Beginning ballet excersises?

Question

I've just begun ballet and I'm curious as to what I can do at home to help advance myself outside of class.

Answer 1

I'm going to give you the same advice that I gave at others.  You'll need to work on your Strength, Flexibility, Turn out, and proper foot techniques.

Strength:

You need to have a strong stomach muscle. It's the core to our movements, postures, balance, strength... You can work on your crunches everyday.

Flexibility and Turn Out:

On the floor sitting - in a la seconde (as wide as you can), your legs are turn-out (your toes are pointed and your ankles are sort of like presenting it forward, your knees are facing as far to the rear as you can) - with your back as straight as you can, reach for the floor with your hands as far as you can forward. GENTLY rock back and forth about 3-6 inches so that you can go down or reach much further. DO NOT BOUNCE - make sure. You can do this for about 30 minutes (or more) a day, while watching TV.

Proper technique is the most essential in dancing. One of these techniques which is the basis of leaps/jetes, kick/battements, pirouettes... almost anything to do with feet is your tendus.

Tendus: is intiated by your ankle - whether going out and in. You have to be brushing the floor with the ball of your foot from the start till it can no longer touch the floor as you point your toes; and doing exactly the reverse. On my own, I would do this really slow so it will ingrain in my mind and body, that it became a natural movement for me. This is also how I initiate my battements, and jetes - it's just proper techniques. You just have to do more than a hundred tendus everyday so it become kinetic (natural movement) to you. Do all the variations. Think of your turn out from your hip joint, presenting your ankle forward as you point your toes - while doing coupe, develope, arabesque, attitude...

To strengthen your ankles do a lot of relevers, elevers, pliers (making sure that you are trying hard to keep your heels down till they no longer can stay down, going down on your pliers; then reverse - trying to bring your heels down as soon as you can, going up). Do coupe, elevers; passe, elevers - to work on your balance.

You can use a chair at home as your barre. You don't need to grab on to a barre, just there to help you with your balance. So, if your chair is moving when you are moving, most likely you are grabbing. Most of the time when I was taking classes, our hands are just placed on the barre and we weren't allowed to grab it when we were doing our tendues and what not.

Making sure you are holding on to our stomach, this will also help developed strength and balance.

Answer 2

Well you could get a barre or a chair and do pleas and tendus.

Answer 3

try doing leg streches

such as:

sitting on the ground and spreading your legs apart towards your hips... make sure to point your toes

next try to lay down on your stomatch ... go as far as you can and hold it for about 10 seconds

but dont go too far cuz you could then pull you muscle relle badly