FABULOUS Dance Student Videos

Watch these videos!

I just found this on line. Wonderful student videos of Napolean's summer dance course in the Salt Lake Conservatory's Summer Dance Intensive.

I've taught in dance courses with modern dance teachers like Wendy Perron, Sandra Neals and Raymond Johnson. There is frustration with teaching ballet students modern choreography. Yet they did, and Napolean did - to enjoyable results - check the link and watch the dances!

Understanding Basic Ballet Positions

Understanding basic ballet positions, to most people, means the five positions of the feet. Yet, a position more basic than those, is the position your body is in when you are standing with your feet parallel, in a comfortably held good posture. Understanding your personal starting point will help you progress faster.

You may not be asked to do this in a beginner (including adult beginner) ballet class. If your teacher skips this step, you can do it at home.

Stand in front of a mirror in your ballet clothes, or wear shorts and a tight top so you can see your knees, and your general posture. A hard floor is better than a plush carpet. Here are things to notice:

- are your feet evenly touching the floor with your weight distributed evenly between the center of your heel, the little toe joint area and the big toe joint area (this is often called "tripod")

- do your ankles roll inward or outward

- do your calves naturally stand in a straight line upward to your knees, or do they bow out slightly

- do your knees face the front or slightly inward

- are your hips and shoulders level or even a tiny bit uneven

- standing sideways to the mirror, are your knees above your ankles or do they over-straighten and curve behind you

- is there a small curve inward at the small of your back (everyone's natural curve will look different in relation to the shape of their gluteal muscles)

- can you pull the very bottom of your abdomen up and in without changing the tilt of your pelvis

- is your chest lifted allowing your shoulders to relax, not drooping forward

- is your neck relaxed - turn your head slightly from side to side, and up and down a little, to get into a relaxed position

Of course it is your teacher's job to notice all of this, but it gets you ahead if you can see these factors, and correct yourself as much as possible. Always ask for help if you need more information to be sure.

All of the above will determine how you will stand in first, second, third, fourth and fifth ballet positions. Aside from introducing the element of turn out, your understanding of posture and how your feet are placed on the floor, will determine how you progress learning basic ballet positions.

Learn more details about accurate ballet positions and movements like retire, releve, and how to correct your turnout and posture for executing ballet barre exercises.

Flexibility Exercises For Cheerleading Stunts

How to improve your flexibility is an ongoing challenge for cheerleaders, dancers, and those doing gymnastics.

Safe stretching is a learned art. It's especially important for those who are not in dance classes learning ballet technique, to learn proper warm up, and proper stretching positions.

If you are in high school or college cheer leading it's easy to justify a short-cut and skip warming up - especially if you're hot and sweaty just from getting to practice on time! Yet warm up and cool down are important for making your hard work pay off. Also, and just as important, your stretching is more effective.

The time taken to warm up protects you from injuries. Stress fractures, joint pain and muscle strains are the least of what can happen if you fail to warm up.

Warm-up gets your body activated for the intense activity of all the choreographic repetitions you will do in any given practice. It wakens your reflexes, or your automatic physical reactions to your own and others' movements.

Your heart rate and breathing will increase, pushing oxygen and glucose to your muscles and raising your body temperature. The result is, your muscles get warmer, move and stretch more easily, and will be less painful afterwards. Once warmed up, your metabolism runs high for the duration of your practice, resulting in better fat-burn off.

Your warm-up should work the same muscles you'll be using while exercising. If you are going to be doing a lot of jumps, a slow motion warm up of jumps would be slow controlled squats.

Slowly straightening up, controlling your posture, and holding your core muscles, will prepare your muscles and your concentration for a fun and safe session.

Using slow motion versions of your arm movements will warm up your shoulder/neck/arms and upper back.

After five to ten minutes of this kind of warm up, you can do some gentle stretching in all the positions you will be using in the choreography.

After practice, you can repeat your stretching more intensely. Better to take time here while you're really warmed up, and then throw on some sweats to go home in. (Even if you are going somewhere to grab a bite and socialize, better use the time to stretch rather than primp. You are serious, right?)

Cool-down gradually. Just walking around two or three minutes, pausing to lunge and stretch your calves, makes it easy on your circulatory system (heart/lungs/blood flow).

Stretches are technical and must be learned in detail. Warming up in order to maximize your efforts will help you get more flexible for cheer leading, and avoid injury.

CLICK HERE  to learn the best  flexibility exercises.

D. Buxton is a writing partner with Vone Deporter, of The Sedona Series, about a surfer girl in pointe shoes.

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Get More Flexible With Safe Stretching and All Natural Nutrition

Here's an article about all natural nutrition and how to get more flexible.

Ballet Warm Up Exercises For Your -Position To The Front

If you are a beginner in ballet classes, adult ballet classes, or with a cheer leading team, safe stretching is an important factor in your training. Following are some safe easy at home stretches with which you can become more flexible. Whatever aspect of ballet/sports/fitness you participate in, these stretches will help for ballet warm up exercises.

Being able to kick, or lift your leg to the front, side, and back, enables you to move more freely and maybe eventually do the splits. You need a daily routine of stretches to become more flexible. You also need to understand a few principles of working safely.

Don't skip a warm up. If you haven't had a class or any other kind of exercise on a day where you decide to stretch, walk on the spot for at least five minutes, swinging and moving your arms freely. This will boost your metabolism and get your muscles a little warm.

For becoming more flexible to the front position, you need to engage your core muscles and lengthen the hamstring muscle(s) that run from your butt bone to the areas around your knee. There are two ways I recommend for this. If you are not able to lift or kick your leg to the front without the movement causing a change in the position of your hips, here's a great exercise. Stand in front of a chair. Lift one leg up and place it on the chair. Bend the standing leg, keeping your pelvis upright and your back straight. If you feel tension down the back of the leg on the chair, stop there. Very slowly lean forward, back still straight. You may only move a quarter of an inch, this doesn't matter. Don't let your back round. Hold this position for 15-30 seconds. That's your stretch. No bouncing or pulsing. Release up a little, then repeat. Change legs. As you get used to this you can do more repetitions on each leg. You want a stretchy feeling, but not pain.

You will feel a place where the muscles will let go a little, allowing more of a stretch. This is the "stretch reflex".

If you can already easily lift or kick the leg to over 90 degrees, or above your hip height, you can put your leg up on a ballet barre or counter top, keeping your hips facing to it. Maintaining a straight pelvis/back, lean over the leg slightly, while pressing the leg down. Hold 15-30 seconds. At some point you will feel the stretch reflex, maybe not on the first repetition. Do the same number of reps on each leg.

After a class or workout is an ideal time to stretch, but sometimes that's not possible. Always warm up for safe stretching.

With these ballet stretches, you will become more flexible for your ballet moves or cheer leading choreography.

Get more ballet warm up exercises, with the fast download The Ballet Bible.

Avoid Knee Pain And Understand Overpronation With Flat Feet

How To Avoid Knee Pain

Over-pronation is the inward roll of the foot while standing, walking, running or dancing. Allowing the foot to roll inwards causes noticeable internal rotation of the lower leg and knee and can influence the body's posture.

This can result in extra strain on the lower body and can cause foot pain of the arches, heels and ankles, knee pain, leg pain, and lower back pain. A ballet student only needs to understand this, and can correct flat feet by developing the sole of the foot muscles.

source.

Studying ballet without correcting pronation can lead to

• Knee pain

• Shin splints

• Arch pain

• Overall tension in the lower leg

Flat feet may be flexible and may show a curve when pointed, but on the floor, they still need to be supported properly.

Rolling ankles, with the lower leg internally rotating inwards, and the thighs turning out, can eventually lead to a twisting of the knee joint with irritation, inflammation, and pain.

Excess wear on the inner sides of the street shoes, is an obvious sign of over-pronation.

If you can get a parent or a fellow dance student to take a picture of your flat feet standing in parallel, (from the back) you'll see if you are rolling in from the heel, with your arches mushed on the floor.

See if your heels lean inwards and if your kneecaps turn inwards while standing.

This would be in a relaxed position, not holding your thighs in any particular way.
You'll see that if you then turn out, your feet may adjust somewhat, with the heels pulling up straighter, and the arches maybe lifting a little.

This will definitely help avoid a knee injury.

However, holding your turnout is not enough to correct this. Also, just lifting the arches up by rolling outward is not a good correction.

Locating and strengthening the tiny foot muscles (demonstrated in The Perfect Pointe Book)is your best bet to not compensate for flat feet in the wrong ways and then send the feet's workload up into the calf and shin muscles.

If you already have ankle, lower leg or knee pain, see a chiropractor, physiotherapist or a podiatrist. You may need orthotics (supportive shoe inserts) and even a heel counter (an insert in the heel of your shoe that stabilizes your heel position) in your street shoes.

This heel counter should fit well to prevent extra movement and twisting ankles.

Morton’s foot (big toe shorter than second) can cause a slight roll inward when the foot moves upward to rise or take off for a jump. Even though weight goes off the foot in many of these movements, just try counting how often in a class that happens - and imagine the uneven pressure on the feet muscles and bones.

Having the weight spread evenly from the center of the heel, big toe joint and little toe joint, is your foundation. It gives the level base, just like the platform a house is built on, for your skeleton to stack up above.

Understanding flat feet, over-pronation, and the possibility of foot/calf/shin/knee sprain, will help you prevent dance injuries.

THE PERFECT POINTE BOOK will help you avoid knee pain.


D. Buxton is a writing partner with Vone Deporter, of The Sedona Series, about a surfer girl in pointe shoes.

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The Care Of Shin Splints - Or Prevent Shin Splints By Building Strong Foot Muscles

Understanding shin splints requires knowing how to use your foot muscles properly.

This affects all your ballet positions and movements. Even more basic, is understanding where your weight should be on your standing foot/feet.

If not drawn back too much on the heel, the calf muscles and tibial (shin) muscles do not have to strain even before you've made a move.

source.

 To avoid shin splints altogether, check how you're standing in parallel, and how your feet are positioned on the floor.

Ideally, you have arches that don't flatten on the floor when you are standing, and also don't hold an arch shape with a rigid locked position.

The front of your ankle is relaxed because your weight is on the middle of the heel, the outside of the foot at the little toe metatarsal joint, and the inside of the foot at the big toe metatarsal joint.Think "tripod".

The rest of your body is stacked upward from ankle to knee (if your knees are hyper-extended you have been shown how to hold them in a straight position) to hip, through the natural spinal curves to your head.

Imagery-wise, your head floats above all of this. Realistically, you work with your rib cage held but not clenched down, so your neck does not have to compensate with a chin pulling up and forward, eliminating the natural curve.

And all of that has to do with how your feet rest on the floor.

If your feet are flat and soft, standing correctly, turning out correctly and getting the weight distributed on the foot (picture a triangle or tripod) is going to activate the sole of the foot muscles but NOT activate tibial (shin) and/or calf muscles that will strain if your weight has sunk inwards. Dancers call it rolling ankles.

Having the weight a tad forward (isn't that nice and scientific) feeling ready to move into a tendu and take the weight on the standing leg, is an activated but not tense or clenched feeling in your legs and core muscle area.

So even though shin splints are usually associated with jumping on hard floors, or overworking through long rehearsal days, shin splints can start with a lack of understanding just how to stand on your feet - and also not understanding what type of feet you are standing on.

It doesn't MATTER what kind of feet you have. It matters that you know how to use them and improve them, way before you get into pointe shoes.

A foot that is arched but rigid in the mid section can be loosened up with massage, warm foot baths, and regular ballet strengthening exercises.

A soft flat foot can be strengthened and activated properly on the floor.More about that HERE.

A hyper-mobile highly arched foot can be strengthened and controlled by the intrinsic (sole of the foot) muscles.

A less flexible ankle can be stretched properly, starting with relaxing the shin muscles.......that may be strained by weight drawing back on the heel, as mentioned above.

Ideally you prevent shin splints.

If you are past that, you practice good care of shin splints with massage, ice, perhaps rest, and applying all of the above.

Swelling and inflammation of the tibial muscles can get extremely painful, and severe pain should be addressed by a ballet/sports/fitness physiotherapist or chiropractor. There may be a stress fracture present, so it's good to know exactly what you are healing.

Take a look at your parallel bare feet position in the mirror and get your weight placed properly.  

Women and men in sports/fitness/ballet can learn to prevent shin splints with The Perfect Pointe Book exercises and improve reflexes and fine balance, for all dance and sports.