Improvers Workshop: Preparing for Intermediate Ballet Classes
Saturday 22 June, 10.30am - 1.30pm at Acosta Dance Foundation
Date: Saturday 22 June 2024
Location: Acosta Dance Foundation, Artillery Square, Building 40, 1 Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, SE18 6BH (5 mins from Woolwich on the Elizabeth line)
Time: 10.30 - 1.30pm
Level: Beginner/Improver level students (minimum 12 months of ballet experience)
Price: £45
This workshop is designed to help adult dancers make the difficult transition from a Beginners to an Intermediate ballet class. Also suitable for Beginner students simply wanting a challenge and curious to learn some of ballet’s harder moves at a slower pace! You may find yourself in that difficult predicament where you have been taking Beginners classes for a while and feel you are able to follow relatively well, and though you are ready for your next challenge, you aren’t quite sure if you can keep up with an Improvers or Intermediate class either. Fear not, we fully understand the struggle of being stuck between the two - this workshop is designed to address just that. Numbers are kept low to enable individual corrections and personalised feedback.
This half-day workshop includes
10.30 – 11.15: Arrive and warm up with a full-length ballet barre to help activate and engage our muscles, find our centre and work on our balance and coordination.
11:15 – 12.20pm: Centre work introducing you to the Dancers Box and key Intermediate steps which build on the foundational movements of Beginners ballet. These steps will challenge you with faster footwork, transfers of weight and travelling sequences
12.20 – 12.30pm A short break, time for a snack and an opportunity to ask individual questions
12.30 – 1.30pm We will then have an opportunity to practice combining our alignments and new steps to perform longer sequences and more challenging choreography. This section will follow the format and pace of a typical Intermediate class, working through port de bras and centre practice to adage, petite allegro, grand allegro and turns.
Extra details:
We will begin with a full-length barre where we go through a comprehensive review of all key terminology and vocabulary as a refresher. We will begin to experiment with slightly faster or more complex barre combinations, however we will provide ample time for repetition and explanation. This is an opportunity to explore Intermediate level barre work at a slower pace and with more guidance.
In the centre, we will begin by breaking down the 'dancers box' - this is a method which allows dancers to understand alignment and direction changes in choreography. When levelling up your practice beyond beginner level, many students find themselves lost because of confusion about where to face/travel in the centre. Whilst copying other students in the class is an option at beginner level, in Intermediate+ classes, the continual change in direction and alignments make this impossible. The terminology of the Dancers Box helps you to understand alignments as per most graded syllabi work (RAD, Vaganova, Cecchetti) and provides a numerical system to understand how to align yourself in relatioon to your space. This tool enables you to better follow verbal cues and to accurately and quickly memorise exercises which incorporate travelling sequences and changes in direction. It also facilitates the use of epaulment - helping to add more artistry and expressiveness to your dancing.
We will then explore several focal and linking steps that regularly feature in all Intermediate classes but not in Beginners ones. These common steps are integral to most general/Intermediate level choreography and variations. At the end of the workshop, you will have the opportunity to learn how to artistically piece these new movements together into longer routines and combinations, giving you an insight into the typical pace and format of an Intermediate class. This workshop is a fantastic opportunity to make sure you leave the studio with the tools and resources needed to go and take that next step!