Category: Dance

Ballet, as you might guess, has a long and storied history—which we’re going to get into here!

We’ll start during the Renaissance era in the 1500s, when the Italian Catherine de Medici married King Henry II of France. It was because of this marriage that we have the early forms of ballet. You see, ballet comes from the Italian word ballare, which means “to dance” (it’s also where we get the word “ball,” as in what Cinderella went to). When de Medici married the king, she was responsible for introducing various early dance styles to the French court.

While the ballet back then was not what you think of now—dancers wore masks and clothes that were hard to move around in—these dancers and dances laid the groundwork for ballet today. Over the next century, ballet continued to evolve as it spread from the courts of France and Italy to other places, such as Russia. In France, King Louis XIV was the most influential person in helping ballet develop. He ot only funded and encouraged the dance style, but also sometimes even participated himself. In this time, too, the dance movements, clothing, and musical accompaniment continued to grow and evolve as well.

King Louis XIV in Ballet de la nuit, 1653.

(Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ballet)
By the mid-1800s, Russia was scene as one of the epicenters of dance evolution, especially ballet. Dancing en pointe was more than just a fad and the outfits that dancers wore had evolved into styles much closer to what we see today. In the 1900s, with ballet’s popularity soaring, now-classic ballets such as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker were created and produced to eager audiences around the world.

Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova
(Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_ballet_dancers)
After Russia, the next big development came in the form of the founding of the New York City Ballet in 1948 by Russian George Balanchine. The NYCB, as well as other ballets all around the world have continued to grow and development the dance style, and that is where we’re at today!

It’s Monday, and while you may feel a little sluggish getting back into the rhythm, we’ve got some clips of one of the most amazing dancers in the world, Misty Copeland, to get you motivated to get your dance shoes back on and get back out there.

We at SSDC love Misty Copeland, everything she’s done, and we cannot wait to see everything else she’s going to accomplish in her career! She’s a testament to setting goals and achieving them and we love her for that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_LfOx-1-c

Need more Misty? Check out this amazing performance.

You’ve probably heard before that you need to stretch before engaging in any kind of physical activity—whether it’s a tap combination or running a marathon—but did you know why you need to stretch? Check out these four reasons and get ready to touch your toes next time before you put your dance shoes on.
1. Increases range of motion – With dance, you’re going to be moving around a lot and sometimes you’ll need to move your body in ways that cold muscles aren’t really willing to do. Stretching will help warm your body up and prepare it for a wider range of motion.

2. May help reduce risk of injury – Like our point above, warming up your body with stretches before you dance is helpful in reducing the risk of injury. Ever pulled a muscle? It hurts! By stretching, you can prepare your muscles to move more rapidly and fluidly, which in turn will help decrease the chances you will pull or injure one.

3. Improves posture – Posture isn’t just important when you’re sitting at a fancy dinner with your parents’ friends, it’s also super important while dancing. Stretching before you dance will help the muscles in your lower back, chest, and shoulders maintain better posture, which in turn will help you while dancing.

4. Improves mechanical efficiency – No, you’re not going to turn into a robot by stretching. Mechanical efficiency is the amount of energy your body needs to perform tasks (like a tap routine, etc). Increasing your mechanical efficiency through stretching means that you’ll use less energy while you dance, increasing the amount of time that you can!

Are you on Instagram?  These pages are a must to follow!  Everything from ballet to tap to jazz and acrobatics.  Pictures, tips and videos to watch and help improve your child’s dancing when they aren’t in class.  I’ll give you my top 5 and stay tuned for more suggestions in a later post.

1. @homerhansbryant – wonderful classical ballet videos as well as a fusion of ballet and hip hop.
2. @Blochdanceusa – I love their mid day motivations with fabulous pictures of current ballet stars
3. @browngirlsdoballet – really lifiting up our younger dancers while encouraging diversity in dance.
4. @Therealdebbieallendanceacademy – fantastic inspiring quotes posted daily
5. @SHOOTINGSTARDANCECENTER – Us of course! We do repost from many other feeds as well as our own content to uplift, inspire and encourage your to work harder in your classes and push yourself to be your best!

Download this list here

We all want to raise a confident child do we not?  We all want the best for our children and that means raising them to be happy and self-assured.  While we are not experts, we would like you to consider these three tips that we employ in our classes to help increase your child’s confidence.

• Concentrate on the good – Children (and adults!) make mistakes.  Instead of dwelling on what went wrong help your child work through the problem and find a way to solve it.  Guiding them to make their own choices builds sureness in their decision making skills.  Which leads into…

• Don’t save your child – Sometimes we need to take a step back and let them stumble for them to figure out how to find their way.  It can be the hardest thing for a parent to do but the sense of accomplishment they will feel in solving the problem themselves helps to build feelings of self-worth, competence and assurance that they can figure things out on their own.

• Stick with what they start – Whether it is problem solving or learning a new skill encourage your child to see it through until the end. It may be figuring out a tough math problem or finishing out the season of a sport, but learning that completion is an integral part of the puzzle and following through again gives them a sense of achievement.

What do you think?  Do you have any tips you would like to share?

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