Your browser does not support the video tag. Franco De Vita is the director of American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School and the 2014 recipient of the Dance Teacher Lifetime Achievement Award. Here, he breaks down pas de chat, emphasizing retiré to help students maintain their turnout.
Congratulations to Gleidson Hoffmann, the latest Editors’ Choice for the Dance Teacher Video of the Month! While performing with Ballet Arizona, Hoffmann worked as a guest teacher with students at The Arizona Dance Project to fine-tune their ballet skills. Many were jazz-trained dancers getting their first exposure to intensive ballet. Your browser does not support […]
In today’s image-driven world of social media, having a supply of eye-catching photos is more important than ever. At a recent Aspen Santa Fe Ballet shoot, photographer Jana Cruder used clouds of colored cornstarch to create rainbows of moving color around the dancers. The results are certainly striking (and definitely Instagram-worthy). On her blog, Cruder […]
Stretching the hamstrings may be the key to injury prevention for some football players. This week, sports news media are getting a kick out of the Dallas Cowboys NFL team installing ballet barres outside their locker rooms, but the move certainly makes sense to us! One of the team’s top players recently tore an ACL, […]
Sometimes all a struggling student needs to hear is a few words of encouragement. At least, that was true for Sarasota Ballet principal Ricardo Rhodes as a teenager with Parren Ballard at Boston Ballet School. “He always believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself–he’d tell me, ‘You have something special.’ He always […]
Given the buzz surrounding Rocky (opening on Broadway tonight!), the partnership between dance and boxing is a timely topic. Whether he planned it that way or not, it’s fitting that photographer John Goodman combined images of fighters in training and Boston Ballet dancers in the wings for his upcoming New York City showcase. Both series of black-and-white photographs capture […]
Watch renowned makeup artist Lisa Eldridge create a look for her friend and Royal Ballet principal Roberta Marquez that’s part La Bayadère, part Sleeping Beauty. The result is a dramatic, glistening fairytale princess with a hint of Bollywood, bold enough to be seen from the back of the opera house.
How I Teach Ballet There is a black plastic folding chair sitting at the head of the studio, but it remains empty during most of Michael Vernon’s hour-and-a-half advanced class at Manhattan Youth Ballet. He’s walking among barres lined with dancers in black leotards, poking, nudging and calling out musical accents and corrections, only returning […]
Judy Rice bridges the disparate realms of competition and college dance; modern dance and ballet. Judy Rice is University of Michigan’s most enthusiastic dance recruiter. After only two seasons performing with the Joffrey Ballet, Judy Rice fell and tore a tendon in her ankle. This came on the heels of being denied a contract with […]
It may seem that the stork dropped Wendy Whelan at New York City Ballet’s doorstep–but she was actually born in the small city of Louisville, Kentucky. Though she never got the chance to meet Balanchine, she was familiar with his neoclassical style when she arrived at the School of American Ballet. She credits Robbie Dicello […]