About BalletPrep®

Why it exists

Ballet training is structurally broken. Most teachers learned as children, absorbing the fundamentals instinctively over years of academy conditioning, and were never required to understand or explain them consciously. Outside a true academy, that knowledge is rarely passed on clearly.

So students at every stage, from children in general studios to late starters and even dancers who began on time, progress on incomplete foundations without knowing it. Adults are often taught to mimic movements, and some even attempt pointe without the preparation it requires.

BalletPrep closes that gap, intellectually and physically: clear explanations of how each movement works, and exercises that condition the exact neuromuscular patterns ballet depends on. It works as a complete training system or alongside regular ballet classes.

Who it's for

• Children seeking real, academy-level training
• Adult beginners who want true ballet, not imitation
• Late starters and students left behind in crowded classes
• Dancers who started young but carry chronic technical issues
• Professionals fixing turnout, feet or other issues at the root
• Dancers from other styles learning classical ballet from the roots

The founder

Clare S. Shabsis

Ballet pedagogue and coach, certified in ballet pedagogy by the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow.

Fourteen years ago, a single adult ballet class sparked both a passion and a frustration: adults were expected to copy movements without being taught real technique. Clare went on to complete formal pre-professional Vaganova training, an opportunity usually reserved for children, and then specialised in pedagogy. That rare vantage point, an adult who went through true academy training, is what BalletPrep is built on.

Clare is also a licensed hypnotherapist, trained at the Palo Alto School of Hypnotherapy. Her teaching draws on the mind–body connection, motor-learning psychology and mental imagery to help students retrain ingrained patterns faster.