by Peter Makus

Created on: February 13, 2009

Passion! Joy! Love! Sweat! Grace! Beauty!
These six simple words summarize the training of a ballet dancer.
Passion keeps a ballet dancer returning to the dance studio day after day through the years of dedicated work. Joy and love are what the dancer reaps with every pirouette (turn) and every plie (bend of knee) because they cannot imagine life without dance. Sweat is both the price paid for their passion and yet another gift granted them by their love the dance. Grace and beauty are the ballet dancer's mentors and companions, encouraging them and urging them reach new heights.

When a dancer, man or woman, decides to pursue ballet as a career or as a hobby, it is a commitment to strive ever upwards. The title of Balanchine dancer Suzanne Farrell's autobiography, "Holding Onto the Air," describes the aesthetic that ballet attains to: light, seemingly effortless despite all the strength and skill required. And so every movement they make in each class must become infused with the fullness of a complete performance.
It takes hard work, sweat, to take one class, two classes, three classes or more for five or six or seven days each week. Their focus is on developing their body, their canvas, and do not sit still while muscle cools and loses itself to idle time. Since ballet dancers love dance, spending a few hours each day in class training and sweating is a simple pleasure and never a chore.
What the dancer does in a ballet class most often follows a standard general form to safely take the dancer from having a cold body, fresh from harried daily life, warm up the complete body, including feet, legs, torso, arms, hands, neck and head, and bring it deep into the experience of ballet by exercises exploring a terre (on the ground), en l'air (in the air), movements standing, stepping, jumping, leaping and turning. Exercises are progressive, starting slowly and gaining speed and intensity as the muscles warm. Exercises are expansive, with movements growing larger and more precise and ornate as the muscles are revitalized with precise movement and ready for ever greater control and demands.
A ballet technique class generally begins at the barre. The barre is, quite simply, a bar of wood or metal, set at approximately hip height, that is fixed to a wall or securely placed on the floor to allow the dancer a stable position to work from. The dancer lightly rests either one or two hands on the barre according to the body arranged perpendicular to the barre or the dancer facing

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