I'm Jodie Gates, professional Ballerina, teacher, choreographer and artistic director and I'm teaching you basic ballet. We have covered the basics of ballet, what you need to practice until it becomes second nature. Now I'll teach you how to move forward in ballet. Learning the vocabulary which is French should become a second language. Don't let it make you nervous, it's tough at first, but it will become easy and fun.
The best thing for you to do is either go online, get a book on simple terms in ballet. Once you learn them, it becomes second nature and then more you practice the more you'll be able to assimilate the steps with the term. As you move forward with ballet technique, you'll notice that the Tendu, becomes the Degagé, becomes the Rond de jambe, becomes the Grand Battement What I mean by that is that speed and height will shift and change. The speed will become faster, Tendus become faster, become Degage, you lift the leg, that is the height. It becomes a Rond de jambe, which is more movement with the leg, become a Rond de jambe en l'air which is higher, becomes a Grand Battement which is tossing the leg up. This you'll find within the ballet class, as you move forward into the center even becomes a more of evolved technique.
When you go and do your center work, you'll notice that once you've left the bar, you'll find rotations or what we call pirouettes. You can pirouette in many different positions, these positions you have already practiced at the ballet bar. Pirouette, it's just to turn to rotate. You'll also find that we have elevation or jumping. You can jump in all positions and this will also happen at the end of your ballet class.
If you would like to move forward in a more intermediate advance level, that's when you went to look to the Pointe shoe if you're a woman. Pointe shoes are a much more advanced technique and a different technique. So you must to make sure that you or -- if you have a child the young girl it's going into ballet has a very strong technique already in the ballet class and also a strong alignment in the ankles and strong ankles. This is very-very important to move forward. I suggest not, even though you might get excited and want to go on Pointe, don't do it too soon.
Repetition and precession are very important in ballet. So just keep repeating the movement and be vigorous with the movement. Keep it very clean precise and clear. Practice, practice, practice like anything we do, just keep repeating the movements, speaking the terms, it will become second nature. How you might want to look into more ballet schools or taking from a particular teacher, I suggest either going online or even looking in the yellow pages, but best would be to get a recommendation from either a student that's already been training and dance, that maybe perhaps now has gone semi-professional or professional or a friend that has taken dance from a teacher that they would highly recommend or you might want to even investigate by going to your local theater group or to a larger theater in your town or city, they might have recommendations professional dance institutions in your area.
I would avoid any type of just off the street going into a ballet school, you really want to make sure that they are highly recommended because they is bad training out there unfortunately and that could be dangerous to your health. So make sure you stick with the experts. Also you might want to think about attending more dance performances or going to see professional ballet companies to learn more about what it is to connect all the movement and you can enjoy it as well. That's it. I am Jodie Gates and from Paris, thanks for watching.
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