Ballet Motor Skills

Essay by michlytasCollege, UndergraduateB, April 2009

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Ballet Motor SkillsMost People think ballet is girly and they would never consider calling it a sport. That statement is just fallacy. A ballet dancer uses her entire body and all of her muscles in hours of rehearsal and performance. The motor skills required for ballet dancers are flexibility, balance, jumps, leaps, and turnout. I have been a ballet dancer for thirteen years. From the beginning I was taught the basic steps, jumps, leaps, and turnout; however, flexibility and balance can not be taught they are just learned through hours of dance class.

Went I was in first grade my mother took me to one of my good friend’s dance classes. I thought that looked like so much fun so I begged my mother to let me try it. The next week I started taking one ballet class a week at a studio in Livermore called Danse Boutique. My teacher was a woman named Sherida Sullivan.

She was so patient with us. It must have been hard for her to teach fifteen uncontrollable sis year olds. She started by teaching us the basic positions in ballet. They are first, second, fourth, and fifth. We had to learn these positions and perform them for Sherida with the proper feet, straight legs, turnout, the right placement of the head, and the proper arm position. All of this was before we even got to move. All of that work was required to just stand there. After we mastered the positions, she taught us the basic steps of ballet such as plie, tendu, and jete. In a plie the dancer stands in any of the positions and then bends her knees keeping her butt down, her chest up, and her back straight; while this is happening, her arms go down, then up in front...