Class Demonstration

[Kini]

Instructor in class last night, "We need to review Fourth Arabesque", wiggling finger to me "Come here, I need a demonstration dummy"

 

I know what he meant but I know what I and the rest of the class heard. Too Funny

[Miss Persistent]

It's a good thing you have a sense of humour! I know I have had slips of the tongue that haven't gone down so well in adult class!

[Kini]

Like other adult students I take my classes very seriously and work hard to progress and improve, but you gotta find the humor in life also and for some reason I find it in the class room.

[Claude_Catastrophique]

Haha, that could have been me. But I hope (!) my students know me so well that they know when I say such things that I don't mean it litterally or in a mean way. We had so laughs about things I said (once I said "good" break, everyone smiling, "that was a catastrophe", everyone laughing because I tend to say good like "well" or other remarks inbetween without meaning that something actually was good).

[Redbookish]

but you gotta find the humor in life also and for some reason I find it in the class room.

 

 

Yes! Kini, this is so true. One class I used to do on early Saturday morning (I've moved so <sob> can't do it any more) we would always be laughing -- usually started by our teacher making jokes. But this was a high level class and we did some complex stuff. Serious study doesn't mean no joy or laughter!

[Rick]

Ballet can be such hard work that it's easy to forget at times to simply have fun with it. My first teacher injected some humor in my classes which helped me overcome my initial feelings of uneasiness and intimidation. In looking back, I think this was a significant factor in putting me at ease with ballet overall, and it enabled me to get myself focused, work hard and stick with it despite the occasional (and inevitable) frustrations.

Edited December 30, 2013 by Rick

[mrstrong_ballet]

One of my male teachers, while trying to help us visualize turning out from the hips and thighs for a particular exercise, said something along the lines of "...feel the electricity between your thighs..." to a class full of women (our male classmates were absent that day).

 

The class seemed a little bit more light hearted that day. Love my male teachers!

[NoTwoSnowflakes]

...

[Willimus]

My main teacher in my youth, Madame Gabriella Darvash was both terrifying and hysterically funny at the same time. We were always laughing. But always en garde since she could be as intimidating as she was funny: "they say that every morning for breakfast, I eat a ballerina. This is not true. Every morning for breakfast I eat a corn muffin with nice butter" (spoken with a thick Hungarian accent...she is from Transylvania, of course).

[Reece]

There are a lot of words and phrases with regional meaning. "Dummy", in this case, means "mannequin", or something he can pose. In British use, though, a "dummy" is what Americans call a baby pacifier. I've done some teaching (tech stuff, not ballet) internationally and I try to be aware of such differences, but every so often I'll say something innocent that makes my students laugh.

 

And then there are pop culture references. One of my ballet instructors used to emphasize the opposite rotation of the legs in turn-out by saying "think of an egg beater -- the blades rotate out but opposite each other." It's a very descriptive image, unless you've seen the final scene in the movie "Bachelor Party" where Tom Hanks's character chases his new bride with an egg beater while implying its use as some sort of a sex toy. Those of us who had seen the movie always broke up in laughter, while the rest of the class looked at us blankly. But as an adult class we could get away with lots of rather risqué comments that wouldn't be appropriate with a younger group.