When you show up to ballet class hung-over, under-caffeinated and in a general fog, and there’s a substitute teacher who throws a brand new grand allegro at you in six sets of eight with multiple pirouettes and every second jump battu, sometimes all you can think about is getting across the floor without crashing into someone.
You come to class to build technique – but if you constantly struggle to pick up the combinations, it’s hard to cement the technique.
So Ballet to the People wrote this survival guide How to memorize ballet combinations for those dedicated dance students over at Dance Advantage. She hopes it will help get you across the floor calmly and in one piece.
Handy-dandy guide to the key ballet body positions (Cecchetti method) from the invaluable Gail Grant (Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet)