Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes - How To Build Confidence

Ballet training is rigorous, exacting, and the finer details of technique all count. Keeping up your self-assurance is challenging. Things that are wrong about what you are doing in your ballet training are mentioned repeatedly. Most teachers want to help their students build confidence. Ballet students worry about their progress, their pointe shoes, their ballet wear, and how they compare to everyone else.

How do you know you are doing things right in ballet class? You count on being told if you are doing something wrong. Not that all teachers correct everyone, every class. Most teachers do, or try their best to, but some do not.

You want your teacher to correct you. And you get corrected. It is all about what is wrong. You want to measure up to all that is expected.

Some students are fine with this. Maybe their self-assurance is a given. Maybe they do not aspire to a ballet career, and they just enjoy doing their best.

However, if you are seriously dedicated to becoming professional, it can be discouraging.

The demands of ballet technique encourages self-criticism. But being aware of your particular technical weaknesses is different from nagging and criticizing yourself. Awareness is helpful, and self-criticism is not. Once it becomes a habit it takes on a life of its own.

Knowing what your body is capable of, right now, and in the long run, is important. The purpose of good training is to teach you what the ideal is, and how to compensate safely, yet aesthetically, for what you do that is less than ideal. Not all teachers are trained for this.

If you are not in a big city with many studios to choose from, do not despair. The information about ballet training that used to be available only by being in a particular teacher's studio, is now more widely accessed. Not that a book or video can replace excellent classes, I am not saying that.

If you need a boost in self-assurance, and need to build confidence, get all the information you can. From your teachers, and from other sources too. And it is okay to KNOW that there are some things you do very well.

Here is a guide with which you can review and improve all your knowledge and dance moves in ballet shoes and pointe shoes.