THE FIRST BALLET CLASS

The local community center offered a ballet class for children under the age of four years. We have a three year old granddaughter who loves to dance so we enrolled her in the class.
The first ballet class was a time of discovery for the youngsters and their guardians. The families came from varied cultures. None of the children had done ballet before nor did the children know each other before the first class.
The teacher was a young woman with a kind face and a big smile. She had the perfect voice; soft, angelic and engaging. She conveyed the essential quality of being interested in the children. All these attributes were useful tools to secure and maintain the attention of the class.
The first class started with the children sitting in a semicircle facing the teacher so she could make eye contact. The instructor took attendance which helped her associate a name with a child. As the teacher read through the roll of names, the children’s expressions changed to looks of anticipation. The guardians who were likely parents looked on with expressions of worried hopefulness while the grandparents in attendance looked much more at ease.
The instructor had the children stand to work on basic ballet leg movements. Each of the exercises led to the demonstration and practice of ballet fundamentals. The teacher turned the exercises into games. The strategy helped to keep the children focused. Balance was one of the more challenging skills, especially where the children were standing on one leg and elevating the other or jumping and touchdown in a ballet stance. There were a few crash landings.
The teacher used ballet terms such as first position and second position to describe the placement of the body to perform the ballet steps. She also incorporated certain movements, including the positioning of the arms, toe pointing, straight leg raising and the classic ballet leap.
The children had a little more difficulty dealing with the arm movements. It is not natural to throw your arms above your head gracefully or to hold your arms in in a circle as you run across the floor.
The teacher used an ingenious method to instruct the class to do a rotating motion from a sitting position. The class would be instructed to sit in a circle with their legs apart. They were then told that they were going to make an imaginary pizza. Each child was asked to suggest the topping for the pizza and the class would then spread the topping on the pizza by moving their torso in a circular direction as they spread the imaginary topping with their hands. The best part for the children was that they could eat their imaginary pizza.
As the children became more proficient at the exercises, the freestyle portion of the ballet class became more complicated. For example, the teacher would incorporate a running jump with twirls and twists.
The children would end of the ballet class by mimicking the movement of different animals suggested by the teacher. Some of the particular favorites were horses, horses, penguins, butterflies, horses and bunny rabbits. The girls would then curtsy, the boys would bow and then the class would chase after the teacher to get their reward sticker for a job well done.