Kate_N

In some situations & particularly on the internet, I tend to assume that English is not the first language of a poster, or that they're not hugely literate or used to expressing themselves in writing ...

No, you're not the only one - which is partly why I answered in a straightforward common-sense way. If someone gets their kicks from posting hoping to elicit responses to feed their fetish, then a straightforward professional answer can sometimes short circuit that.

Very wise advice - effective stretching actually makes many many tiny tears in the muscles. The idea is that as those tears heal, the muscles heals lengthened. This is why extreme stretching to increase flexibility shouldn't be done between barre & centre, but at the end of the day's dancing. I've also read sports physiotherapists advise that it's flexibility that is key, but mobility. That is, functional flexibility. It's all very well doing the splits on the floor, but can you get the leg high in a step or combination, when the choreography requires it? That's the difference between flexibility (splits, for example) and mobility (penché, for example)

@Anna C - that's really interesting. I remember Ms Julie Felix (extraordinary master teacher) saying something like that in a summer vacation class once to a large group of intermediate to advanced dancers, of mixed ages - from 13 year olds, through to Elmhurst students on vacation, through to us adult ballet dancers of ages up to around 60. There were a couple of talented, thin long-legged 15/16 year olds with potential as dancers, but struggling with clean turns. Ms Felix was really sweet to both them and us (middle-aged women with hips) saying that in terms of the physics of turning, it was harder for these long thin bodies to turn, whereas our mature adult bodies with hips and shoulders, had a greater potential for the torque that is needed - the kind of energy via opposing forces that helps you round in a pirouette. It certainly made me feel a little braver in a class with all those young girls!

I assume this is what dance belts are for. The wonderful teacher, Sander Blommaert shows such stretches on his Instagram feed.

I've seen Ms Rojo working in class (years before she was AD of ENB) and while she may not have elevation, boy, can she turn!

MODERATOR'S NOTE: This thread has been split off from an earlier thread here: and some quotes may be from that original thread (click on the arrow at the top right of any quote to go back to the original post). If you spot any post which is obviously in the "wrong" thread, please point it out. Thank you. @Pups_mumI think this is such an important point. We need a balance, and a society which doesn't pathologise normal ordinary feelings of stress, anxiety etc and particularly the normal ordinary confusions of puberty! I had a young student of mine take me aside at the start of a 3 hour studio session to tell me that they thought I ought to know that they'd not slept well because they'd been having lots of anxious thoughts. My spoken response was to smile be reassuring and say "It's OK. You know what you have to do. Do the breathing, be in the present here in the studio, focus on that. You don't have to think about anything else." What I was thinking to myself was, however, "Welcome to the adult world." Lovely hard-working student - but I can't help feeling that they were not served well by not being taught that anxious thoughts are normal ... and being taught how to deal with them. And insomnia from them! Resilience is so important. Edited to add: So I"m interested in what can be done to train young people in realistic ways in areas where standards are exceptionally high, and competition for places is tough, and some aspects of the high standards are perhaps beyond the individual's control? Given classical ballet aesthetics as they currently are, there are going to be some bodies which are just not suited. And before we get to aesthetics, the rigours of the physical training also mean that some bodies are just not suited. And the work ethic is necessarily tough, and aesthetic & technical standards necessarily exceptional. What are the ways of preparing young people for these aspects of the world they aspire to enter, which offer realistic assessment to pupils, but don't become abusive?

That's really interesting @drdance - no apology needed! When I started doing box jumps, I was trying to land on top of the box in the same upright position that I had on the ground - that was scarier & louder & much harder (my trainer judges my effort on the noise of my landing). So I have almost jumped that height. I've also jumped the next plyo box height up - probably 65cm, but not for a while (lockdown of course), so we're starting back slowly ... And yes to this in my gym training: the aim is to jump up (landing without sound) step down and immediately jump back up. It's tough when you do 30 in a row without stopping! Which is what I did on Friday - a pyramid 5,10, 15, 20, 25, 30, then back down again with a sled push at 80kg in between each set of jumps. Slight DOMS in my quads today ... ballet class later today will be nice.

I was thinking about this thread in the gym yesterday. I work out with a personal trainer (have learned to lift quite heavy weights - it’s a revelation!) and he was getting me to do box jumps onto a plyo box. I’d guess it was about 50 cm. The aim is to jump up to the top from standing and to try to land on top of the box as silently as possible. So that means i have to really lift up my knees and control my landing. I land in a fairly deep squat to do this, so it’s not pretty! But my trainer was saying that box jumps are one of best core exercises around, as well as good for glutes. I was definitely jumping higher than 25cm! (and in a set of exercises over about 25 minutes I probably did around 200 jumps). But the main thing that I struggle with on the first few is not the height, but the fear - of falling, of tripping up. Weird ... but it certainly trains my jumping - I notice in ballet class that I can access much more push - not that Zoom classes contain much jumping at the moment.

I just wanted to add how much I m learning from this discussion - I'm particularly interested in Ms Northmore's experience of remaking her body & her day to day experience of teaching, in relation to the scientific knowledge of other posters. I'm interested in this partly because I notice quite a difference in teaching approaches between the UK and the USA - I've taken class with some amazing teachers in the US who have a very scientific and body mechanics approach to ballet - it's a different mindset to many teachers in the UK. Both have their virtues and - as a permanent ballet student 🤣 - I learn from each.

Oh, I don't disagree @Nico Kolokythas I was just thinking about @drdance's comment about dancers not actually jumping very high, but giving the illusion of height. But it's clear to most relatively ballet-knowledgeable spectators that for example, the men who can really jump have obvious thigh & glute muscle development. It's tougher for women, who are supposed to have bodies with longer elegant lines (not that male dancers aren't expected to have that as well!) And dancers tend to know that the long-legged tall dancers (of both sexes) find fast jumping more of a challenge. It would be interesting to have some research investigating whether there's a correlation between the muscle types @drdancewas talking about, physique, and perceived levels of speed & height in professional classical dancers.

Isn't part of the 'optical illusion' to do with upper body, arm & head carriage? If your chest and head are up, and arms stretched, you'll look higher, longer, leaner, than a sportsperson. This is why we tend to think of ballet as - ultimately - art rather than sport.

In Zoom, you can 'Pin' a particular window - I find it really useful when I'm trying to pick up the combination, but I really like switching to Gallery view once I know the choreography, so I have a sense of dancing with others!

I am doing classes with Christina Mittelmaier on Zoom, and the class is accompanied by Chris Hobson - he is superb! And the 2 of them together are a funny & endearing double act. I learn so much in Ms Mittelmaier's class, and love the way Chris Hobson improvises and changes pace & tempo in response to the combination Christina sets. Their classes are the highlight of my ballet week, and one of the wonderful silver linings of the situation we are all in.

As I understand it, not necessarily to both questions. Muscle bulk is as much to do with innate physiology and hormones - from puberty, male bodies' production of testosterone affect skeletal development (heavier bones than female bodies), lung development (bigger lungs) and the ability to develop muscle - it's why men and women don't compete together in most athletics (and why there was such an outcry in the 1980s at the East German 'doping' of women athletes with male hormones!) You can deliberately train for bulk, but that requires fairly specialist techniques. If you look at the way that women look in bodybuilding competitions, what you see is an emphasis on an exaggerated stereotypical "feminine" body - tiny waist etc, and an emphasis on minimal body fat (and similarly for men, emphasis on chest and biceps and stereotypical concepts of the masculine stereotype) - it's not to my taste at all, I think bodybuilding bodies are a bit to exaggerated, but it takes all types to make the world ... My own experience of learning to "lift heavy" is that getting up to an 87 kilo deadlift and 62kg back squat (my heaviest lifts) has taken about 3 years (but I'm 60) and in the process the training has made me stronger, but leaner (because I've shed fat) and has definitely improved my whole core - not just legs. But I'm not 15 and in pre-professional ballet training! If you have a look at the Instagram feed of "TheDanceStrengthPro" you'll see the sort of slow, careful, controlled and technically exacting training he does with young dancers in training. They do some standard weightlifting as well as specifically dance-related conditioning & training. It's very interesting and I learn a lot. Edited to add: but I take @drdance's point about unqualified people - so caveat - I'm just talking from my own experience of a long time training, but just my own body. And I fit into the category of "post-menopausal woman" that @Nico Kolokythasmentions re Pilates! But I like to approach things as @drdancesuggests - evidence and argument and discussion, which seeks to refine and focus what we're all aiming for, each in our own training journey.

Brilliant advice! I'm finding this to be a fascinating discussion - thank you to all you experts with your different perspectives and expertise.

I think @Viv speaks a lot of sense. What do you want to achieve by doing the exam? Sometimes, we get caught up in "doing an exam" for its own sake, rather than remembering that the exam comes after the training. That is, we train to learn to get better and better in our technique. We don't train to pass an exam. So, if you know you need a particular qualification to get to the next stage of your training, then it might be worth doing. But does it make your actual dancing better? Will the course you want to do accept you on an audition? or paper qualifications? or a combination of the two? Edited to add: oh dear, that sounds like an inquisition! 😉 I'm not suggesting you answer those questions here, but use them for your own private reflections & decision-making.

Yes, that sounds like a good idea - I think you could do a search here about it, and I'm sure @DrDance will have an overview. A lot of dancers push back into their knees and I gather (but please, ask an expert) that that can overdevelop the quads in relation to other muscle groups in the body (such as glutes and lower abs).

Full disclosure - neither am I! but everything I read about physical training - dance & general fitness - always says - women shouldn't be scared of cross-training & weightlifting - it won't make us have bulky muscles! And I have to say that doing weighted squats (or lunges) has trimmed my thighs revealing the muscles (under the fat!). It's about the technique & details of the training. I love what @drdance says upthread about thinking about what you're training for, and then think about how you do that. It's like the fear people have of doing ballet - "Oh I can't do ballet, I can't do the splits" - well, no-one needs to be able to do the splits really - they are a by-product of the strength & flexibility that fully trained professional dancers acquire.

The other thing about the quadriceps muscles is that on a slim body, they can look bigger than other parts of the body. They are - the quads are the strongest muscle group in our bodies. But sometimes less than optimal training for body type can affect the proportions of a person's body. Putting too much weight back in the heels, for example or pushing back into the knees , particularly if the person has hyperextended knees. I was told that this is unlikely - particularly for women/girls. Physiologically, we don't have the level of testosterone which leads to the strongly muscular physique and bulk of men/boys (in puberty) - it's unlikely that 90 minutes of that sort of activity each week is bulking muscles on a 15 year old girl - women just don't have the biology to create bulky muscles without a lot of specific work. I've found, for example, that what makes my quads strong, but also leaner, is weighted back squats (and to a lesser extent deadlifts) - done correctly, weightlifting can be excellent strength training for dancers (see Rupert Wilshire's Instagram feed, for example). And I lift quite heavy for my age & sex.

Well said @Pups_mum The problem is that we have no steady, secure, and science-based guidance from the government. It seems to me that their policy actually hasn't changed much from 'herd immunity' - it's swayed by public opinion & the influence of commercial & business interests. I compare this with the experience of my family n Germany (one of whom works in the theatre) who've had clear and science-based guidance, and are back at work. And there's been absolute clarity about wearing masks as a way to protect everyone. And Germans do these things properly, not half-heartedly (eg wearing masks but not actually covering nose & mouth).

I'm totally with you, @DeveloppeD If I said what I really think is going on, I suspect my post would be deleted for being too 'political' but I think we need to think back to public statements about "herd immunity" made in February-March, and reflect ... And as for risk: there are peer-reviewed papers emerging that suggest risks for people over 50 are very bad.** So a number of us are right to be very careful & cautious. **If you do Twitter, Mike Otsuka (from the LSE) is worth following for links to this research.

From the link @Peony gives. It seems to refer to after-school & extra-curricular activities are permitted in school/educational settings - so schools, for example. The "Dance studios" in the list cited above maybe for the stand alone studio eg Danceworks or Pineapple.

That's not happening now. I think it behoves us all to travel as little as possible, unless it's necessary to earn our livings. Scotland will still be there next year! A lot of people have died (something like two & a half times the normal number of deaths each week, according to a scientist on the Today programme this morning) - personally, I don't think anyone should put pressure on our systems unless it's absolutely necessary for health or earning a living.

Indeed - as we see in the work of many contemporary choreographers, where they use both male & female athleticism, grace, and flexibility.