This morning I attending my usual Saturday morning ballet class and I found it quite surprising as to how satisfying it was. Now I am always happy 
when I am dancing, but today was something special. As always the class started at the Barre. Now for those of you that don’t know what the Barre is it the pole generally mounted on the wall or sometimes they have it free-standing in the middle of the room, but dancers use it for their warm ups and stretching.
The class is considered a beginning ballet class, but it is a mix of beginners and adults like me that have been dancing for years. The instructor creates combinations that are not necessarily difficult but occasionally we have a couple of brain twisters for us to concentrate on. Today though, the class was very small with only myself and two of the “beginner” dancers that have been dancing for about a year now.
I am not sure what inspired my instructor to do this but she took out all difficulty from the combinations at the barre. Usually something like this would leave me a little disinterested and frustrated but not today. Our first two combinations of Plié and Relevé were our standard practice but it was after those two that I noticed a difference right away.
Our focus was completely on our body’s and how we were using them today. Instead of thinking about the combination we were able to focus on muscles and how we execute our movements. By the end of class every muscle in my body was warm from all of the use.
I feel that this class goes to show that for anyone that is practicing any kind of art some days you need to take the challenge out of it and just focus on the core movement. It gives you a chance to look at all of the little details. I would like to encourage you that to take out the extra challenges in what ever art form you practice this week and get back to the building blocks of it. Share your experience whether positive or negative with everyone in the comment section of my blog, hopefully we can all build on each others experiences.
Sarah Bartrum 