Adult Ballet (old)


If you are taking adult ballet classes there is a 99% chance that you are not practicing ballet correctly. Most ballet classes teach recreational ballet. They teach you the choreography and names of the movements but what they don’t teach you is the underlying mechanics of how these movements should be carried out. 

"But I receive plenty of corrections in my ballet class."

Corrections don’t count. Corrections should serve as reminders, not as new information to be assimilated on the spot while performing one of the most biomechanically complex artforms in the world. This piecemeal information is useless on its own if the system is not already understood by the student both intellectually and somatically.

"Are you saying I should quit my regular ballet class?"

What we are offering is an easy solution to a complex, wide spread problem. BalletPrep Method is not trying to compete with every ballet classes in the world. On the contrary it is a supplemental training system designed to bridge the gap. 

The good news is you don’t have to give up your regular ballet classes. Ballet classes can teach the what, BalletPrep teaches you the how; not just to your mind with coherent explanations and methodological breakdowns of the movements, but to your body with exercises that build the right muscle and neuromuscular connections.

Beginners will start ballet the right way learning in a progressive manner as ballet students do in pre-professional academic training. 

Experienced dancers will return to class empowered with certainty on how to perform each movement and get the most out of ballet barre exercises with proper technique in placement. 


Why Most Adult Ballet Training Fails and Why None of it is Your Fault

Ballet is one of the most technically demanding art forms in the world. Yet most adult beginners and late-entry dancers are placed into classes that skip the very foundations professional training is built on.

Children spend years developing alignment, turnout, foot articulation, coordination, and postural strength before ever attempting a true barre. Adults, meanwhile, are expected to begin with pliés, tendus, and even pirouettes: movements that assume years of preparation they never received.

The result? Mimicry instead of mastery. Effort without progress. Passion with a dead-end. This is the gap the BalletPrep Method was designed to close.

“Adults who want to learn ballet usually get to learn the what but not the how. I designed the BalletPrep method to fill that gap.” — C.S. Shabsis, BalletPrep Method: An Introduction — The Book

 The Teacher Gap
Even Talented Teachers Can't Explain What They Never Had to Learn

Most adult ballet teachers were trained as children and don't remember how they learned the foundations of ballet. They learned instinctively and somatically, under the developmental conditions designed for young children. However, their adult students do not share these advantages.

These teachers often give well-intentioned corrections meant for advanced-level students, such as “deepen your plié,” “don’t sit in your hip,” “extend through your tendu,” while skipping over a plethora of things that need to be in place before these elements should even be addressed. This leads to confusion from piecemeal information.

Serious adult students deserve more.



The Late-Entry Dancer: For the Dancer Who Started Late
 

Late-entry dancers (teens and adults beginning ballet after the traditional training window) often feel shut out of the system. Many children even start on time but are left behind in overcrowded classrooms whose teachers favor those with natural abilites. 

These students are passionate, disciplined, and willing to work hard, yet they’re rarely given access to the technical education offered to those on the professional track, or the individual attention offered to favored students. 
The BalletPrep Method was designed for these situations: serious training, explained clearly and logically, and without requiring the years of childhood conditioning that traditional programs assume.

Late-entry dancers, and those left behind, require more.

 

Some of the Groundbreaking Concepts Behind BalletPrep Method



The Technical Foundation

A five-point alignment and form checklist that corrects the foundational elements adult dancers never received. What the industry doesn't tell you is that no movement should be performed without it. This is the beginning of true technique; the unspoken rules that separate the professionals from the novices.

The Pillar

The principle that reveals the real mechanics behind balance, stability, and shifting of weight. Without it, balance is unpredictable. With it, balance becomes reliable, even effortless. Learning the Pillar can save students years of practicing until the body figures it all out on its own. Once fully learned and integrated, guidance like "don't sit in the hip" or "don't lean" will become obsolete.

Induced Resistance

The key to the proper execution of movements. No action in ballet should take place without its application. It ensures the building of the correct musculature and and effective interpretation of movements.

The Pendulum

A breakthrough method for overwriting the ingrained postural habits adults bring into ballet. By exaggerating alignment in the opposite direction, the body finds its true center faster and more naturally.

It encodes alignment so deeply that the body learns to organize itself without effort or overcorrection; once this pattern is internalized, common classroom tips like “don’t sit in the hip," "lift up tall," and “use your core" bcome redundant and obsolete.


“This unnamed thing that eludes so many students and teachers alike in terms of comprehension, I have found is simply the sum of five technical points that I call the Technical Foundation.” — C.S. Shabsis, BalletPrep Method: An Introduction — The Book



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