Practice at Home: Best Beginning Ballet Barres

By Kate Feinberg Robins
 
My beginning adult ballet students often ask what they should practice at home. One challenge in practicing ballet is that there is so much, it’s hard to know where to start when you don’t have a teacher to guide you. Every class I teach is different, because an important part of dance training is putting steps together in different ways. This is why even professional ballet dancers take company classes, where the company’s ballet master or ballet mistress gives practice exercises. 

A company class at the Royal Ballet

Once you’ve been studying ballet for a few years, or even a few months, you’ll start to understand the patterns of ballet exercises, which we call “combinations.” At that point, it will be easier to make your own exercises to practice at home. But if you’ve just begun and everything is new, then where do you start? Or maybe you understand how to create a combination, but you just want to focus on doing it, without the extra complication of also putting it together. You just want a simple way to practice at home between classes, without putting too much thought into it. So where do you begin?
 
These three ballet barre videos offer good practice routines for beginning adult students.

Beginner Ballet Barre by Dansique Fitness

Basic Ballet Barre by Tips on Ballet Technique

30 Minute Ballet Barre by Ballerinas by Night

I chose them for 3 reasons:

• Each shows an adult demonstrating barre exercises with correct technique. There are plenty of videos showing children doing beginning exercises. Beginning children rarely dance with technical precision and correct alignment, and sometimes adults just feel silly following along with a children’s class.
• These barres stick to beginner steps and simple combinations. Many videos that are labeled “beginner” put steps together in more complicated ways that are confusing for students still trying to learn the basics.
• These videos keep you moving, keep your muscles warm, and get you through a complete barre. If you’ve already learned the steps in class, then what you need between classes is to practice, not to overwhelm yourself with more explanation. 

​How to use these videos when you practice at home:

1. Use them between classes, not instead of class. These videos give beginning exercises with very little explanation. Use them to practice steps you’ve learned with your teacher in class.
2. Warm up first. If you take class with me, you know our floor exercises. Always do a few of these to find the right muscles and alignment before standing at the barre. At the very least, do a few crunches. If you don’t warm up, find, and engage the right muscles before starting barre, you can easily hurt yourself. It also just feels better.
3. Find a barre. A chair, sofa, table, or ledge can work. It should be above your waist and below your shoulders. Place your hand gently on your “barre” with the elbow in front of the shoulder. Readjust your arm position on the barre as you move, so that the elbow is always in front of the shoulder.
4. Skip the steps you don’t know. It’s best to practice what you’ve learned between classes and to learn new steps in class with instructor guidance.
5. Simplify the combination. Sometimes you might recognize the steps but feel overwhelmed by the way they're put together. If this happens, try simplifying. You can face the barre with 2 hands holding it, so you don't have to worry about arms. Or keep 1 hand on the barre and the other arm in 2nd position. If the exercise involves turning, face straight forward instead. If the pattern of steps is confusing, just keep repeating the same step.
6. Do each combination once looking at the video and once without looking. You have to look to learn the exercise, but you can’t fully focus on how you’re doing the steps until you memorize the exercise and focus on yourself.
7. Always start at the beginning and continue in sequence. The sequence of a ballet class has been carefully developed over generations of teaching and training so that the earlier exercises prepare you to do the later ones. Even if you don’t get through the whole barre, start at the beginning every time.

​And most importantly, have fun!

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