Teaching Idols #2

Another of my teachers that deserves some thought is Liz Holmes. Liz teaches ballet to people like me, whose dreams of being a ballerina happened too late in life, when the hopes of body flexibility, required to perform to standard, are forever lost.

Ballet is a very complex subject to teach. It is as artistic as drawing and as disciplined as military exercise. There are correct and incorrect ways of executing an exercise. If the latter ones happen too often, it may result in injury. There is also the danger of correcting the technique all the time, as Celia, our support teacher, does. It is very difficult to advance or even to keep motivation when enjoyment is cut short by perfectionism.

Liz teaches us technique through barre work (for warm up) and then we work on expression, balance and musical awareness through adagios, allegros, turns, jumps and reverences on the floor. This is a structure of a proper ballet class for people that are passionate about the discipline but are not fit or free (timewise) enough to take it any further. It's an amateur ballet class, delivered in the way a professional one would, rather than selling it as ‘ballet-cise’ or even exercise. I know that this exactly what the student body wants.

What is worth mentioning about Liz's teaching approach is the fact that we learn without really knowing we are learning. The ballet course is obviously non-assessed and we do it for pleasure, not a qualification. We do, however, have little tests and different levels of engagement with the exercises. The more advanced students may include complicated arms or double-time turns.

Throughout the class, Liz uses metaphors, images that stick to the mind:

- imagine your pelvis is like a bowl of water full to the brim; you should take care not to spill any water for whole duration of the dance.

She also emphasizes the core values of the discipline, what ballet IS:

- ballet is about doing extraneous exercise with your legs while the arms show there's no pain or difficulty
- ballet is like learning how to fly. That's why they love going into the floor. The barre is like a perch to help you gather strength and develop confidence in your movements

Whilst being disciplined and taking out the amateurishness of our approach to ballet, Liz works with what we have, trying to perfect it while enjoying. Rather than making the class only about exercise, she also emphasizes rhythm, musical accent, poses, expression and character (we have been snow flakes and sugar plum fairies a few times!). In this way, we can take what we do and apply to life situations (like disco dancing, or queuing). Her teaching works as something perhaps not that practical (as we don’t repeat movements endlessly until they are perfect) but as something one realises over time, as an epiphany on the tube platform or while running after a bus.