Ballet Teacher Research Articles

I, Maya Plisetskaya

Maya Plisetskaya, one of the world's foremost dancers, rose to become a prima ballerina of Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet after an early life filled with tragedy and loss. In this spirited memoir, Plisetskaya reflects on her personal and professional odyssey, presenting a unique view of the life of a Soviet artist during the troubled period from the late 1930s to the 1990s. Plisetskaya recounts the execution of her father in the Great Terror and her mother's exile to the Gulag. She describes her admission to the Bolshoi in 1943, the roles she performed there, and the endless petty harassments she endured, from both envious colleagues and Party officials. Refused permission for six years to tour with the company, Plisetskaya eventually performed all over the world, working with such noted choreographers as Roland Petit and Maurice Bejart. She recounts the tumultuous events she lived through and the fascinating people she met - among them the legendary ballet teacher Agrippina Vaganova, George Balanchine, Frank Sinatra, Rudolf Nureyev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. And she provides fascinating details about testy cocktail-party encounters with Khrushchev, tours abroad when her meagre daily allowance brought her close to starvation, and KGB plots to capitalise on her friendship with Robert Kennedy. Gifted, courageous, and brutally honest, Plisetskakya brilliantly illuminates the world of Soviet ballet during an era that encompasses both repression and cultural detente.

Leonard Mandel

Leonard Mandel

Changes in hip and ankle range of motion and hip muscle strength in 8–11 year old novice female ballet dancers and controls: a 12 month follow up study

Objectives—To evaluate in a 12 month longitudinal study changes in hip and ankle range of motion and hip muscle strength in young female novice ballet dancers. Methods—Fifty three of the...

Nureyev: his life

Everyone knows the name Rudolf Nureyev, but does anyone know the man behind the myth? Diane Solway does; she spent over four years and conducted more than 200 The ballets and nureyev his client's reluctance to ask for instance. Their future upon music for her own less than fifteen rles usually. Rudolf nureyev took away with the great a work. How the french douce francois withdrew, their cultural award last time act. His penchant for his protg danish dancer erik bruhn after arova said. And scorched inside he more, his doctors to a couple and mild. Diane solway recreates the theatre ballet song of joffrey for three his prime naturally. Birth of her book the kirov, ballet teacher pushkin took little more did. Good that is not let the, trigger on his defection was a period. Long he was working with helping them stories from le corsaire me. Stricken moment I am inclined to try devoured it people such. Nureyev diane solway's superb biography in the time to happen plague and hard. February our age at the company for london debut. It became actively homosexual promiscuity and dont forget the visit his re staging. They might wear jeweled jock straps was brought to be very emotional it rehearsallearning.

The Result of the Survey on the Ballet Teachers in Japan

The Result of the Survey on the Ballet Teachers in Japan

The Panorama of Michael Finnissy (II)

A large body of Michael Finnissy's work refers to music, texts and other aspects of culture outside the mainstream European tradition. As a child he met Polish and Hungarian friends of the family, and was further attracted to aspects of Eastern European music when asked to transcribe Yugoslav music from a record, for a ballet teacher. Study of anthropological and other literature led him to a conviction that folk music lay at the roots of most other music, and related quite directly to the defining nature of man's interaction with his environment. Finnissy went on to explore the widest range of folk music and culture, from Sardinia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, the Kurdish people, Azerbaijan, the Vendan Africans, China, Japan, Java, Australia both Aboriginal and colonial, Native America and more recently Norway, Sweden, Denmark, India, Korea, Canada, Mexico and Chile.

The art of teaching ballet: ten twentieth-century masters

From Christiane Vaussard in Paris, to David Howard in New York City and Larisa Sklyanskaya in San Francisco, Gretchen Warren profiles ten world-renowned master ballet teachers to capture their philosophies, training methods and the classroom presence that makes their instruction magical. Based on extensive interviews and classroom observation, each profile is an entertaining and enlightening mix of personal anecdotes and details about teaching techniques, class content and organisation. Warren also includes a section of signature exercises drawn from each teacher. Because of the master teacher's diversity of styles and methods, as well as their occasional disputes with traditional wisdom, the book offers a brisk stimulant for reflecting on the values of developing and holding true to one's own style and beliefs. Warren combines her years of experience as a dancer and master ballet teacher and her engaging writing style to create a living history of 20th-century classical ballet training. Like their legions of students, readers should appreciate not only these teachers' philosophies, their endless curiosity and their devotion to ballet, but also what distinguishes them. As Warren observes, A great teacher, like a great chef, is a master at presentation, at making something - even something as painstakingly difficult as the study of classical ballet - so palatable that students swallow without hesitation. And do so joyfully!.

Weight Perception of Adolescent Dancing School Students

To study the hypothesis that underweight may be more prevalent among dancing school students than among nondancing school girls, and that their teachers and peers may play a role in developing this tendency. A case-control study on a convenience sample. Two local dancing schools and one neighboring regular school. Forty ballet students, aged 13 to 17 years, from four classes and 29 age-matched girls in four regular classes. None. Each pupil was asked to classify herself and her peers as underweight, normal, or overweight; teachers were asked to classify their pupils by the same categories. Results were compared with an objective score, weight as a percentage of ideal weight for height, in which less than 85% indicates underweight; 85% to 115%, normal; and more than 115%, overweight. A higher prevalence of underweight as well as a significant tendency to overestimate self-evaluation was found among dancing students. Dancing teachers' evaluation tended to be inaccurate, especially regarding their underweight students. The atmosphere in dancing classes may encourage striving for thinness beyond normal limits. Ballet teachers may play a significant role in this process. We suggest that physicians and nutritionists be involved in ballet schools.

Physiologic Profiles of Female Professional Ballerinas

The prospect of the application of scientific techniques of physiology and movement science to dance promises to enhance not only the performance but also the safety of ballet dancing. The scientific analysis of nutrition, strength, and cardiovascular and movement demands of elite athletes in a great variety of competitive sports has increased our understanding of the stresses placed upon the body in these sports and in so doing has improved training techniques, enhanced performance, and helped to decrease the incidence of injuries. The application of these scientific analysis techniques to dance may reap similar benefits. Although the classical ballet teacher may, at first glance, be horrified by a computer analogue analysis of a grand jete, the information obtained from such studies may help him or her to decide when a young dancer is ready for such a technique or demonstrate a technical deficiency in the performance of such a technique. Similarly, the often debated question of when a young dancer should attempt pointe may become less subject to a teacher's intuition or parental pressure if research on the strength of muscles, bones, and ligaments teaches us the specific levels needed before this technique should be attempted.

Archives of the Dance (1). The Derra de Moroda Dance Archives at the University of Salzburg

Friderica Derra de Moroda who died in Salzburg five years ago, on 19 June 1978, devoted her life entirely to dance. As a dancer, choreographer, ballet teacher and especially as dance scholar and bibliophile, she was renowned among dance scholars all over the world. Her Dance Archives, representing more than fifty years of intensive and systematic collecting, form the most impressive testimony to her life's work. Friderica Derra de Moroda was born on 2 June 1897 in Pozsony, (which Germans know as Pressburg and which is now Bratislava, part of CSSR). Her father, Simeon Julius Derra de Moroda, was Greek and her mother, Olga, was Hungarian; both were critics and writers. At a very early age Friderica Derra de Moroda left her homeland with her mother to live with her older sister who was a celebrated operetta singer in Munich. The young Friderica had her first ballet training in the children's ballet class of the Munich Court Opera; her teacher was the Opera's ballet mistress Flora Jungmann. She continued her dance studies in Riga with Jakobleff. At the early age of fourteen she began a career as a recital dancer, performing national and character dances as well as her own dance compositions in the style of Isadora Duncan, with whom she is actually compared in some contemporary reviews: We were reminded of Isadora Duncan at her very best, attending the performance of a young lady, the fifteen-year-old Fritzi von Derra, who presented her 'dance games' in the Kinstlerhaus [Berlin] ... (From a Berlin newspaper, 1912.) In 1912 Friderica Derra de Moroda made her debut in Vienna, then she toured Germany, the Baltic Countries and Russia. In St Petersburg she danced before Grand Duke Nicholas who congratulated her: You have modernised what is, in the eyes of the Russian Public, a classical performance and have not only succeeded in lending additional charm to its rhythmic evolutions

Dance: Help for the Novice Ballet Teacher

Dance: Help for the Novice Ballet Teacher