Flexibility Exercises For A Professional Ballet Career

One of the ballet parents asks me if I could recommend a DVD for flexibility training. She states that her dancing daughter has

* tight hamstrings
* and front legs, I assume meaning her quadriceps

Her daughter's aim is to get higher leg extensions.

The ballet teacher says its her hips but the daughter describes the above. I recommend the ballet student reads the articles below:

A muscle stretching exercise;

"For your low back and hip area: stand with feet together, and take a long step forward. Keep your hips and low back upright, and place your hands on your hips so you can feel it if your posture changes.

Bend your back leg slowly, lowering into a runner's lunge, not uncomfortably deep. You will feel the stretch at the front of your hips. The posture muscles at the front of your spine will get this stretch as well, and also the front of your back thigh. Hold for a 10 count, and switch legs."

For a flexibility exercises DVD, with massage techniques and myofascial release, get your dancer the Flexibility Workout For Athletes.

Healthy Nutrition For Your Growing Dancer

A dance parent recently asked me if I have any idea what would healthy nutrition be for a teen aged girl who takes a few ballet classes a week.

For a growing ballet dancer, I recommend that junk food be kept to a minimum, and fresh organic foods are eaten as much as possible. Why organic? The hormone disruptors in food laden with pesticides cannot help any child grow up to be healthy. Hormones affect bone growth, muscle strength, and your child's view of the future.

The general guidelines of lean (grass fed or wild caught)proteins, lots of green vegetables (raw with a tasty dip can become a favorite with kids) and salads made with healthy oils, would be good for anyone, especially athletic people.

Learn about HEALTHY FAST FOOD.

Read about NATURAL MUSCLE BUILDING AND WHEY PROTEIN.

Understand BRAIN HEALTH AND OMEGA 3 OILS.

Use a NATURAL ENERGY DRINK without all those food chemicals.

Green vegetables supply calcium and other minerals for proper growth. Healthy oils such as flax seed oil, walnut oil and coconut oil make wonderful salad dressings. These oils contribute to brain function. If your teenager is moody, get them oils with omega 3 fatty acids in them. Unfortunately, the regular bleached super market oils are not the ones that help them grow.

Snacks that help a young dancer would be celery, nuts and seeds. The oils and trace minerals in these foods will get them more mileage than a pizza. O.K., have pizza once a week, but it is not good snack food.

Your dancing daughter or son will have a real struggle with the stress of competition in ballet and the physical demands if they eat the typical modern diet. I hope you'll read the articles listed above for more detail. But this is for you too, the concerned dance parent. It should be your diet too. It is anti-aging, and your dancer will have you around longer!

Personal Charisma And A Professional Ballet Career

A mother worries about her dancing daughter; the director of the ballet school her daughter attends has said that her strength is her personality and the fact that people like to watch her dance. Will it make up for the fact she is not the most technical dancer? And that she has a good-enough but not ideal ballet body?

If everyone is doing the same steps and shouldn't they all presumably look the same? Is personal charisma something that any child can learn or develop?

When your dancing daughter or son has a wonderful quality to their work that is unique to them, they truly have a gift. Anyone with the right physique can learn ballet, but when eyes are drawn to a dancer it puts her/him apart from many of the other dancers. Many dancers spend years in the corp de ballet because they are excellent dancers, but their gift, ironically, is blending in. They just don't have an extra spark or magnetism that draws people's attention to them.

It is wonderful when a child is accepted into a professional ballet career training program when they don't have the perfect ballet body but their personal charisma is so obvious to those holding the auditions.

I always hope these gifted performers never eye the perfect ballet bodies that do show up in professional ballet schools and feels lesser-than in some way.

Less charismatic dancers who later in their training take some acting lessons will blossom in a way that their teachers may not have expected them to. And some become more noticeable just because they grow up and develop confidence.

One way to increase your child's confidence is to get them THE BALLET BIBLE.

(And remember to get The Parents Manual for f*ree!)

Is There A Professional Ballet Career For My Dancing Daughter

I feel for you, because once I was a dancing daughter. I know my mom did her best so that I could have an extra advantage at having a professional ballet career.

And I bet your heart aches, for all the times that your dancing daughter moans and groans after ballet classes, that "I'm not good enough"..."so-and-so is so much better than me"...and more.

Well, know this and take comfort. No one is ever good enough in ballet. It is an occupational hazard. But, on the positive side of things, in ballet, you are always getting better. Even the prima ballerinas and lead male dancers improve all the time. There is no perfect.

If your dancing daughter, after all your time, expense, and emotional commitment, only becomes a corps de ballet member, will you love her as much?

Of course you will! As an understanding parent, you know that very few children who train in classical ballet become the prima ballerinas or premiers danseurs of their generation.

So how can you help your dancing daughter be the best she can be? Can you help in a way that matters - I don't mean your emotional and unconditionally loving support, but can you help in "the ballet world"?

You are your child's biggest support. And you can offer her even more support by finding and providing great dance education, to enhance her ballet training. Most ballet schools (yet) do not offer any education in functional anatomy, for example.

Or training in extra-curricular practice in say, special foot exercises that give her ballet muscles for pointe work. Ballet footwork is admired and mimicked by football players and tennis players, in case you didn't know. Everyone in sports desires that level of professional footwork.

To dance in pointe shoes - that is a big one!

For your younger dancing daughter, who is not yet ready to dance in ballet pointe shoes, THE Perfect Pointe Book offers a dance education with exercises to prepare for ballet footwork, that nothing else provides.

Every dancer has some limitations. The earlier they address these compromising factors, usually involving physique, the better. You can help your dancing daughter right now.

Why now? Doing these special ballet muscles exercises, will prepare your ballet dancer for dancing in pointe shoes, long before she gets there. Look at the author's presentation, and I think you will find that the material will help your dancing daughter work toward a professional ballet career.

Foot Arch Pain In Ballet Dancing

In ballet dancing, there is always the potential for many types of foot pain. Children dancing, who have different shapes of feet and muscle strength, may experience foot arch pain for various reasons. If your child complains about feeling foot arch pain during or after ballet classes or contemporary dance classes, there are corrections to be made in their ballet moves.

THE BALLET BIBLE breaks down every detail about how to learn properly in ballet classes and how to use the foot and arch muscles.

For example, the following topics are covered:

foot - proper weight placement on the floor

rolling ankles, or pronation - and its relationship to ballet turnout

relaxation techniques

stretching exercises

sprains, strain and pain of the lower leg caused by weak foot muscles

ballet injuries such as shin splints and sprained ankles

"Rolling ankles" in ballet dancing, is when the inner sides of the feet collapse toward the floor. This pulls on the knee joints, as well as all the tiny joints in your feet. Usually this is fixed by the dance student learning how to hold ballet turnout better in the rotator muscles at the back of the pelvis area.

As the entire leg rotates outward, the inner foot lifts a little, without evoking excess tension in the ankle muscles.

Relaxation techniques and stretching exercises are explained. The stretch of the ankle joint done by relaxing the tibia or shin muscle, prepares for a gentle and safe ankle joint and muscle stretch, to increase flexibility and a achieve better point of the foot.

Weak sole of the foot muscles will cause over-use of the lower leg muscles. This will result in tension and a decrease in the joint movements required to prevent ballet injuries.

How to prevent foot arch pain is one of a hundred technical pointers your child will understand with The BALLET BIBLE where you will get all the details.

Dance Teacher Summit Free Passes - Value $425

Author of The Body Series, Deborah Vogel writes today:


"I'm excited to announce that I will be giving away 5 full

attendee passes for the Dance Teacher Summit being held

July 29 - 31, 2011, in New York City. Each pass is worth

$425 and you can take all the dance classes, visit the

exhibit hall, and get a goody bag filled with... well

goodies! You're also invited to the cocktail party, the

ACE award competition performance, and a fun Fashion

Forward show choreographed by Mandy Moore.

Transportation and lodging is not included in this contest -

just the $425 registration fee.



To be in the running for one of these 5 free passes place

an order for $50 or more from The Body Series. The

contest is open from today, June 27th - July 3rd. I'll

pick the 5 winners from all who order first thing on the 4th

and then email you immediately, making for an even better

holiday!

Vancouver's Coastal City Ballet Holding Auditions FOr 2011-2012

Here is their page for the audition information.

Video auditions accepted.

The School Of Dance And Ballet Parents

The school of dance that you pick for child's ballet classes will influence them greatly. I know ballet parents worry about this, or simply want to learn more. There are several factors to consider when choosing a dance academy. Naturally you want a school that you can get to easily, and is in a reasonably good area. You may be driving your child there once or twice a week, or putting your child on a bus.

Your priorities on this list may be different, but here are some items to consider:

• location

• teachers' credentials

• competition level in the school

• cost

• opportunities to perform/cost

• classes by age or ability

• older teen/adult ballet beginners, if needed

• proper floors

• general atmosphere

• teachers are parents/or not

Sometimes children ask me if they should go for a career in dance. If they should dedicate themselves to ballet at the expense of other activities. I do not always know if it is possible for individuals to get into professional training. I usually respond with the most practical answer I can think of ..."can you live without dance"? If you can, do something else, maybe performance related or not.

I say this because ballet exists in a world of its own, even though this has changed a great deal over the past couple of decades. Most ballet teachers  have long dropped the "no pain no gain" concept, thankfully. Many ballet academies work with or can refer to, a health care practitioner such as a chiropractor or physiotherapist, for when students complain of  recurring pain.

The "tough it out" attitudes of the past are replaced with more sympathy for the less physically gifted, and also more ability to teach them. Not that there have not been gifted teachers who could instruct less physically endowed students to advanced or professional levels, but there have been many who were not willing to do so.

Checking Teachers' Credentials

Ballet teachers usually have chosen a syllabus to follow for ballet exams which could be:

• Cecchetti

• Royal Academy Of Dancing

• Vaganova

Factors your child may have to deal with:

• does not enjoy competition

• worries about gaining weight

• loves dance but is not physically suited

Many children are happy just to love dancing and learning the elegance and precision of ballet. A school of dance that does not structure itself around ballet exams or competitions may be a better dance academy for your child - and for you, because as ballet parents, you will go through all the stress and anxiety that your child experiences, as parents do.

Most ballet schools provide jazz, hip-hop, contemporary dance classes  and other styles of dance that are great venues for the balance of intensity and performance opportunity.

Ask dance teachers if they teach anything about nutrition or healthy eating in their classes. There should  always be an awareness of the possibility of eating disorders or crash dieting, that should never be encouraged.

If you want to support your child in the best way possible, get her/him a copy of THE BALLET BIBLE, which will reveal every essential technical point about ballet technique that your child needs to know. This amazing dancer's guide shows your child how to practice at home safely.

Read more here about THE BALLET BIBLE - a videos/photos ebook package that will result in the joy of understanding and being able to make progress in ballet classes easier for your dancing daughter or son.