A conversation inspires my topic and checklist for learning new choreography with two women working as architects who also attend the adult ballet class with me. In this class, we are passionate women who enjoy staying connected to ballet, and somehow we all are connected through different art forms.
Some of us design clothes, others draw buildings, and there's me, a physiotherapist working with dancers and being an authentic ballerina. Together we meet once a week with the purpose of co-sharing our Love of ballet. 


As a professional, I'm especially interested in dancers' bodies and the subjective experience of how we feel when we dance. 
What also occupies my professional ballet mind is how we learn and interpret new choreography. 


People are very different and have different ways of looking at dance as a phenomenon, and we also have various learning strategies. Some people, for example, focus on the aesthetic benefits of ballet and get inspired by their bodies in the mirror, being able to create beautiful lines and shapes. The ability of the body to form something interesting in the room catches the dancers' eyes and creates a dialog with an inner experience of itself. 


Nowadays, we often discuss mirrors in the dance class affecting body image and self-perception. 


As a professional, I'm aware of the eventual 'dangers' associated with the unhealthy dependence on the use of a mirror. But, I also try to look at the situation positively, especially for adult, competent dancers like maybe you and your friend are!






2. IS A MIRROR IN A BALLET STUDIO GOOD OR BAD?


Adult women dancing ballet who like to study themselves in the mirror can benefit if this action is conscious and desired. Sometimes I even see it as a gift for an adult woman, but why?


Being busy in her life and very often focusing on giving attention and care to others through the use of a mirror, a woman can lock out the world outside for an hour, and she can relax looking at (and hopefully sensing too) her own creative, dancing body. It can be of value itself, although this way of understanding the benefits of a mirror in a ballet class sounds a little unusual. 


Anyway, this woman's body gets attention in ballet, and it occupies all the focus. That focus again creates the excitement of being able to perform art. 


The mirror in this context can function as a canvas of amazement and a process of being creative. So I guess, in this context, there shouldn't be anything wrong with it.
I hope that you are still following my kind of existential thoughts about this topic!


So let's move on to the next point.






3. DANCING A CHOREOGRAPHY IN A GROUP AS A CONSTRUCTING
PROCESS. 


In the adult ballet group I've joined, we learned the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker choreographed by our dedicated instructor. The beautiful music of Tchaikovsky was making us feel adventurous. I'm also sure that every one of us was experiencing the opportunity of living out the creative and artistic part of ourselves while dancing the Waltz of the Flowers. 


The feeling of the dancing group was also strong. We were working together on making the choreography function for all of us as adult dancers with different experiences and levels of technique. This process took a lot of focus and tuning in to the group. 


While learning this new choreography, I noticed that we talked to each other, smiled at each other, and sensed each other more than ever in our ballet classes, where the focus naturally is more on individual skills and expression. In other words, while learning the Waltz of the Flowers, we were building together a dance construction, and to succeed with it, we had to communicate well. It was at least my experience of how it felt. 






4. FINDING THE RIGHT SYSTEM WITH NEW CHOREOGRAPHY


Each of us is an essential component of this construction, and it challenges us a lot to think about ourselves alone and as an element within the group. So, when I talked to one woman from the ballet group who is an architect, she made some interesting reflections on how she used to understand and how she learned a new choreography. 
As we could see in the checklist, the seven steps of learning new choreography do base on this construction thinking which has been very helpful for me. 


My architect friend appreciated understanding the choreography building process, the fundamentals, and in which order the layers of the choreographic construction were defined. I found it inspiring that she embraced this learning process as powerful yet straightforward step-by-step thinking. It was all about building the strong fundamentals, the walls, and the roof. Keeping her focus on this way of analyzing the choreography seemed to help her systematize the dance to later work on the aesthetic part of the choreography and the technique in the next step. We also agreed that this way of working on the choreography helped us stress down a bit, and, having this in mind, we allowed ourselves only to mark the steps when we needed to be able to place everything in the right system first. Very energy-saving, indeed!


This way of working on new choreography sounds probably quite like an obvious thing for most professional dancers.
But still, as an adult ballerina, I'm considering it as a genius, simple, and a very stress-reducing and energy-protective way of gaining control over a new dance and at the same time enjoying it so much! 




5. LEARNING DANCE AS AN ADULT BY THINKING STEP-BY-STEP 


Why am I thinking that this reflection on learning a new choreography is so good? It's because we so often forget that working on something is a process of steps. We get too overwhelmed, and our joy of being creative becomes lost in frustrating and negative thoughts about ourselves. 


We don't feel we master the activity because it feels too much, and we forget the simple step-by-step principles as we move towards a goal. We also ignore the connections between the learned components and split a significant process into more minor focuses. 


Nowadays, in social media, young dancers, especially, are expecting to get results quickly.
They forget the process and want it all 'here and now. It is a popular topic and observation for us adult and experienced professionals that young dance students don't know well enough to guide themselves through unlimited access to information. They don't know how to work smart and systematically to get the best results without being overwhelmed. 


My Authentic Ballet philosophy focuses on step-by-step thinking and establishing fundamentals fast to let the ballet expression grow and blossom into this incredible feeling of beauty and contact with art. I believe this feeling of mastering a challenge still means a lot to people, even if the reality of the social media channels sometimes shows us that it's all about being entertained and getting everything served at once, 'here and now. 


Other adult dancers and I have experiences that are opposite. We believe that building something valuable takes focus, time, cooperation, and step-by-step thinking! 






6. VISUALISING LEARNING A NEW DANCE AS THE RUBRICS CUBE


At the start of Advent, I went for a bit of holiday with my family, and we traveled a long way to Sogn&Fjordene, in the west of my beautiful country, Norway. 


During that weekend, my sister-in-law's eldest son showed me how he built the Rubrics Cube. He enjoyed the strategy of building the fundamentals first, then the walls, and at the end, the roof of the Cube. That was a simple example and a parallel to my story too. At the same time, it is such a true association when I'm thinking about learning new choreography. I wish for an uncomplicated, robust system that gives me a feeling of control and meaning!


I'm sure that with this fundamental way of systematizing a choreography, explained as 'fundamentals-walls-roof,' will all the 'colors' of your piece of art fall in the right place, and you'll feel in control again. With time, practice, and good cooperation with others (if the project requires that), everything will find the right system. 


So I hope this blog post, inspired by a simple architecture-influenced way of thinking, will give you a feeling of peace and order in a busy time of the year like now, with all the Christmas Celebrations and the New Years' events around the corner.


And maybe you were a ballerina, too, learning the Waltz of The Flowers for your Nutcracker of the season? Then I wish you good luck, and I hope that you enjoyed the process of discovering your dance and cheerfully sharing it with others! 


With these final words, I wish to send you all the Love from the Authentic Ballet Blog until next time! Thanks for reading my blog, and I want you all dancers, teachers, and therapists a Step-By-Step organized and passionate New Year 2019! 


P.S. Remember to download my checklist of 7 steps for learning new choreography. I hope it will inspire you!