Balletopedia

Eat Right

Eat Right. Respect Your Body. Dance Forever. Dancing is great for your body. Dancers tend to live long lives, in superb health. They maintain their strength, their suppleness, and that magn...

Cross Training & Injury Prevention

The well-rounded dancer can benefit from a variety of training tools. Pilates, resistance training, the ancient practice of yoga, along with thoroughly modern forms of exercise such as Gyro...

Terms & Positions

Positions of the Arms Ballet’s major training systems all use Beauchamps’s original five positions of the feet and, for the most part, the same French terminology. On the most fundamental a...

Hairdo How-To

The Ballet Bun Ballet’s classic hairstyle has come to define the dancer herself: “bunhead” is dancers’ own affectionate term for ballerinas and ballet students. Meticulous grooming is part o...

When To start Pointe

It is hard to tell an eager young dancer that she is not yet ready for pointe shoes. Students — and parents — must realize that teachers have to be firm: there is a risk of serious injury in...

Studio Etiquette

Many breaches of studio etiquette — things that are generally not allowed during ballet class — are shown in the illustration above. Can you find them all? ×Chatting, whispering, or giggling...

Pioneers of Pointe

By the end of the 19th century the ballerina faced new challenges. In Russia, in St. Petersburg, ballet flourished thanks to the patronage of the Tsars, and the genius of Petipa, Ivanov, Tch...

The Ethereal Woman

Marie Taglioni was not the first to dance on pointe but she’s the one who made it great. She developed and refined what had been a mere trick into a genuine means of artistic expression. Sta...

Rebels & Scandals

By the 1700’s women had made it onto the stage but they still hadn’t liberated themselves from their cumbersome and restrictive costumes. Any sort of realistic drama or expressivity was impo...

Pointe Shoe Evolution

The first toe-dancing shoes were merely satin slippers, much like today’s technique slippers. They had leather soles and some darning on the sides and under, not on, their pointy tips. They fit ...