Introduction

Ooooooh. Well done!

With enormous strength, passion, and finesse, you’ve made a flying leap into the world of dance. Notice how deftly you hoisted this book; how stylishly you soared over the Table of Contents; how gracefully you flipped to this page.

Take that a step further, and you’ve got ballet — where women in tutus and men in tights leap across the stage, doing some very unusual things to their own bodies.

Ballet is a form of dance, and you’ve experienced it all your life: on TV, in the movies, at your junior high school prom. (Okay, maybe you skipped the prom.) If you’ve ever heard the names Fred Astaire, Paula Abdul, or Mikhail Baryshnikov, you know more than enough to get started.

Whether you want to dance ballet or just find out all about it, your ballet experience can remain as powerful and elegant as it began. All you have to do is take it one step at a time.

About This Book

To get one thing straight right off the bat: We take for granted that you’re a highly intelligent person. After all, you’ve chosen this book from among a whole shelf of ballet books.

But in today’s world, you’re expected to be fully conversant with millions of different subjects. Clearly, even the greatest genius can’t know everything. It happens that you, O Reader, are still in the first stages of ballet mastery.

That’s why we’ve written Ballet For Dummies . Without presupposing any prior experience, this book gives you a thorough understanding of the basics of classical ballet. It broadens and deepens your appreciation for the art form. It helps you explore the steps yourself (if you want), within your own comfort level. It puts you at ease discussing ballet in any situation. And although this book is not a suitable alternative to a graduate degree in ballet, it’s much more fun and costs about $90,000 less.

Conventions Used in This Book

As you leaf through this book, you may notice that we use French terms to refer to ballet steps. Ballet began in France, and you can’t get very far in ballet without tackling a couple of these terms. But not to fear — we provide pronunciations for each term throughout each chapter. You can find a detailed list of the French terms, and others, in the glossary at the back of the book.

We also use letter-and-number combinations, such as D-1, D-2, or D-3, to refer to different directions in a room. These combinations help guide you as you do the steps, allowing you to face the right direction at the right time. Turn to Chapter 9 for more information about this room layout. You also find it printed on the Cheat Sheet at the front of this book, just in case you get lost along the way.

Foolish Assumptions

We don’t make any assumptions about you, O Reader. For example, we don’t assume that you have any previous experience with ballet — although if you do, you can still find plenty in this book to keep you busy. We explain everything from the beginning, so that you can go farther, faster, in your exploration of this great dance form.

However, some people do make some unfortunate assumptions about ballet before they know much about it. In the following list, we can help you ward off a few ballet misconceptions that are quite common — especially in America.

You need to be rich to enjoy ballet. Not at all! As we show you throughout this book, you can discover the joys of ballet with nothing more than this book, a sturdy piece of furniture, and your own two feet.

You need to be skinny to dance. Not true — unless you plan to audition for a huge ballet company like the Bolshoi tomorrow. Whether you’re shaped like an hourglass or a clock, you can begin to explore the steps in this book.

You need to start young. Again, if you want to be a world-famous professional dancer, it helps to start dancing as a kid. But if your goal is to master the steps and enjoy the art, you can start at almost any age. You should see what Grandpa did yesterday.

Ballet is just for girls. Yes, it is for women and girls. But it’s also very much for guys. Ballet as we know it was invented by a king, and at first, only men were allowed to dance it. Professional ballet dancers are just as fit as Olympic athletes — and in many countries, male dancers are revered as macho national heroes.

People of all ages, genders, colors, shapes, and sizes are discovering ballet — and having a blast doing it. Starting today, you can, too.

How This Book Is Organized

We divided this book into five different parts, for your reading pleasure.

Part I: Ballet Dancing from the Top

In this part, we ease you into the world of ballet. We show you what ballet is and how it started. We introduce you to the most popular kinds of ballet attire. We let you in on the warm-ups that the pros use. And we present the basics of ballet technique — things you can do right here, right now, without any prior training.

One of our favorite chapters tells you all about music. Besides being an incredibly rich art form in its own right, music is the inspiration for most ballet. We show you how to listen to music, count it out, and coordinate your steps with it.

Part II: Belly Up to the Barre

In Part II, we introduce you to the barre — that long, horizontal, wooden pole that ballet dancers use to start every single day of their lives.

In the three chapters of this part, we demonstrate just about everything a person can do at the barre — and even how to get along without one. Some of these steps are extremely simple to grasp — such as the plié (“plee-AY”), or knee bend. Others (in later chapters) are successively more advanced.

Part III: Center Floor, Anyone?

This part shows you the awesome steps that you can try out on the ballet floor — or in your living room. We start with the first tentative steps away from the barre and end with amazing pirouettes (spins) and thrilling jumps across the floor.

We even explain some very advanced steps that you often see the pros do — like the whip turn known as the fouetté (“foo-et-TAY”) and the stunningly impressive double tour, or double turn in the air.

Part IV: Living the Ballet Life

Part V: The Part of Tens

Part V contains our picks for the Top Ten of ballet — everything from the most common steps to the best-loved ballets; from the most useful ballet terminology to the ten strangest (but truest) facts about those sleek and graceful animals known as professional ballet dancers.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout Ballet For Dummies , we use several icons to point out important features worth noting.

This icon clues you in on a handy shortcut, technique, or suggestion that can help you get more out of your ballet experience.

This icon reminds you of an important point — something that appears elsewhere in the book, or something you should always remember as you practice ballet.

For especially complicated moves, or their descriptions, let this icon be your guide.

This icon marks an opportunity for you to get up and dance.

Sometimes you just gotta be really careful. We use this icon when we want to show you how to do a step without hurting yourself.

This icon lets you into the backstage world of ballet. It also signals great stories worth repeating.

Where to Go from Here

We designed this book so that you can start reading anywhere. Use the Table of Contents or the index as a starting point, if you want. Or, if you’re in a romantic mood, put on a CD of Swan Lake , skip right to the chapter on partnering (Chapter 14) and discover what you’ll be able to do in the not-too-distant future.

But if you want to actually try what you’ve read, we strongly recommend that you start at the beginning. In ballet, each exercise gives you the skills you need to try the next. As ballet dancers are always saying, “You gotta plié before you can double tour .” (Oh yeah — there’s a glossary at the back too.)

The reason that ballet becomes an obsession for so many people, including us, is that it has incredible power. If you’re attuned to it and are within its sphere of influence, you simply cannot remain unchanged.

We hope that this book helps you to tune into the life-affirming force of ballet. We hope that you want to experience more. And we hope that this incredible art continues to move you and change you as long as you live.