Perhaps the most disingenuous and misleading idea - an idea that I personally think is nothing more than a pure attempt at taking your money regardless of any results or consequences - is the notion that children can learn multiple forms of dance at the same time or worse still, that students can spend a year or two dabbling with jazz, a year or two doing hip hop, and a year or two doing tap, and then attempt ballet and have any chance at keeping up with even a basic ballet class. This may seem like a very strong and opinionated statement, but I can back it up with twenty years of direct experience. I am writing this article to save you time and money by avoiding this mistake.
Reasons to avoid jazz, tap and hip hop multi-classes or combo classes as a child:
1) No center and no centering of the body.
Students who "study" these dance forms and then attempt ballet are always confronted with the hard reality that they have no idea where their balance center is. Hip hop, jazz and tap are always in motion or are in poses not requiring anything but basic pedestrian balance - no better than what a 4 year old can do naturally. Ballet trains and teaches to a very specific balance center that will let the dancer suspend themselves over the ball of the foot for extended periods of time whether spinning around or in a pose. This suspended balance also makes the ballet dancer have that "floating" or "etherial" look whereas the hip hop, jazz or tap dancer always looks released, heavy into the floor, or drifting around and vague. I have seen so many jazz and hip hop students try ballet at 10 or 11 or 12 years of age after years of combo class training and they have no idea where their bodies are, they cannot hold still in any of the standard positions of ballet, and they are inevitably extremely frustrated at this. I would be very upset if I spent good money and a lot of time on something and got that type of result.
2) Extremely poor posture.
The child's body does not want to naturally pull up and stand in a straight, heightened position - hence all those colloquialisms of a grandmother or nanny always reminding their children to stand up straight from yesteryear. Hip hop, jazz and tap do absolutely nothing to teach or train how to pull up the posture, these dance forms simply do not have a method or system to do this - instead they are only interested in rhythmic motions that are essentially pedestrian or found in the normal, random sorts of motions a human body might do in day-to-day life. When students who have learned this type of non-pulled up or vague positioning attempt ballet, they not only fight the bad habits of being released and slumped in the spine but many times they cannot find the muscles with which to make any pull up happen because they simply never used them before in that way.
3) Vague, heavy arms.
Use of the arms in a smooth, light and effortless way that draws the line of the body out through the hands must be learned, it is not something that can be figured out at home. Hip hop, jazz and tap let the arms move in very basic ways or just hang off the body letting the hands do whatever - which means the student has no idea where their arms are. Upon the very first attempt at anything like ballet it becomes immediately apparent that the dancer has no idea what to do with their arms and their arms are just in the way of the motion being done which further adds to the hampered, off-balance look being caused by reasons 1 and 2 above.
4) Zero articulation of the feet.
The absolute, most critical thing a ballet dancer has to be able to do - and which benefits all other dance forms and even athletics to a very great extent - is control what the feet are doing and learn how to extend power through the ends of the toes for pushing off the ground, shaping the foot in the air, and also keeping the foot angled correctly. The wrong angle of the foot leads directly to sprained or broken ankles and improperly training the foot builds up all the wrong muscle memory and makes the entire lower leg solidify to where it becomes nearly impossible to bend or extend in the correct way. For any young dancer this is a non-starter for ballet and for girls in particular this sort of bad, sloppy "anti-training", if you will, makes it impossible for them to attempt pointe work. If you set about sabotaging someone so that they'd never be able to do anything else, training the feet in the wrong way is the perfect way to go about this. I have seen so many students come to a ballet class as a pre-teen or teenager with "years and years" of previous combo-class training and they simply cannot make their feet do anything. The teenage students in particular recognize this and then see what sort of tremendous road blocks they are facing to undo all this useless training and bad habits and usually decide to stop dancing altogether - and for that result, after years of time and money and effort at the combo class or competition dance approach, the student and parent end up with zero. What a shame and what a waste.
Conclusion:
Train incorrectly as a young dancer and the ability to dance well - to say nothing of attempting ballet - is severely impaired unless you are fortunate enough to have access to a very good ballet program nearby and take full advantage of it to fix the damage. This means you will have spent twice the money and wasted years of your time, but all is not lost in the end; learn ballet correctly in the first place and you will dance anything beautifully plus not waste your time and money learning bad habits and, it must be said, learning things you can figure out on your own at home in front of the TV. Take virtually any professional ballet dancer or fully trained pre-professional ballet dancer and just look at how they move, then compare that to the lumbering, sloppy dancing and mute upper body of the combo-class or competition dance trained student of any age or level and the difference is profound. You cannot learn or figure out ballet by yourself at home which is why it is worth spending money and time to learn; hip hop, jazz and tap can be made into video games because they do not have a specific technique in them. Avoid wasting your money and time, have your child learn ballet first so that problems 1 through 4 do not plague them for the rest of their lives, then let them try whatever dance fascinates them after that.
Matthew Reinschmidt
Ballet Master,
Ballet North Inc
On the web: http://www.balletnorth.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment