have deals with Heath Lambert for members, but the FCD one suits me.
  14. In addition - I'll try not to get started on this one as it's something I tend to rant about! - the way that dancers are spoken to ( eg being called 'boys' and 'girls' even as adults, being 'criticised' and 'bossed about' by directors or choreographers, not to mention the 'desirable' physical aesthetic that looks extremely immature has been written about by a dance psychologist as all contributing to professional dancers being emotionally/developmentally quite immature, and therefore displaying immature behaviours. According to an article on Guardian online (Sarah Hall, 2000) Julia Buckroyd's book "The Student Dancer" (2000) states that the system produces "incredibly emotionally immature" youngsters who are ill equipped to cope with the complexities of life beyond their narrow, rarefied existence.
  15. Unfortunately a lot of dancers still smoke because of the appetite supressant nature of nicotine. I personally think that 16 is an awfully young age to be living in a house with other young dancers and to have to look after yourself as an adult, and to have all of that responsibility and freedom - any youngster would find it tempting to 'enjoy' this freedom, but I think with ballet dancers in particular, it goes a little bit further - there is a certain viewpoint among psychologists/sociologists that dancers, particularly those who have been away at vocational school from a young age, have a very different idea of socialisation and are almost institutionalised in their maturity and development. For these young people, the freedom that is suddenly put at their feet when they get to 'sixth form' especially if housed independently in central london, is almost too much to deal with and they may go 'off the rails' and more dramatically than, say a 13 year old who throws the odd tantrum to test the boundaries. The adolescent years are when social development occurs, especially in terms of how we see ourselves within society, and how it is appropriate to act etc. If one is in a remote boarding school with strict rules and traditions that are almost religious, during a large majority of this developmental phase, it stands to reason that sociological development is going to be affected. I have friends and colleagues who are professional dancers, and there's almost another step up from leaving sixth form and getting a contract in a company, where there is even more freedom to 'rebel' - I think this is why professional ballet dancers seem to wear the scruffiest clothes they can find too! Edited to try to make more sense! (not sure if it helped though!)
  16. I remember seeing a documentary a while ago where a corps dancer in the Royal ballet was saying that they can't afford to get on the property ladder even when there are a couple wanting to buy!
  17. Yes my colleague and friend is the daughter of the history teacher at Hammond and I remember her mentioning something about having kids at theirs but I'm not 100% sure. If you're still looking let me know and I can put the feelers out!
  18. Where are you based? I'm sure that there are enough people on here who will be able to help you find a really good dancing school for your DD to focus her energies onto - when I went to vocational school at age 18 my hours of dancing actually DROPPED from what I'd been doing at my local dance school!
  19. Sometimes splits is affected by neural tension affecting the hamstrings. Search for old posts on Lisa Howell or 'front splits fast'
  20. Good luck! By the way - it's not boring at all!
  21. If one is doing purely classical training then turnout in splits is desirable, as you want to train the ranges of motion for grande jete, arabesque penchee etc which of course are performed in turnout. But classical technique should be maintained in these cases, ie hips square! It's very difficult, especially at the back, unless the student has loose enough hips to get 'flat' turnout. The back leg in splits is, in effect, in the same position as it should be in arabesque (in relation to the torso) so the rest of the body should also reflect this,
  22. Totally agree about the breathing - it was what got me my doubles as a youngster. But then I didn't really have the teaching which instructs the balance etc. Interestingly, Anjuli I tried having students today resist the urge to put down the foot from retire when wobbling, but to lower the heel of the standing leg instead. We do an exercise involving balancing in retire for 3 counts and then today I did the same exercise with a single turn ending facing the front with the heel down but maintaining the retire and it really helped so thanks for that tip!
  23. It really does come down to the fitters, doesn't it? Yet so many teachers know what they're looking at - it can't be that hard, surely?!
  24. Those of you who went to Dancia and then found shoes were too wide later - had you walked a lot in London first? it could be hot swollen feet syndrome!
  25. Balance and a VERY strong core to mantain that balance is key. The longer you can balance in pirouette position, whilst being able to make tiny adjustments to your balance and maintaining a secure centre, the longer you can pirouette.... as shown here: (NB it's not my video - and it's not ballet, but one of the girls has just been accepted into the Australian Ballet School level 5 full time from January so the skills are transferable!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuFnqZZrxok&feature=g-all-u
×
×
  • Create New...