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Acro in dance


balletmum20

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I'm after a little help and peoples views on acro, my dd does a modern solo and her teacher has asked that we start acro so she can put a walkover in her next modern solo.

 

My dd loves modern and tap, but ballet is her world, just wondered what everyone's thoughts on acro in dance, and does gymnastic type work not ruin posture and so on for ballet?

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I would say that its not necessary to have any acro in a modern solo but its nice to have a little to show off their abilities if they can. But not too much, its a dance solo after all so dance should be paramount.

 

To give you an example, my DD had a forward and backward walkover in her last modern solo, she does them very nicely so they looked good. However she suffered some wrist pain (not from doing acro) and as a result needed a minor op (from which shes still recovering). The walkovers had to be removed from her dance as she couldn't put any weight on her wrist, it made no difference, she still kept on winning.

 

As for ruining posture, I'm not sure, its never affected my DD but then she doesn't actually do gymnastics any more. Others may have more thoughts on this.

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I did gymnastics from the age of one to about 15 and it has never affected my posture for ballet.y younger sister(age 13) still does gymnastics and is in worldwide development squad for trampolining and has no trouble at all with her posture in her vocational grades x

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When I was younger and dancing gymnastics was certainly discouraged and probably frowned upon. It was always considered that dance would aid a good gymnast but not the other way around. However, I'm not sure if the train of thought on this has changed over the years as I know dd has 2 gymnasts in her level on the CAT scheme and I think TV shows like Dance Moms certainly seem to advocate a lot of acro within their dance routines! I personally would prefer to see the girls in this show just dance, although I do appreciate what they can do; I would love to see what they are capable of without all of the tricks! Just out of interest, does the same teacher who takes your dd for modern also teach her ballet class?

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There are lots of threads on here about acro/gym

And ballet. If the ballet teaching is good enough then acro or gymnastics is a great addition to training in fact I advocate it nowadays but if the ballet teaching isn't good enough pupils with bendy backs from acro will struggle with their posture in ballet.

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i have done both gymnastics and dance for about 9 years and id say its helped me, particulaly recently as it has given me greater flexibilty and more tricks etc for my improv or modern routines - i agree with drdance about the good teaching, when a gymnast is in a dance class they just need to make sure they remeber where they are and keep thier posture correct and they should be fine !

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I just wanted to add from a personal and teaching perspective, I did gym with an England coach until the age of 11 i had to work quite hard to retrain neck and upper back muscles more than worry about my lower back. I have since found this with a student who was selected for the Olympic rhythmic team a few yrs ago. She pulled out to concentrate on dance career but I found her arabesque line was the most affected problem, however her and other gymnast trained students approach and attitude to class, auditions, exams, festivals was and is exemplary and I feel they always 'get it' when I correct them.a lot of overseas vocational students tend to have done a lot of gym and it is still on the year 7 &8 curriculum at white lodge so I think the pros of doing some form of gym and having a few tricks up yr sleeve as a dancer outweigh the cons :)

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