Old School Ballet is Still Crippling Today

Going back and forth to doctors and physical therapists has reminded me a lot of when I was a dancer, and thus why it was that I created my specific way of teaching.

Getting professional training, I was injured a lot. And so were many of my peers.
Seeing my friends drop like flies, promising careers shattered, with injury after injury I often asked myself if there was an underlying reason to ending up so horrifically injured, with problems that most people don't encounter until old age. The more I became injured the more often I questioned aloud if something wasn't wrong with the teaching methods. I had the nerve to ask my own teachers this. The concensus was always the same, there is nothing wrong with how dance is taught. If you're injured there is something wrong with you."

And indeed the general school of thought is that if a dancer is often injured they weren't 'made for dance'. To some degree that is true, but I never believed that could be the whole truth.

As a professional level dancer, I've been to beginning ballet classes taught by directors of major ballet schools (the ones who are supposed to know the most about how to teach ballet) and have been witness to and victim to the very same dangerous teaching methods- leaving me wondering if this is how they treat their beginning adult students, how much worse off are the young children? For those wondering what I'm doing in a beginning ballet class-when an adult dancer is injured in body or spirit, you can often find them in a beginning level class.


In college, I began to actively seek out answers. When speaking to specialists at the Harkness Center for Dance in New York City, I was finally successful. It turned out, I was right to question all those years. I was right to think that there was something wrong with the teaching method itself, the time table of instruction. I learned that many steps are taught years too soon- resulting in the weaking or damage that eventually leads to severe injury in the older dancer, when the body is being asked to support more weight, ask to do more advanced steps. Too many classes, or not paying attention to student's physical changes can also lead to injury.

Though no studies have been done on dancers (lack of funding or interest) these doctors had seen enough of the same injuries to know what they were talking about. And everything they said I could match in my own memory, or experience, having many of the injuries myself.

I took what I'd learned, and used it as the backbone to create my own dance program. With the information I'd gleaned from these specialists, I had a clear time line of what should be taught when. And it was so clear. What I couldn't understand was why I was the only one questioning. If these injuries didn't have to happen, if the adage "dancers are always injured" didn't have to be true- if there was something better available, why didn't anyone take advantage of it? Why didn't anyone else think that getting so many injuries was wrong? And if the information on how to prevent these injuries is out there why am I the only one utilizing it?

Of the doctors I spoke to, all asked that I not mention them or ask that they endorse my training method- though they whole heartedly agreed with it and wished other teachers would employ such training overhauls. They asked this of me because each one of them was already affiliated with a major ballet company or a major school. To then endorse my training methods, which in essense is a condemation of how every other ballet school is run-well, how could a doctor back a 'safe' method of training, and also back another ballet school?

It's a big thing when you take on the ballet world and call it wrong. But if the directors of ballet schools care to do the work that I did, to question doctors, they'd soon find out just as I did that the current method of ballet instruction is wrong. There are steps being taught to four year olds that shouldn't be taught until the age of 13. There are things girls shouldn't be doing until after puberty- and I'm not talking about pointe shoes.

The research I did was almost ten years ago. I thought that surely by now I would not be the only person employing this kind of 'new ballet'. But I am. The rest of the dance world, apparently is still teaching "Old School Ballet". And as I see class after class of young students still performing the steps that doctor after doctor has told me to be dangerous and damaging I am frightened. The local competition sees my ballet school as a threat, because how I teach my students not only flies in the face of convention, but tells every other ballet institution that they are wrong. The truth hurts sometimes. Instead of embracing change for the sake of their children, dance schools around me seem to be running like hell. But is it a big deal. To do what I've done takes guts. And for major ballet schools to do what I have done from the inception of my school, they would have to gut their entire program, say that they were wrong. "What we've been teaching to your four year old really shouldn't be taught until she's fourteen or so. Oops."

With any luck, someday at least one other ballet school in the country will also swallow their pride, turn their back on a lot of their training, and do the right thing.