4dancers – Page 68

About Pointe Shoe Wool…

January 3, 2012 by 4dancers

Today we’re running a post on something I was particularly excited about sharing with the dance community…wool for pointe shoes. When I was researching different topics for possible inclusion this month, I came across Pine Acres Woolstock, which is located in northwestern Wisconsin.

Pine Acres has a small flock of Romney/Rambouillet sheep, and the owner, Teresa Smit, processes some of their wool for use in pointe shoes. I reached out to her to learn more, and she was kind enough to tell us a bit about how wool is processed and prepared for use in pointe shoes…

Can you tell readers a little bit about how you got involved with producing pointe shoe wool?

I am really combining two loves from childhood. I grew up on a farm and am a country girl at heart. During my childhood I enjoyed 11 years of dance, including pointe, and understand the value of wool for padding the toes. Raising a flock of sheep now keeps me happily connected to both worlds.

What is the process like of processing the wool for ballet dancers?

Softness and cleanliness are my two criteria for pointe wool. Softness in wool is determined by the breed of sheep. The Rambouillet breed produces soft, fine wool and is the basis for my pointe wool. The sheep are shorn once a year, usually in April. After shearing, a cover is placed on each sheep which is worn throughout the year. It is replaced with a larger one periodically as the wool grows. These coats protect the wool from the elements of weather and keep the fleeces nice and clean. After shearing, the wool is washed and sent to the woolen mill to be processed.

What are some of the benefits of wool? [Read more…]

Keeping Dancers Dancing: An Introduction to Dance Wellness in 2012

January 2, 2012 by 4dancers

Join me in welcoming Jan Dunn who is going to be with us this year writing about Dance Wellness. Ms. Dunn has an extremely impressive background in the field and I’m really excited that she will be sharing her insights with us here at 4dancers…

by Jan Dunn, MS

Welcome to the world of Dance Wellness! (also sometimes called “Dance Medicine and Science”). Dance Wellness is a fairly recent branch on the dance family tree; thirty-five years ago, the field did not exist at all. But the last three decades have witnessed tremendous growth in our knowledge of how to keep dancers dancing, longer and stronger than ever before. This is the first in a series of on-going articles about dance wellness, integrating recently learned information to help teachers, dancers, choreographers, and directors.

What IS “dance wellness”, or “dance medicine and science”? The “dance medicine” part is comparable to sports medicine – the care and prevention of dance injuries – just as sports medicine serves the same function for its participants. “Dance science” draws on research in the last thirty years (most of it in dance itself, as opposed to sports or other fields) from such areas as:

kinesiology and anatomy
biomechanics
exercise physiology
motor learning
nutrition
psychology

Both areas are concerned primarily with how dance injuries can be prevented / minimized, and how to integrate these findings into dance training. “Dance wellness” incorporates all of these concepts — i.e., keeping dancers healthy, to be able to have long, viable careers with decreased risk of injury. [Read more…]

January 2012: Pointe Shoes & More

January 1, 2012 by 4dancers

Hello and welcome to 2012!

For this first month of the year 4dancers will be taking a closer look at the pointe shoe and all that surrounds it. Tune in for more about things such as:

The process of raising sheep to provide lambs wool for ballet dancers

A closer look at Freed pointe shoes, including the history, how they are constructed and how to fit them properly

Exercises you can do to improve your arch

And much more!

We’ll also be featuring great content from our columnists, including new contributor, Jan Dunn, who will be talking about dancer wellness. Toss in a teaching tip or two and our new “Dance Blog Spotlight” feature and we’re off and running to meet 2012 with more quality content for readers than ever before!

Happy New Year!

Setting Dance Goals For 2012

December 29, 2011 by 4dancers

Every year I set a few professional goals for myself. I’ve reached almost all of them. I think the key is to spend a little time thinking about what you really want to do before creating any resolutions. That way you are clear on what it is that you want.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how I want this blog to evolve in the coming year. Up until this point I have just let it grow slowly, without spending a lot of time on the “plan” for where it is going next. But, with 4dancers turning 2, I thought it might be time to define a few long-term goals for 2012. One of them was to develop an editorial calendar, which I am still in the process of finishing, and the other was to begin the process of focusing the content so that it is a solid resource for dancers and dance professionals. That goal will evolve over time.

Setting a couple dance goals for yourself can be very helpful. Just the act of writing out what it is that you want to do helps solidify it in your mind. You don’t have to do anything fancy…just jot them down.

Of course, after you set the goal you’ll want to create a plan for achieving it. Try to be as specific as you can in terms of the steps you need to take to get there. Map out ways to measure your progress along the way so you don’t get discouraged. And be ready to adjust the plan on the fly if need by. After all, life has a way of shifting things…

Do you have any dance goals for 2012? I’d love to hear them!

Dance In The UK: NYCB’s Nutcracker Production

December 10, 2011 by 4dancers

by Jessica Wilson

There’s an extremely Christmassy privilege heading to the UK on 22^nd December, in the form of New York City Ballet’s brand new production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, with tickets priced at just ten pounds. This multi-million dollar production includes a forty foot Christmas tree which weighs a staggering one tonne, seventy ballet dancers, fifty children from the School of American Ballet – the official school of NYCB – and a sixty-two piece orchestra. It is ultimately described by the New York Post as “the Christmas show of all Christmas shows”.

NYCB has an unparalleled active repertory of more than 150 works, many of which are considered modern masterpieces. The Company was established in 1948 by choreographer Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, joined by Jerome Robbins in 1949 as associate artistic director. Now under the artistic direction of Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins, the company performs an impressive annual 21-week season in New York, the longest home season of any dance company in the world.

The production’s defining feature is its vast scale, described as a ‘virtually live performance’ to be screened in cinemas all over the UK. This will ultimately provide mass audiences with the chance to view such an iconic and prestigious work by Balanchine, who is generally argued to be the father of modern ballet. This great accessibility is proved unhindered by the extremely limited run, due to the fact it is the ‘golden ticket’ of ballets for all dance lovers, available nationally. [Read more…]

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