Lessons with Lucette Aldous!

[wembley]

There is going to be a 5 day dance summer school in my city in January, and the ballet teacher will be Lucette Aldous! I am so excited already. I am going to enrol in the lower intermediate classes, as I think that is the right level for me, and I would probably get more out of it in a lower class than struggling in the next class up.

[Redbookish]

That's an exciting opportunity. I remember seeing her dance with the Australian Ballet, and she was always very exciting to watch. And then in class one term, we learnt one of Kitri's variations from Don Q (the one that starts with a grand jete) to music (according to my teacher) arranged by John Lanchberry for Lucette Aldous when she danced this role with the Australian Ballet. So my teacher said, this explained why even for a grand allegro piece the music was quite fast - because as a dancer she was quite small and fast-moving. There's a six degrees of separation story!

Kate

[Guest Talularocks]

Am I allowed to ask which Australian city this is in and how do I get information for it.

[wembley]

Sure! I'm in Canberra, and it is being run by Ausdance.

www.ausdance.org.au

[Guest grace]

wembley and Talularocks: ms. aldous will also be teaching at a summer school in perth, on the west coast, organised by the local cecchetti society (of which she is a patron), in the week of jan 17 onwards.

[wembley]

Well, I thought that I'd tell everybody how it went. Ms Aldous did heaps of floor barre exercises with us, which was really interesting as I had not done floor barre before (it is very uncommon here). Initially it was very hard work, but by the end of the week I was feeling the benefits.

 

The other different thing she did was that most barre exercises started with the feet parallel, and then you turned them out to first position as part of the preparation. I liked this as it means that you had to use your muscles to find your turnout for first position, and you couldn't use the floor to force your turnout.

 

She also taught us to use our head and arms differently.

 

I have written down some of the floor barre exercises so I can keep doing them.

 

She is a wonderful teacher, and I really enjoyed the week of classes. And she obviously is still very passionate about ballet, and a wonderfully expressive dancer.