Customer Reviews

Ballet: From the First Plie to Mastery, An Eight-Year Course

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this is a perfect guide for a syallabus for a dance school.
That is what I'm doing with it. I am a professional ballet dancer that has danced with major dance companies in the USA. I needed a good guide to teach young beginners I am teaching.This book is a perfect guide in teaching young beginners through to advance students. The stretches taught are real perks for the students to gain the flexibility they need for the years new steps. Also the strenghtening back exercises are exactly what children need in order to do arabesques and other steps. I am also a pilates instructor and these stretches and strengthening floor exercises are perfect. I wouldn't reccommend this book to a child since it is very detailed in words but to a 12-13year old that likes to read and dance it might be just what she likes! and it will give her some good pointers.
Best of luck
T.T.

If want your child to read some ballet picture book that they can color in, don't buy this book. This book is an indepth look into the technique of ballet. I sat down and read it with my seven year old. The author is so describtive that the pictures are not even needed. My daughter could perfectly comprehend the technique. This isn't a book of flashy technique or shortcuts around the technique, but of the simple,perfect technique. This is for parents and children who thinking of starting in seriuos ballet. I applaud Anna Paskevska for this delightful book on beginning ballet.

I am in the process of writing curriculum for the studio that I teach at, and this has been an indespensable resource for a teacher. It had easy to follow sample classes that help you to get an idea of how to teach the classical vocabulary for that level. I found some of my all time favorite combinations in this book. Fabulous resource if you want to make sure your students are keeping up the ballet world!

"Ballet: From the First Plie' to Mastery, An Eight-Year Course" or "WHERE'S THE BEEF?"

I admit. I ordered this book expecting to get a condensation of Kostrovitskaya's "100 lessons". (available through this site) (A book I highly recommend. The John Barker translation is no longer available, but Oleg Briansky's is still available:

Yes. I saw the name "Paskevska" and said to myself, "Well "8 Lessons" and she's gotta be a Vaganova practitioner, right? WRONG!!!

Okay, I have been a Vaganova practitioner for many years. But, I wrote a thesis on the Documentation and Colloquia of the Oral Tradition of Balletic Vocabularies in the English Speaking World. (Not very publishable). When I opened the book I knew that it wasn't what I expected. photos of children too young to assimilate the positions they are posed in (and thus are showing them incorrectly) most of the dancers breaking their hips (leaning slightly forward), under utilizing the natural turnout available from their buttocks, hips and through their legs. But, no - I don't have problem with this: its difficult to find well trained dancers in the US. I knew that examining content was the best way to evaluate the book. So I went on to examine it...

here's what I found:
- Cecchetti and French terminology combined, (with some Legat thrown in for good measure) without explanation throughout. particularly ports de bras and relative spacial positioning.
- No decent explanation of turnout as an active function in ballet virtcle. No explanation of utilization of ports de bras as 1) functional as counter balance to extension, flexion, motion or stasis 2) the primary functionary of presentation.
- No decent explanation of placement as either somatic (as in some English styles and Cecchetti, or placement as spacial as it is in all other schools (eg: `a la seconde is placed in accordance to available external rotation from hips in Cecchetti. `A la Seconde is placed in accordance to second position of the feet and angular relationship to audience in Vaganova and other schools.)

In fact, there is so much more I find wrong with this book, I can't fit it in here. So, here is the little of what I liked, unfortunately undone by each points' subsequent failing:
1) it does a half decent job giving the progression of classes structure and emphasis -according to the author's presumptive stance._ In other words, because of the lack of definitive information of alternative schooling, the author has assumed that her presentation is best. (If she didn't, she wouldn't have written a book about it.) The truth is that it is an American Melting Pot of a variety of styles. This was fine through the 1980s when Americans dominated world ballet...that is, until Perestroika!

2) She is an academic and so writes in a succinct and direct manner that is easy for a novice to understand. But, the devil is in the details in two ways in this statement.

A) Novices hould not read a book to learn ballet. Period. (For example, a novice would not be able to fathom Kostrovitskaya's 100 lessons. It is a good reference book, but terrible to glean an ability to instruct - as it should be! It is a book for seasoned trained professionals.)

B) She is an academic with little professional experience. To train children from beginner to professional (as as if they are to be professional) one must not only have studied pedagogy -with professionals who were your teachers- but one should have at least some professional experience on stage for a few years. Ballet is meant for the stage; if you haven't been on many, night after night, dealing with applause and the rather difficult lifestyle, you won't be able to prepare your dancers for what ballet really is: an ATHLETIC ART FORM!!

To Ms. Pavkevska credit, she has a long resume'. But her background is dated. The principles she prescribes in "Ballet" are simply out of date. For example, we now know that creative dance is good for children from age 4 (at the earliest) until 9. You can start a child in ballet at age 7, but this "level one" must continue until age 9 to 11, depending upon physical and mental maturity. At this point, the only major in emphasis should be arms, stretch and strength training. Some forms of character and movement can be trained. But around age ten is when you really kick in teaching technique in the form of positioning, and simple transition movements. If you have taught them arms first, when standing still, they already look like pros! Even the photos in Pavkevska's book betrays the lack of strength and training in these young dancers. Further, the training of dancers breaking the line of their upper body forward at the hips, so their is a slight sitting back in the lower body, will stunt these young children as they grow.

Could a dancer become a finished dancer using the generalist techniques outlined in this book? Only if they then leave to go -retrain- with another teacher. I'm sure she has students who have gone on to professionals, and others who could have done, but like many talented students chose other paths that they thrive in. But, though well organized, and she does have good points about discipline etc., it exemplifies the "ballet light" that has been pervasive for years, and has been run asunder by the Russian invasion by dancers who are so much more superior in their training that few Americans stand a chance.

Where Americans thrive is in our ability to switch dance and choreographic genre. If only Pavkevska stated this in her Preface or first chapter. Sadly, I have not found it yet. She needs to be specific that this is more than just a rehashing of Nicholas Legat's Cechetti influenced dated methodologies.

P. S. Rosemond

Anna Paskevska - like this reviewer - who was also once a pupil of Cleo Nordi - dedicates her book to the teacher who had a very profound influence on her delevopment as a dancer and technician. Ms. Paskevskas preface ends with the words: "These pages are written in the hope that, in the spirit of the master they will encourage you to rethink, understand and develop". Wisdom indeed! Anyone thinking of start ing a ballet school would do well to read this book from cover to cover and preferably learn to recite some key passages by heart. Parents are also encouraged to do the same. The photographs posed for by students of the appropriate age, are wonderfully clear and instructive - Jennifer Girard is responsible for the excellent photography. There is a glossary of ballet terms, and also, most important, a discography. Here we have the fundamentals of ballet training, explained how it goes far back into history, and then perfected and refined during time. Draw a line from Christian Petrovich Johansson - Nicholas Legat - Cleo Nordi - Anna Paskevska and you have ballet tradition on the very highest level. This is really a volume one cannot to without.

I have been living with ballet teachers and students for years now (my family) and I am a martial art teacher myself so this is a subject I learned and practiced myself. The writer is an exellent teacher and writer. The progression is precise and explained and something to look up to in todays teachers. She takes the body from the initial stages and builds it from the core with great care and inteligence and does so well with good exercises and lesson plans which hold a treasure of hints and pointers to good form, movement and tone.

A wonderful buy for myself and I reccomend it to everyone who may benefit from the Russian ballet.

If you're expecting a lot of picture to show you the correct ballet positions, you may want to consider a ballet video. There is ONE picture at the beginning of each chapter, with 95% of the book describing (in words) what to do. It's more of a ballet teachers manual than something you'd give your daughter or someone already in ballet. I don't mean to be overly critical, but it was a disappointment.

This is a manual a ballet teacher might use. It's definately NOT something you give your daughter who's already in ballet. There are hardly NO pictures. It's mosting words. What good is an instructional book about ballet without pictures to show you the correct positions. Very disappointing.