Using the same combination for children and adult class

[yingying932]

Is it unusual that a teacher will teach the same combination to adults as she teaches to children? I remeber my teacher saying she wanted to expirement on the adults with a combination she created for nine through elven year olds and she gave us the children's nutcracker dance.

[love_ballet]

I don't think it's unusual. Our teacher sometimes talks about given the same combination to the academy classes -- it's kind of fun because my daughter is in those classes and we get to compare (sometimes commisserate!) together about the tough combinations he gives us. He's never given us nutcracker combinations though--there's enough of a nutcracker overload all those weeks at the end of the year when we hear the music coming from the rehearsals next door!

[Redbookish]

Well, ballet steps and combinations are ballet steps and combinations! We all start class with pliés and tendus, so I dont see the problem (unless it's lots of those"step-and-point" or "spring points" of pre-ballet).

[ruby]

I agree with Redbookish - combinations are combinations. But my teacher did once try out the tiny tots' dance at the end of our pointe class, with lots of spring points and skipping. Boy, it was hard to make it look nice on people who aren't small, cute and bouncy! Those things we think of as easy are just a different game when you're a grown up, and you do look rather silly (which in turn makes it quite a funny thing to do once). The people waiting for the next class looked quite troubled by the whole spectacle!

[Redbookish]

Crikey, Ruby, I never thought of spring points being difficult! But I suppose you're right - pre-ballet and baby ballet steps are for little people, and would make me look fat and elephantine! (not you, I'm sure)

 

But isn't that the case - the more I study, the harder pliés get, because I realise how much more there is to them than bending my knees outwards!

[ruby]

I think I didn't put that too well - I just meant that there are, as you say with plies, challenges in even the simple things, which you weren't aware of when you first did them. With baby steps, unlike plies, you haven't kept doing them as you progress, so it can come as more of a surprise when you go back and try it again. And yes, they did make me feel fat! Not so much the step, but the way little kids will do loads and loads of them -- the relentless, high-speed, bobbing up and down!

[Hamorah]

If I am not mistaken Aurora does spring points in one of the Sleeping Beauty solos. She does them moving back, follows them by a releve passe into a prep. for a pirouette. I often give my senior class spring points - they are very difficult to do turned out and lightly enough, with no weight on the point!

[Jaana Heino]

Language problem, likely, or possibly the fact that I never took pre-ballet - but what is a spring point?

[Hamorah]

It's a jump from one leg to the other pointing the foot out in front, lightly touching the floor. In other words exactly as it sounds, spring (or jump) and point!

[Jaana Heino]

Thank you. Yes, I know a jump like that exists, but I did not previously know what to call it in any language.

[Guest pink tights]

ya

[koshka]

Sometimes I'll have two classes with one teacher in the same week, but at (sometimes VERY) different levels. Almost every time this happens, I notice that the combinations are very, very similar and yet some minor changes (e.g., more repetitions, more releve) can make things quite a bit more difficult.

 

And then there's the teacher I had last year (or maybe it was the year before) who would give some really scary-hard combination and say "well, I gave it to the kids (meaning the top group, of course) so I figured you could do it too."

[Toadette]

I'm surprised that there would be little difference. I was looking for classes in England a year or so ago and did one class with some children (very embarrassing!) The combinations all took place at least twice as fast as I was used to and the plies...they were so fast. I totally couldn't cope. I assumed that it was because I was dancing with children, and they have little legs!

[Striving for Grace]

I rather like spring points. *harrumph* As for the using of kids' combinations with adults, I had a teacher who did that once with our beginner class. It was maddening because we knew they were kiddie (like, PRE-ballet) moves but had to do it anyhow. In the end though, I found that it helped me to become a tad less inhibited. I had always been afraid of making a fool of myself in front of my classmates, but if you get that fear out of the way by doing "silly" kiddie steps that actually have something to do with ballet, you get the embarrssment out of the way, because everyone sees everyone else acting like a fool