Challenges with How Adults Are Taught Ballet
The Adult Open Program
Today, let’s dive into how adults are currently taught ballet. We’ll talk about adult open programs, which are how many of us learn ballet, we’ll talk about what to even teach adults, and how to structure a program for busy adult lives.
Before we start, it’s worth noting that it’s going to get real on this episode. We are going to have some honest conversations, I’m going to dig into the challenges I see with how adults are generally taught ballet.
I understand why the adult ballet opportunities are the way they are on many levels as a studio owner, teacher, and adult ballet dancer myself, and to be very clear, while I will present my challenge of how the adult ballet world is today, I am not here to begrudge any teachers, any studios, or anyone for doing their best to provide opportunities for adults while making ends meet.
If this episode resonates with you, the remainder of the podcast season will aim to help you navigate through this system to get what you want from it and help to make changes to the things you have access to.
Let me start with a little background and context.
When I asked my audience all the following questions:
Do you wish you had more information on levels and progression in ballet?
Are you dying for a ballet syllabus for adults?
Do you wish you could level up without having to be able to afford frequent private lessons?
Are you frustrated by the "open" levels of adult ballet?
Can you follow along with the steps of an intermediate class, but can't yet land a double pirouette or get your legs up high?
Are you bored with "beginner" level but are not sure how to get to "intermediate"?
Do you have big dreams but you're not sure if they are possible, and you're not sure how to achieve them?
Do teachers tell you things like "engage your core" and "keep your hips level" but you don't know what they mean or if you are doing it?
The replies poured into my inbox and went like this:
“There are adult ballet classes at several studios near me, however they are all mixed level. What I crave is an adult ballet program with structure in a similar sense as they level children’s classes.”
“I wish I had more information on how steps and posture build on each other to achieve the harder steps. For example, how tendus and posture help achieve doubles and triples. Or how degages build to grand jetes or other jumps.”
“Ballet is very structured, it is just that as an adult we are not usually afforded the structure and curriculums that younger kids have as there is an assumption or maybe rather presumption that we have had that basic training when we were younger. I wish there was a curriculum for adults that did not take ballet as a kid.”
“When I attended ‘open’ adult classes most teachers didn't spend much time on technique, just going over the combinations”
“It is hard to join classes when there is no structure and I found myself spending more time trying to work out what to do rather than focusing on my technique and muscles.”
“I would love to learn things properly and in order from the start forward.”
“My teachers encourage me, but it's not like they are leading me through a step-by-step progression.”
“I would prefer a syllabus so I can check skills off and have a better sense of where I land on the spectrum. Piecing it together myself, as a beginner, is terribly discouraging and overwhelming!”
“Kids get the opportunity to learn within a structured level-based curriculum, so why can’t adults, if they’re serious about ballet? I absolutely wish I could do this without paying for a private tutor!”
“I love my local classes but they are just open and there is no progression. I don't know how to jump levels or get on pointe, I feel like I'm at a stand still.”
“I feel like everyone knows everything and I struggle along.”
DID ANY OF THAT RESONATE WITH YOU?
It does to me too.
You see, I founded Broche Ballet because I saw a problem with how adults learn ballet and wanted to change it.
How did I see this problem? Because I started ballet the same way these adults learned — in adult open drop-in programs.
I felt the problem really deeply. I felt the discouragement and the disappointment weighing heavily on me, and then eventually relegated myself to goals of low legs and maybe a single pirouette to save myself the disappointment and allow myself to continue ballet class without carrying that sadness.
I started at 17 in an adult beginner open ballet class. From the moment of my first class, I knew ballet was the place for me, my home. I would spend 10 years learning, training, experimenting, and seeking out training before opening Broche Ballet’s first Denver studio
But, I took drop-in adult classes all over New York City. Know of a teacher or a program there? I’ve probably popped into it. I was all over that town. I remember so strongly the longing feeling of watching the intermediate classes, seeing so many steps I didn’t know, and yet seeing that the beginner classes weren’t teaching them. How would I ever be able to keep up in an intermediate class? When could I learn those steps to be able to join the higher-level classes?
Meanwhile, craving more structure, I snuck into my college dance minor program due to a glitch in the registration software that allowed me to register without auditioning. I was so incredibly lucky to take 2 ballet classes, 2 jazz classes, 2 tap classes, choreography/acting class, and hip hop class (well, hip hop felt a little less lucky). But the program was amazing, and a breath of fresh air. The classes were structured from A-Z, each week building on the skills of the previous week. New vocabulary was taught and broken down, instead of just tossed out there casually as something you’re expected to already know. We were given targeted drills to build coordination, warmups to build strength and flexibility, and a dance to work towards to put our skills together.
All the while, desperate for some way to keep leveling up, I took private lessons on and off in college as I could afford them. Private lessons are great and super helpful when you can afford them and find a good teacher. So helpful to have a person directly addressing what you need specifically, especially when you’re in a plateau or feel a little stuck.
Then, I had the idea to apply to ballet youth summer intensives when I was 21. I was young enough to still go to some programs, so I applied and auditioned all over New York City. I was miles behind all of the young teenagers who I auditioned with, and that was eye-opening in it and of itself. The feeling of the auditioners walking by and literally not even looking at you was a new one! The competition in the air, the intensity, no joy anywhere to be found in the room.
After many weeks on the audition circuit, I ended up going to 2 youth intensives where I could see that I was missing a ton of information. I was missing technique. I knew a good amount of vocabulary by this time just through stabbing in the dark with open classes around town, but I didn’t have the technique. But, the programs actually taught technique. They focused on teaching how to use your muscles and how to actually train. Train, not dance. They are separate. Petite allegro wasn’t exclusively about remembering a fast combination, but more so about how to land your jumps on turned out legs. A barre exercise wasn’t about just executing it in time with the music, but about keeping your muscles engaged the whole time. And the teachers wouldn’t let the classes move on until everyone in the room had mastered the concept. To be clear, this was an extremely intense experience, filled with condescension, competition, and envy. I left almost every day of both programs completely in tears. But the training was to die for.
And then, I was in a couple of shows for adults. And that experience was a whole different experience than class too. We worked on the same piece for weeks, perfecting every little detail. And that allowed the dancers to apply technique and not just work on picking up the choreography.
But I was lucky with each and every one of these pieces. I was in college with limited responsibility compared with someone with a job, kids, ailing parents, etc. I was on scholarship, and able to work while in school to afford all of this. I had a more flexible schedule, and lived in New York City where opportunity is everywhere. And, though I felt old at the time, I was still young enough for some opportunities typically reserved for kids.
Not everyone is so lucky, and it should not require luck to be good at ballet. Luck shouldn’t play a role in whether you can do it. And, good training shouldn’t be paired with bad vibes. The chance to learn ballet should be available for everyone, in a positive and joyful environment.
So, together let’s start to build a bridge from A to Z so that you can make progress within what exists now while we work on larger change. And let’s help you define what you want from ballet so you know which bridges to seek out.
Let’s talk about the adult open program
Some of us are lucky enough to have access to a structured or curriculum-based program, but this part is aimed at the difficulties of the adult open drop-in class.
What are adult open programs? The word “Open” refers to the fact that you do not have to audition to take class -- they are “open” to all. And “Drop-in” refers to the fact that you can just drop-in to any one single class, as opposed to the child’s classes where you must attend all classes within a given semester and attendance is tracked (and often enforced). Adults may drop-in to class anytime they want (or don’t want).
Adult drop-in open programs typically offer class in a couple of different levels a few nights a week, teaching different sometimes random things week to week with different faces joining for class each week.
There isn’t necessarily a syllabus, and since the dancers (and even the teachers) can vary from week to week, sometimes there is little systematic progression possible over a longer period of time.
They are ironically unstructured for how structured ballet is.
THERE ARE TWO MAIN DROPOFF POINTS. THE FIRST DAY OF BALLET CLASS, AND AROUND ~3 YEARS INTO BALLET CLASS.
New dancers can join class at any time, which can either cause that new dancer to be completely overwhelmed if the teacher doesn’t slow down, or if the teacher does teach more slowly to help them get oriented, the level will be knocked down considerably for the people who’ve been in class for months or years.
Or, on the other side of it, a pre-professional teenager or professional dancer might join the class for relaxation or extra practice, causing intimidation of the dancers in class, or sometimes causing the teacher to speed up the pace of the class considerably to try to suit that dancer.
Picture you’re a dancer totally new to ballet, walking into a class labeled Beginner. You assume, well, this class is labeled Beginner and that one is Intermediate, so the “beginner” level must be for me. I’m a beginner. So, you arrive on your first day, nervous, excited, eager, anxious, etc. What do you find in the Beginner level class?
Adults who’ve been in the beginner level for 5 years because it’s the only class that works for their schedule
Adults who danced as teenagers and are returning to ballet, but with an incredible base of knowledge
Professional dancers wearing pointe shoes using it as a warm up for their day or relaxation in the evening.
Pre-professional teens using it to let loose and have some fun in class without the pressure of their regular program
The Beginner class goes across the floor, traveling with a flurry of confusing steps named in French, culminating with a pirouette that everyone else seems to be able to land but you.
And as a beginner, since no comment is typically made about the difficulty of what’s going on, and everyone else seems to know what’s happening, it seems like you, too, ought to already be able to do these things. Since you can’t naturally land a pirouette or figure out a tombé pas de bourrée across the floor that first day, because no person can ever do these things on their first try, you might agree with that voice inside your head and say “yes, ballet isn’t for me. See, I knew I couldn’t do it” And then you’ll never be seen in a studio again. Or maybe you’ll try again 10 years later, having worked up the courage to face that feeling again.
Now fast forward to the perspective of the adult who’s been dancing in the open program for 3 years, only having had the opportunity to take open drop-in classes. Even if this person is extremely committed, coming to class a few times each week, there’s a big gap between beginner and intermediate, where beginner classes don’t teach intermediate steps, but neither do intermediate classes. Beginner classes teach only the beginner steps, but intermediate classes assume you already know the intermediate steps. So where are you supposed to be learning these next-level steps? And, how would you even know which steps you’re supposed to be seeking out to learn? You can’t google what you don’t know.
There’s not often a clear path to level up, as the beginner classes teach only beginner steps, but yet the intermediate level classes assume you already know the intermediate steps and often don’t teach or explain them. For people who started ballet as kids, this vocabulary gap isn’t a terribly big problem, as they may know some of this vocabulary, but for someone new, it can feel like there is no way to cross this chasm between the levels.
But the adult at this point either has to decide to take the leap into intermediate and look like a fool for a while to pick up the new moves, remain in beginner classes and feel stuck, or give up and quit.
Not to mention that adult open classes often teach choreography (step left on count 3 then pirouette on count 4), and not technical depth (pull your belly button up and back, stretch your toes long, pull your shoulders down a little extra the moment you launch for your pirouette).
Technical depth and training the muscles & muscle memory is how we pirouette, achieve light pointework, and improve our extensions. For advanced skills, so after many years of open classes only covering which foot goes where, the dancer may have picked up all the vocabulary in the book, but still not be able to land a pirouette or get their legs higher because they haven’t been training their muscles that whole time.
The dancer often must turn to private lessons to get this type of training. Private lessons are great, but I think they should be reserved for helping you with things specific to you, and shouldn’t be needed for learning a fundamental skill in ballet that everyone needs to learn.
If everyone needs to learn it, everyone should be taught and we shouldn’t all have to go to a 1:1 setting to get it.
So why can’t we have a structured syllabus for adults just like they have for kids? Can we have a program like they have for kids?
We can, and we will have this more universally, but I do understand why the adult ballet world is like this. I’ve been in all the different shoes: teacher, studio owner, and adult student and I understand all of the perspectives of how this unstructured setup we have now has come about.
Ballet is complicated, humans are complicated, and business is complicated.
I ultimately think that a structured program for adults looks a little different than a kids program or even a linear pathway and here’s why.
Adults and kids are different in 3 main ways: Different goals, different training needs, and different lives.
LET’S START WITH GOALS.
With kids, most programs assume, whether or not it’s true, that all of the kids have the same goals. Sometimes a studio will offer a simple recreational vs competitive track for kids to choose if there are enough kids at the studio. Or sometimes you might go to a different “competition” studio. But in all cases, all of the kids do the same training and don’t have any control over which level they are in or which classes they attend. They simply must follow the exact curriculum as its laid out on the days that match the level they’ve been invited to.
This sounds really appealing to us Type A’s (and I assume if you’re listening to a podcast on how ballet training should be structured, that that description might loosely fit you).
But with adults, the goals are much more extraordinarily widely varied and even piecemeal and challenging to fit into a program like this.
Some want to destress after work and enjoy the movement of dance, some want to maintain what they have and not necessarily push for more, some want to study ballet seriously, and others want to find a group of friends.
Some people want to train 10 hours per week while others want to dance once a month when they have the time and energy. Some want to perform or get en pointe whereas others are in love with the simple beauty of the barre and the energy of a live pianist in class.
And even within a ballet class itself, some can’t (or don’t want to) jump, and others can’t or don’t want to pirouette, and others are perfectly content with the height of their extensions. Some want to be corrected and some don’t want any individual attention.
All of these goals and ways to exist in the ballet world are valid, but it is difficult to make one class to suit them all. If ⅓ of the room wants to chat, ⅓ wants to waltz across the floor and feel freedom in their body, and the other ⅓ want technical corrections, the teacher is in quite the pickle.
And, without enough dancers or studio space to split the class into 3 goal-based classes, we all dance together and try to make it work, but with each group not quite getting what they want.
It will take critical mass to have an equivalent “competition” and “recreational” studios for adults, but even then, there are actually way more than just 2 types of adult ballet dancers.
2. TRAINING NEEDS & RATES OF PROGRESSION
With adults, our backgrounds and starting places are also quite divergent. Within an absolute beginner level class, adults are starting from very different places.
An adult who has been working retail, nursing, or other job standing on their feet for 20 years is going to have widely different needs from an adult who has given birth to twins, or who has been in a car accident, or who has been taking pilates for a couple of years.
The starting place of 2 beginners after decades of leading different lives are so widely varied.
So in a beginner class, some people might take a few years to warm up to the idea of spinning around in a circle. While others might be dying to pirouette from day one.
Not to mention the person who is coming back to ballet after a 20 year break who danced seriously through their teens (or who even was a pro formerly) will have their muscle memory almost entirely intact.
The “returning dancer” is a completely different dancer than the “absolute beginner as an adult dancer.” The returning dancer needs to gain strength and flexibility and memory as a beginner would, but they don’t need to learn *what* the steps are and often they remember them like it was yesterday.
So all that having been said, “beginner” means many different things. And then layer different goals, availabilities, and desires to commit to the equation, and progress begins to look very different for each individual dancer.
To put a group of a dozen people together into even a 6-week structured program, much less a multi-year curriculum-based program, they’re going to move through the material at very different rates.
3. ADULT LIVES ARE NOT CENTERED AROUND SEMESTERS, SO PEOPLE ARE STARTING AND STOPPING ALL THE TIME
With new people joining all the time, and people taking weeks or months off for normal adult life complications and activities, it’s difficult to follow a plan or a larger progression.
With kids, you can simply force them to take private lessons to catch up, or kick them out of the program, or make them pre-pay and commit to a long program.
But with adults, I don’t think we should try to make it work that way. We also need flexibility within our lives. Adult life is super complicated. Sometimes we unexpectedly have to move, or we get injured, or the kids’ schedule changes, or our finances change drastically.
Not to mention, some adults work split shifts or can’t commit to the same class each week. Unexpected things come up with kids, work, and family and attendance can’t be enforced without leaving a lot of people behind.
Within ballet training, we also need to meet each dancer where they are and remember that we’re still humans at the end of the day.
So then, what would a structured program look like for adults?
I think the drop-in class actually continues to play an important role in ballet for adults perhaps even as a staple of it, but I think it needs a whole ecosystem surrounding it.
The drop-in class is an amazing way to make friends, build community, meet people with different goals and backgrounds and get inspired by more advanced dancers and help the more beginner people along. And it so easily fits busy adult lives. Plus, for the people who don’t have any technical goals beyond loving ballet and enjoying the community, that’s a great place for them to get most everything they want because drop-in classes give you a nice full well-rounded ballet class, touching lightly on each element.
Where the structure comes in is helping the dancer understand what a 90-minute ballet class will teach you and what it won’t.
We can’t learn 100 things in a 90 min class, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn them. It’s just not the right place for the focused topics.
Helping dancers see that in a drop-in class, you’ll learn some parts of ballet, but not others. And that’s ok, that’s expected, and in a big group setting, you couldn’t easily learn those other aspects. It’s not what it’s for.
And then providing opportunities to learn the missing parts that interest you.
This part is highly individual, to fill in gaps, tailor to your goals, and match your unique needs. But, just because it is highly individual, doesn’t mean it has to be 1:1 private lessons.
There are a lot of commonalities and the program can be more systematized where people can get to say 75% of the knowledge in a group setting and then take the rest of the way with private lessons, whereas currently the group setting is 0%.
Then, having learned those aspects supplementally, you can take that knowledge back to the big generalized group class and practice, or go to a 1:1 lesson to really hone in and deepen your understanding.
Additionally, beginners can meet at “zero” together with help learning some basics online so that they can go to a “beginner” class and not need to wait for an absolute beginner class to come up or have enough people to fill it up.
Take the model of musicians. They play in a band together. That is their time to enjoy their company, and put it all together. But then they go home to perfect their craft. They go to workshops, masterclasses, practice on their own, do their scales and exercises and work on their specific weaknesses and curiosities. They work out of music books, scales and drills. They learn their favorite songs on their own. They play for their friends and families and record a little bit of their music. And then they bring their craft to the group setting to enjoy it together with the others.
“Learning,” “absorbing,” and “experimenting” happen outside the studio in a different cadence and time than a live class.
The Facets of Ballet that I will present over the remainder of this season propose a structure of the different skills, steps, and facets of classical ballet and how to navigate them.
In the next episode, we’ll cover an overview of all of the facets of ballet are, from depth of technique to breadth and range of steps, to athleticism and flexibility, musicality, artistry & performing, pointework and partnering.