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Archief Balletchool Mabel Alter

Mirella Simoncini, the owner of Balletschool Mabel Alter at The Hague, loves to teach beginnersclass for young adults. People in their early twenties and thirties who want to take ballet lessons for the first time in their live are not the most easy group to teach, yet Mirella accepted the challenge. Lucinda Sterk spoke with her about these classes. 
 
By: Lucinda Sterk - The Hague, May 2005

"You have to understand the words before you can understand the poem.’


 
 
 
Where do you start, how do you build up a beginnersclass?
 
“You have to start at point zero: just standing in the right way - or actually just laying down with your body in a straight line on the floor, learning how to be aware of your placement. Than we let them feel how to stretch the legs, how do you turn out your legs. It’s hard, given the fact that these people have no ballet knowledge at all. My mother (Mabel Alter) has been working with beginners on the floor for a long time and the result is great. So, I use the floor as well. The beginners will be able to do the movements without gravity and use the floor to have a straight back. When I want to learn them to do développé à la seconde, I let them lie on their side. Than it is much easier to feel how to lift the knee, keep your turn out and stretch the leg up to the ceiling. You can see how happy and excited they are to be able to make this difficult movement. After a while I let them make développé à la seconde at the barre and it goes well! We work on the floor and the barre for a maximum of 30 minutes. The second part of  class is about moving, feeling the music, running, jumping, or just walking. Everything is possible, just to make them feel what it’s like to dance.”

Step by Step Basic Ballet at Balletschool Mabel Alter,
technique exercise on the floor - learning to do développé à la seconde.
Picure by: Robert Benschop



Feel what it’s like to dance!
Picture: Nutcracker December 2006 by: The Dutch Don't Dance Division.
Dancers: Mirella Simoncini and Giacomo della Marina
Can you do something easy like tendu en-croix with beginners?
 
For a dancer tendu en-croix is simple indeed,  but for a beginner even tendu en-croix is too complicated. You have to learn them first how to do just a tendu. And what’s more you have to learn them how to count the music. So, with beginners you don’t teach complete combinations. In our school we learn the students the basic understanding of the bodymovements before we learn them combinations. It’s like reading a poem. You need to understand the words before you can understand the whole poem."
 
"That’s why it’s not easy teaching this group because the class has to be understandable and simple for everyone - but I don’t want the students to be bored. They have to move around the room and feel what ballet is about. And you can learn them so much more about ballet by just telling them about it. Like how a dancer does it’s own warming up before class or how dancers always mark an exercise first before really doing it. The advanced group knows this, new pupils don’t even know what it means to mark.”


What difficulties are you facing while teaching beginners?
 
“A lot of beginners don’t understand yet that they should have an active attitude, use their own energy in order to get more energy. And make the body work with willpower. They need their teacher to help them find that willpower. Sometimes it’s hard because as long as they don’t get this, they will need to borrow my energy. Another thing is that as a teacher you have to be able to explain where a movement is coming from. Sometimes you have to go back in your mind to the basic, in order to explain to your students a simple movement. And sometimes a literally approach is the best way. Like a grand plié, to let them feel how to pull up their body, I let them do it with two arms above their heads, pointing their finger up to the ceiling. It’s great, I myself still learn from each lesson.”
 
What, can you tell, is different about teaching young adults from children who start at the same point?
 
“With children you’re just more playfull. What I find interesting is that children learn faster than adults. A child will take the shortest way, so if you do a jeté en cloche, the child will go with the feet in a straight line from back to front. An adult will make unneccessary movements with the leg, you have to teach them to lose those unneccessary movements. Children learn fast because they are in a way still free. If you ask them to lift their leg they do it at once really high and energetic. An adult is not so free anymore and will lift the leg - but might be shy and afraid to do it wrong. You’ll have to make an adult feel free like a child to let them dance.”