Aree School of Dance Arts -BKK

[LaFilleSylphide]

Has anyone ever taken a class at Aree School of Dance Arts in Bangkok? They've turned out decent students, and I'll be in the area for a weekend. I want to take an open class, but am unsure what the level is or how the classes will be - there's no email to contact them and I don't really speak enough Thai to initiate a phone call!

 

Let me know if you've been to their classes before in Central World. Thanks!

[DaPixie]

I guess I'll find out next week.

[DaPixie]

I took a(n RAD Intermediate Foundation) class at Aree (Silom branch) last night. Not great. Way too many students in one class. Nobody was warming up before class. The air-conditioning was ice cold. Lots of standing, goofing around, and chatting. Not very serious. The kids who were in the class had been doing this Inter Foundation class for almost two years and they still knew only the first allegro, the second allegro without the port de bras. They'd not even started learning the Variations or the technique and steps needed for them. We were made to do the syllabus exercises and not much else. And even the syllabus exercises were not always correct from my understanding of the syllabus book and the video. The teacher wasn't giving many exercises to learn technique. I would not really recommend the school. Oh, and the floor was very hard.

[LaFilleSylphide]

I also noticed that the Central World branch is closed... I don't know Bangkok very well, so if I'm there I tend to stick to the downtown-BTS connected spots. *sigh* I did enjoy Bangkok City Ballet though. I might've enjoyed it more because I ran into another Ballet Talk poster there - Hahaha!

[DaPixie]

The Silom branch is right at the Saladaeng BTS station. But anyway, Aree isn't worth going back to.

 

Yesterday I had a great ballet class at a school called Dance Centre at 53/3 Soi Sukhumvit 31, Khlong Toei, Bangkok. It's a bit out of the way, but well worth going to. It's near BTS Phrom Phong (one stop before Thong Lor to go to BCB).

 

I had a class with a Thai, but Australian trained ballet and contemporary dancer. This class taught me some really great things.

[olgahk]

Thank you very much for the information, DaPixie, I must try the Dance Centre when I am back in BKK in October.

[DaPixie]

You definitely should. Slightly off topic, but in the class that I took at Dance Centre, one exercise we were made to do was to pirouette without arms (cross arms behind back) and see what happens when we only push off with the feet. We had to try and master that first. If we were thrown off in either direction, we had to fix that.

Then we had to try with one arm, and then with only the other arm and see what happens. And then we had to try with both arms. When trying with only one arm we could see what threw us off and thus try to fix it.

It made me realise that only being able to balance in retiré isn't THE key to pirouettes as I was made to believe - because of the need to compensate for the additional forces from the rotation as well, and THAT is usually what throws me off. It's very much a dynamic movement not a hop/strong rise onto one leg and turning.

This by no means makes me any better at turning now, but it makes me think about the whole thing differently.

[olgahk]

It made me realise that only being able to balance in retiré isn't THE key to pirouettes as I was made to believe - because of the need to compensate for the additional forces from the rotation as well, and THAT is usually what throws me off. It's very much a dynamic movement not a hop/strong rise onto one leg and turning.

 

Thanks - sounds like just the exercise for me! I am usually good in balancing in retiré but when it comes to pirouettes I am very much thrown around ))