Friday, November 25, 2011

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Perfect Pointe Book – By Lisa Howell

The Perfect Pointe Book” is a fantastic resource for dancers of all ages. It is designed to guide you through all of the stages required for pointe work, to make sure you have a safe and fun progression onto pointe!

This invaluable resource was written by a Physiotherapist (Physical Therapist) with over 10 years of experience in treating dancers and preparing them for pointe work.

It is designed to combine classical technique training with physiotherapy techniques to fine tune and accelerate your preparation for pointe work!, this book is worth its weight in gold!

The book teaches you four special exercise programs targeted for technical accuracy and strength.

  • the flexibility of your feet and ankles
  • the strength of your little foot muscles 
  • your ballet turnout 
  • your core control
Lisa Howell the author says:

"After over 10 years of working intensively with dancers as a therapist and constantly seeing the same weaknesses resulting in the same problems en pointe, I simply had to find a way to teach students how to get it right from the beginning. The problem is, if you start off with bad technique, it is VERY hard to UNLEARN this later on."

And:

"I wanted to make learning about the body as fun, and as easy, as possible. All of the exercises have lots of photos so that you can see exactly how to do them..."

The198 page book shows you how to "test yourself at the start of each of the 4 stages, and then learn a program of special exercises that really focus on waking up all of the important muscles. After doing all the exercises for two weeks, you can retest yourself, and if you can do them all perfectly, you can move onto the next stage."


This years old book continues to be a highly valued ballet dancer's guide for adult ballet class, getting the right ballet pointe shoes, and for teachers too.