If there’s one lesson Annette T. Thomas wants her students to take away from their time together, it’s that the “process is beautiful. In the arts, especially classical ballet, you can’t rush things,” she says. “The process is the details that make for fine art. In moving through the process, we create the artist.” That […]
In a spacious upstairs room in his San Francisco home, ballet teacher Christopher Lam gently holds on to an ironing board as he pliés, tendus and dégagés in his socks on the wood floor. He is leading students in a virtual ballet class on Zoom in light of the San Francisco Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order […]
Open World Dance Foundation founder Ekaterina Shchelkanova with students This summer, dancers and teachers in the United States can attend an intensive Russian ballet workshop led by dancers who studied under Agrippina Vaganova herself. The event will be hosted by Open World Dance Foundation, which focuses on preserving Russian ballet traditions while providing training opportunities […]
Margaret Tracey works on the fundamentals with Boston Ballet School student Daniel Goldsmith. Should your students know their ABCs (Agrippina Vaganova, Bournonville and Cecchetti, that is), or focus on only one ballet technique? Until about 30 years ago, there were firm do-not-cross lines drawn between the various ballet techniques. Russian dancers, trained in Vaganova […]