The Importance of Ballet for Younger Dancers
by Barry Kerollis
"While ballet training is an important foundation for many dance styles, it sometimes gets a bad rap. Some avoid training under the misperception that the art form is boring. While others have the impression that it has not evolved to be accessible to dancers from all walks of life. There are plenty of excuses to skimp on ballet training and focus on more current styles of dance. But giving less attention to this foundational technique, especially for younger dancers, may be a critical error that could prove difficult to overcome."
At its foundation, dance is a language where each individual step can be viewed as a word. A pirouette can be a verb, an arabesque a noun, épaulement an adjective, and pas de bourrée a preposition or article. These technical elements are the building blocks of a sophisticated and beautiful language which acts as a vehicle for dancers to move with precise coordination and express themselves through movement. It takes years of repetition and patience to master the language of ballet.
Likening dance to language allows us to better understand how it is best taught. When it comes to verbal communication, kids learn simple language skills in the home at a very young age. Similarly, most children begin dancing before they can speak, often receiving joyful encouragement from those around them.
Upon entering grade school, kids begin studying language in a more structured and systematic way. They begin by learning the alphabet before piecing together simple words and learning how to pronounce them. As students progress through grade school, they learn how to string words together into phrases, explore more intricate ways to express themselves, and learn systematic structures of writing and literature.
Academic schools are unafraid to take their time working through the tedium of language arts because families understand the importance of communication skills. They want to set their kids up for success down the line.
In trying to understand why many kids are spending an insufficient amount of time training in ballet, I’ve noted that patience is the main issue at hand. Ballet is not boring, per se. But in its early stages, it requires a great amount of explanation alongside physical practice of precise, individual movements. To ensure a dancer has time to think through and understand ballet vocabulary, they need to be taught consistently in a slow, repetitive fashion.
Due to fact that most kids start taking dance classes as a recreational activity, parents are less likely to continue enrolling their kids in ballet if they don’t leave the studio skipping with excitement and joy. But novice technique classes tend to be more informational and less dance-y. For this reason, teachers must strike a balance between teaching properly and finding time to get kids moving and excited without jeopardizing their training or physical safety.
The main challenge in getting young dancers into ballet classes and retaining them comes down to money. Academic education is generally covered by government-imposed taxes and children are required to attend. There is less ability for parents to influence systemic change because of the state-run structures of grade school. Yet, while quality ballet training follows similar educational structures, programs that teach dance are nearly always consumer-driven businesses.
Considering ballet is not required or supported in the same way academic education is, families of young dancers often have more sway in educational practices. If a parent doesn’t understand the correlation between academics and dance, they may undermine their kid’s dance education with their spending power. This may come in the form of inadequately short classes or allowing dancers to take other styles with foundations in ballet without any foundation whatsoever.
Learning the fundamentals of ballet technique are important for every young dancer, whether a child wishes only to dance for fun or they have aspirations to become a professional. A strong foundation in ballet will offer coordination, discipline, and retention skills while helping prevent technical issues and injury down the line. Additionally, like spoken language, learning dance is much easier at a younger age. For these reasons, I will always encourage guardians of young dancers to immerse them in properly structured ballet classes.
