Pre Grade One Ballet, Tap and Stage
Pre Grade One Ballet, Tap and Stage
The core principles of ballet focus on balance, coordination, strength, and poise. Every exercise and step builds on these, creating a strong and capable dancer.
To be able to dance properly you must have good posture and a strong core – two things that have been proven to benefit in overall health! Ballet is a great workout for the whole body. Ballet is a weight-bearing form of exercise which strengthens muscles, promotes healthy bones and burns calories.
Because ballet uses the full range of muscles, it’s also great for cognitive functions such as coordination and concentration.
Ballet is an art form created by the movement of the human body. It is theatrical – performed on a stage to an audience utilizing costumes, scenic design and lighting. It can tell a story or express a thought, concept or emotion. Ballet dance can be magical, exciting, provoking or disturbing. Ballet is a classical dance form demanding grace and precision and employing formalised steps and gestures set in intricate, flowing patterns to create expression through movement.
Classical ballet emphasises fluid, graceful movements and long lines, along with strict adherence to correct form and technique, especially turn-out of the legs. There’s also a focus on narrative and storytelling achieved through dramatic visuals and complex choreography.
Tap
Tap dance is an art form that has been around since the seventeenth century but did not emerge as a well-known form of dance until the nineteenth century. In the United States, the dance emerged as an amalgamation of different ethnic dances, such as Irish jigs, African American Juba dance, Scottish step dancing, and English clog dancing. Originally, early tap shoes had pennies or nails attached to them to make the signature tapping sound.
Tap dancing became a signature of traveling minstrel shows post-Civil War, and by the twentieth century, was a prominent staple in Vaudeville acts. In the 1930s, tap dancers would gather at the Hoofer’s Club in Harlem, practicing steps and competing in dance competitions. Though tap dance declined in popularity by the 1950s, it influenced a new style of movement known as jazz dance. Today, many dance studios teach tap classes to young dancers.
Three Characteristics of Tap Dance
There are a few main characteristics of tap dance that distinguish it from many other styles of dance:
- Syncopation: Tap dance numbers typically punctuate the first or eighth beat count, which creates a syncopated beat. Tap steps often follow the irregular rhythm or harmony of a song, using the tapping of the footwork to create an added layer of percussion.
- Improvisation: Tap dance’s relationship with improv-heavy jazz makes improvisation an important aspect of the dance form. Tappers also use improvisation as an exercise to improve their skills, at auditions, or at tap festivals.
- Upper body movements: Depending on the style of tap, the upper body may play a big part in the visual expression of the dance. Some tap dancers combine graceful movements of their arms and torso with complex footwork.
Modern stage dance, the other major genre of Western theatre dance, developed in the early 20th century as a series of reactions against what detractors saw as the limited, artificial style of movement of ballet and its frivolous subject matter. Perhaps the greatest pioneer in modern stage dance was Isadora Duncan. She believed that ballet technique distorted the natural movement of the body, that it “separated the gymnastic movements of the body completely from the mind,” and that it made dancers move like “articulated puppets” from the base of the spine. Duncan worked with simple movements and natural rhythms, finding her inspiration in the movements of nature—particularly the wind and waves—as well as in the dance forms that she had studied in antique sculpture. Elements that were most characteristic of her dancing included lifted, far-flung arm positions, an ecstatically lifted head, unconstrained leaps, strides, and skips, and, above all, strong, flowing rhythms in which one movement melted into the next. Her costumes, too, were unconstrained; she danced barefoot in simple, flowing tunics, with only the simplest props and lighting effects to frame her movements.