Brochures & Home Practice
Well, the studio brochure came in the mail today, and my fears have been squashed! They put a photo of me from the dress rehearsal on the front of the brochure....
Thank god I look normal! :)
I also decided to investigate the world of home ballet style workouts. I have a lot of terminology and moves cataloged in my brain, but when it comes time for me to pony up to the barre and work out at home, my mind usually draws a blank.
I have an Amazon Prime account, so I like to stick with online purchases through there. In looking through the workout titles that are dance based, I was a little disappointed to find that there appear to be only two videos that are structured as an actual ballet class, with barre and center movements. One has great reviews, but it's subtitled from Russian. The other has bad bad bad reviews.
Once that revelation hit me like a ton of bricks, I decided to explore the barre bootcamp types of videos. After reading reviews on most of them, I settled for one called "Xtend Barre: Lean & Chiseled". It promotes ballet barre type movements combined with pilates and a core section. The DVD is 50 minutes long.
I purchased it and immediately tried it out, and it was surprisingly hard in some ways! The DVD uses ballet basics like plie in 1st and 2nd, passe, releve, arabesque, and attitude positions. It also covers some basic ballet arm positions. Aside from that, not a whole lot of ballet terms or center movements, but that was OK.
The "class" is structured well, with warmup, barre, core and cool down sections. By the time the warmup was finished, I was dripping in sweat. I struggle with core strength, and I feel doing this every day will seriously help me in that area.
The one thing that bothers me about this DVD, is that the lady in the video doesn't explain proper alignment at any point. There are long stretches of releve while in the plie position, pulsing in plie/releve, and no talk of how the back or hips should be aligned. An ultimate beginner could get hurt doing some of these things, just from standing with improper alignment.
It has a nice enough blend of ballet & pilates plus high energy movements to satisfy a balletophile or workout freak. Though the lady in the DVD doesn't focus much on arm placement or pointed toes or anything, I was able to focus on those areas on my own as an added bonus. Articulating through the feet and improving my port de bras is important to me.
I give Xtend Barre: Lean & Chiseled a 4.5 out of 5.
Have you tried this video or any other ballet/barre style workout videos? Any suggestions? Please share in the comments!
Thanks for reading, and Happy Dancing!
Thank god I look normal! :)
I also decided to investigate the world of home ballet style workouts. I have a lot of terminology and moves cataloged in my brain, but when it comes time for me to pony up to the barre and work out at home, my mind usually draws a blank.
I have an Amazon Prime account, so I like to stick with online purchases through there. In looking through the workout titles that are dance based, I was a little disappointed to find that there appear to be only two videos that are structured as an actual ballet class, with barre and center movements. One has great reviews, but it's subtitled from Russian. The other has bad bad bad reviews.
Once that revelation hit me like a ton of bricks, I decided to explore the barre bootcamp types of videos. After reading reviews on most of them, I settled for one called "Xtend Barre: Lean & Chiseled". It promotes ballet barre type movements combined with pilates and a core section. The DVD is 50 minutes long.
I purchased it and immediately tried it out, and it was surprisingly hard in some ways! The DVD uses ballet basics like plie in 1st and 2nd, passe, releve, arabesque, and attitude positions. It also covers some basic ballet arm positions. Aside from that, not a whole lot of ballet terms or center movements, but that was OK.
The "class" is structured well, with warmup, barre, core and cool down sections. By the time the warmup was finished, I was dripping in sweat. I struggle with core strength, and I feel doing this every day will seriously help me in that area.
The one thing that bothers me about this DVD, is that the lady in the video doesn't explain proper alignment at any point. There are long stretches of releve while in the plie position, pulsing in plie/releve, and no talk of how the back or hips should be aligned. An ultimate beginner could get hurt doing some of these things, just from standing with improper alignment.
It has a nice enough blend of ballet & pilates plus high energy movements to satisfy a balletophile or workout freak. Though the lady in the DVD doesn't focus much on arm placement or pointed toes or anything, I was able to focus on those areas on my own as an added bonus. Articulating through the feet and improving my port de bras is important to me.
I give Xtend Barre: Lean & Chiseled a 4.5 out of 5.
Have you tried this video or any other ballet/barre style workout videos? Any suggestions? Please share in the comments!
Thanks for reading, and Happy Dancing!
I've heard of a ballet workout called Ballet Beautiful. I know you can buy individual workout videos from their website, but I haven't tried it yet.
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