Ballet for Figure Skaters

Although the length of an intermediate ballet lesson is 1 ½ hours long, it is not uncommon to see ballet classes at rinks in particular reduced to a 30-45 minute lesson. Since this is often accompanied by lessons running back to back and attendance being taken during the first few minutes of each class, it is impossible for a complete lesson to ever be taught. Try to encourage your club to allot at least one hour for the lessons as well as 15 minutes leeway on both sides of your class time so that you can present authentic as well as effective ballet lessons and so that the skaters will have enough mental as well as physical transition time.

Skating sessions usually range between 8-10 weeks; this gives you the flexibility to extend both the beginning and intermediate lessons given in this book so that everything is learned at a moderate pace without rushing through. You can use a full 16-20 weeks before having the skaters take their first syllabus test. This is significant to note because the beginning syllabus is by far the longest as it lays the groundwork for all future progress.

It is important to understand that the lessons contained in this book are specifically geared to the needs of figure skaters so that although they are based on the Russian Teaching Method Syllabus, factors such as no “extreme” turn-out, ratio of pliés to jumps, attention to the minute details of complete body awareness and the initial difficulty of certain steps have all been taken into account. In addition, since figure skaters are already “athletic” to a certain degree and need immediate special training in specific areas, some of the exercises and steps introduced will be more advanced than would normally be presented in the beginning lessons…

The following are excerpts from Annette's upcoming book:

"Lessons in Classical Ballet for the Figure Skater"