Ballet, ballet and more ballet
by Melissa Arulappan In less than a week from now, my younger daughter will have completed her Grade V Imperial Ballet exam. It’s one of the reasons why she decided on a gap year after her Grade XII board exams. She did not know when she made the decision whether she would be selected for the exam. It was a ...
Around this time two years ago, TLFCB held ISTD ballet exams for the first time ever in India. I sat in on all the exams because I played the music (some might even say ‘DJ-ed’) for ones that didn’t have a live pianist. In a few days, I’ll occupy the same seat next to the examiner. As the second exam ...
Time and again we get asked if it is worth sending children to ballet if they are not going to become professional dancers. Time and again the answer is a resounding YES! Studying classical ballet, or any dance style, is about much more than learning technique and making dance a career. Parents often wonder how their child is doing as they ...
There is no doubt that girls dominate over boys in the ballet world today. This was not the case back when ballet shifted from stately court appearances to professional performances on stage. Back in the 1660’s it was males who emerged as the first professional ballet dancers. In the Renaissance era, only male dancers would perform, using masks for when ...
Examinations and assessments are a great asset to the growth of our dancers here at the Foundation. Every other year is spent solely on mastering technique and performance in preparation for exams and assessments, building strong roots and setting the right foundation in classical ballet. Months of training and practice are put in before we allow our dancers to take ...
Have you ever wondered why ballet schools insist on students wearing uniform? Or why we at TLFCB are so picky about the length of skirts, quality of tights, and the fitting of shoes? Here’s your answer! Students wear the uniform in ballet class for several purposes. Each part of the uniform has a specific role in helping both the teacher ...
The performing arts aim to express the performer’s emotions or ideas by the use of bodies, voices or inanimate objects. A dancer uses their body as an instrument to tell a story to an audience, but sometimes dancers get trapped in a tunnel vision, focusing more on technical perfection rather than the characterization aspect of dancing. Let’s take a look ...
Ballet has evolved immensely over the course of the last 500 years. Starting off as court performances in Italy with basic technique, it is now performed worldwide in various styles. Here’s a little history and background on the style variations in ballet. In the 15th century, in the midst of cultural revival and transition to modernity in Europe, known as ...
Have you ever been tempted by a Youtube ballet tutorial, or decided to learn a solo online? Unless you are a technically advanced dancer and are confident in your ability to perform the steps correctly, think again. It isn’t advisable to learn ballet technique from YouTube in the initial years of training. Just like any classical dance form, you need ...
The Student Scoop Series: We want to provide a platform to encourage our dancers to share their individual growth, experiences and insights as they bloom as dancers in our community. This is Nirupama Ganesh (Grade 3 + JDC) sharing with us her experience on attending our 2018 Summer Intensive, 'Adventures in Neverland'. "Get out of the house more often!" This was what I heard all summer. I sighed as I looked at my unfinished to-do list of summer activities. ...
