Before starting with tai chi chuan (and from there moving more generally into martial arts) I trained various forms of dance for almost ten years. This included ‘proper’ ballet classes twice a week for more than 4 years, mostly while at a state-funded dance academy in Amsterdam, and concurrently to this also some other dance styles with a fair amount of ‘ballet DNA’ for about 6 years. Plus much other stuff that was very different to ballet. I was never a ‘classical’ classical dancer – started much too late, too long and lanky back then, also much more interested in other forms of dance/movement – but I still put in the time, gained some benefits, and so I think I can say a few things about what classical ballet training does for you, and what it doesn’t.
It’s true that highly trained and skilled ballet dancers do at some levels have excellent coordination, control, strength, flexibility and general athleticism. Both male and female. But yes, it really is something fairly different to what you need and train in martial arts, and even more different to what I’ll refer to here, provisionally
, as IMA. Horses for courses, right?
Classical ballet is essentially about leaving the ground, not only in jumps but also when it comes to creating a kind of floating, hovering impression, or ‘energy’ if you like. Not about connecting with the ground, ‘sinking your qi’ and so on. This is not just a queston of cliché terminology - the feeling in the body, the sensations, the type of control, really is different.
It’s also a question of how ballet is taught and trained. After my first few years of exploring and getting deeper into tai chi I often thought “If only I had known/felt these movement principles back then in my ballet days, or if the teachers had known/applied these principles, then ballet would have been so much better. Easier, more efficient, stronger and softer.” It’s not a question so much of
what the moves or shapes are in ballet, but to some extent
how they are realised. In the great majority of ballet training, anyway. When I started tai chi, I was already quite flexible and reasonably strong and fit in a normal athletic sense, but – like almost every person and almost every classically trained dancer – when my body came under any kind of martial pressure I would either tense up and brace or go soft but in the process lose my structure and root. Little ability to combine 'hard' and 'soft' at the same time, in one action. Maybe I learned some things in tai chi more quickly than the average due to my general movement and contact experience, maybe, but basically I was starting from scratch again.
That said, there are some excellent basic exercises in ballet that I still do sometimes (should do more...) and can recommend for anyone here. The basic moves of plié (demi-plié is enough to begin with, leave the grand plié until later) and relevé are great for the hips, legs and indeed the feet. Also the tendu left and right, another great exercise.
(In each video start at 0:25)
Plié --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrBhcopjDZQRelevé --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unv8TS3JO6UTendu --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeSVHYSMItgIn classical ballet, you can be absolutely sure that in technical terms your performance will start deteriorating around the time you hit 40, or probably before. Then the older you get, the less you can do in terms of performance. Powers of expression, the ability to move an audience, may possibly improve, but that’s something else. In an art like tai chi chuan you can continue to improve some aspects of your technical skills (can be checked through partner work) through the ages of 50, 60 and beyond. Personally this makes me happy.