Are you at Ballet level 3? Or Intermediate? Advanced? Foundation? And Foundation 1 or 2? Ballet skill levels are confusing – we we’ve created the definitive guide to levels in women’s ballet. Whether you’re RAD, Cecchetti, or Vaganova, a professional ballerina or an adult dancer, you’ll find that our Ballet Level Guide is applicable to you. And remember – no matter how good you are, there’s always a foetus in Russia who’s better than you. We also asked the lovely…
Keenan Kampa is the coolest. Watch a video of her dancing onstage, and she radiates the loveliness of a classically-trained dancer. All effort and hard work is hidden beneath a veneer of calmness and grace honed from years of ballet training, and refined in the notoriously exacting Vaganova Academy in Russia. Offstage, she exudes another sort of coolness – an effortless, off-the-moment chicness of someone who marches to the beat of her own drum. One only need to look at her breadth of…
A gaggle of girls cluster around me in the dimly-lit photo studio, waiting for my instructions. Nastya and Sasha have to leave early. “So how about you sit and I shoot you wearing your pointe shoes,” I say. The two long-limbed young women in question pull out a fresh pair of satin pink pointe shoes apiece and sit against the white studio backdrop, shifting slightly as I reposition them. Their friends disappear down the corridor to a dressing room. One…
Misericordes is the term for a type of medieval blade used in combat, or to kill gravely-wounded knights as an act of mercy. As the name of Christopher Wheeldon’s creation for the Bolshoi, it might as well been named Misery Chords. …
This 30 minute documentary by Russia Today offers insight into the punishing world of that is Russian ballet.…