January 16th
I’ve been thinking a lot about the mindset it takes to become a successful dancer or performer and decided to put together an initial video clip on 5 important success principles. Enjoy! “Education is the key to injury prevention”
January 9th
Happy January! I love the first of the year as it is so filled with potential and possibilities and thoughts of change. As a dancer and dance teacher there have been similar patterns to my thoughts over the years at this time. I vow to decrease my sugar intake, increase my exercise and spend more [...]
December 20th
I am a ballet teacher living and working in New Jersey. I used to teach in New York City, and my teacher training started with Don Farnworth in New York. As time allows, I contribute to Dance.net. A question just came up regarding splits and young dance students. When is it safe to start doing [...]
December 19th
Everybody has their favorite dance blogs that they bookmark and read. Nichelle at DanceAdvantage.net (a wonderful blog) is having a contest for the top 20 dance blogs. I decided to enter my Dancing Smart blog in the Teacher Talk section. The way this contest works is the blogs with the most comments will win in [...]
December 13th
With the holiday countdown, Nutcracker performances, increased social engagements – stress levels can easily increase. Dancers and dance teachers need recovery time and ways they can train (or retrain) their bodies into more efficient patterns. I created a mp3 file of guided imagery for my students. As I talk about in the Inner Dance of [...]
December 5th
Today’s post came from an email from a concerned mother who’s daughter was diagnosed with an os trigonum in both ankles. She writes… My daughter is 14 and very serious about her dancing. She has heel pain and has worked with a PT for the past year and rested a good part of last year. [...]
November 17th
In the last post we saw a good example of a popping and snapping hip and I talked about the possible reasons for a popping/snapping hip. Many of you appreciated the post and have asked me to talk about the hip pops that happen in the front of the hip. That’s been duly noted and is [...]
Read more of Stretches for the side popping and snapping hip…
November 9th
I had the pleasure of working with dancers from the Allegro Performing Arts Academy recently and they were the dancers shown in the picture on the post on strengthening the iliopsoas for higher extensions. This week’s post is answering a common question about snapping or popping hips. What does it mean? There are different types [...]
November 1st
Today’s posting looks at another way to help get your extensions higher and développés even smoother and more controlled. It has to do with the wonderful iliopsoas muscle that you hear so many anatomists and body workers talking about! I know I’m someone that always looks at this muscle carefully when I am assessing someone’s [...]
October 25th
Today’s post is a series of 6 short clips about looking at the different elements of a pointe shoe. Things such as do you need a wider or a narrower box and what is the crown of the shoe are looked at. Many thanks to Anneliese Burns Wilson for sharing her expertise and to Geneva [...]