mirrors

[Guest heavenlydancer]

when are the right times to look in the mirror? i know at the bare to check your alignment and line but in the center and across the floor is it ever appropiate? thanx

[Victoria Leigh]

It is appropriate only if that is the direction one is supposed to be looking at that particular moment Or, if you are working specifically on something that needs to be corrected.

 

Be careful that you don't overuse it while at the barre, too. Check yourself, but don't stay tuned in to the mirror all the time.

[Guest dancergal]

Like Ms. Leigh said, there are certain times that you can look in the mirror, and certain times you're not supposed to. Some of my teachers make us turn around and not face the mirror while we do combinations so we stop getting into the bad habit of looking at ourselves in the mirror all the time, whether or not we're supposed to. Then one of my teachers always says that mirrors are the dancer's drug, and dancers get addicted to them.

[glissade_jete]

One of my teachers ALWAYS makes us look in the mirror to "correct our own mistakes." I hate that though. Another teacher NEVER wants us to look in the mirror. He wants our head placement to be perfect. I think an ocassional glance is okay though.

[Victoria Leigh]

Mirrors have a purpose or they would not be prominent in every dance studio in the world, or just about every studio. They are expensive and not something teachers would insist upon if there was not a reason for them being there. We must all work with them in order to see what things should look like and correct ourselves so that the body can understand what the brain has conceived but the legs and feet might not yet understand ;) The problem only happens if the dancers overuse the mirrors and become dependent on them.

[Guest dancingostrich]

we are alowed to look in the mirors if our head is suposed to look taht way like in second but if it is not it isnt recomended unless you fell that you need to correct yourself. but if we are practicing for our recitals and we know it realy well then we face away from the miror so we dont just expect the miror to be there on stage.

[blizzardqueen]

For my SI I was with Suzanne Farrell on Cedar Island. The studio there didn't have any mirrors. I found that I wasn't distracted because I couldn't look at myself in the mirror:)

[Guest hesterlover1]

I find myself in the habit of looking in the mirror during rehearsals, because I'm used to using it in class to correct myself. Of course, I should be using it to correct myself, but only when I should be looking front, and sometimes I overuse it. One of my teachers at Joffrey put it this way: "Let the audience look at you, you don't need to look at the audience! They came to see you, not the other way around." I always think of that when I find myself looking in the mirror too much.

[Guest dancergal]

Recently one of my teachers has been making us face away from the mirror while we're in the center because she found out that whenever we face away from the mirror and do pirouettes or releves, we can't seem to hold our balance. So now she's obsessed with trying to get us to be able to hold our balance and be able to spot without a mirror because onstage, she says there's no mirror there to spot or look at.