MR. WAYBURN ADDRESSES THE BEGINNERS’
CLASS IN BALLET TECHNIQUE
YOU have now advanced in your studies to where it becomes necessary to train yourselves for the stage mentally as well as physically. You have acquired the flexibility, strength of body and symmetry of form that was promised in my earlier courses to those who faithfully attended class and persistently practiced at home.
You have progressed through the hard foundation technique to a point where you are physically fitted to undertake the beautiful work of our ballet technique.
But now that you are entering on a new phase of your life work, it is no time to let down and by carelessness lose what you have already acquired by your obedience to your studio instruction. I am sure you will not disappoint me by doing this.
Please bear in mind you have still some hard work before you, both mental and physical hard work, before you are ready to capitalize your efforts, to get the substantial rewards that come to the graduate pupils of these courses. You can by looking back a few weeks see your own improvement. You are able today to do many things of value in a stage career that when you entered here you found impossible of accomplishment. But you are still in the formative period as to the finished product, as represented by the solo ballet, the stage work par excellence, to which you all aspire, and in which you will realize your fondest hopes when you possess its full technique as we teach it.
You are more fortunate than you may realize in having available the benefit of our ballet technique instead of having to go through the long years of excessive labor that would have been your lot if you lived abroad and wished to become a premier danseuse. Long training, at least four years' daily instruction and practice, is required of ballet students in England, France, Italy, Russia, or anywhere else in the world. The foreign methods tend to bunch the muscles. You have seen dancers with knotted calves, bunchy knees, huge thighs, all the result of the old technique. As you know, we insist upon your preparing for the ballet course by taking our limbering and stretching exercises, and today you know why. You have a genuine foundation to build upon. Your bodies are lithe and supple, your muscles hard yet not misshapen, and you have advanced by easy stages through the foundation work to where you are today, ready for the finishing touches.
In your ballet work you must be careful how you land when you jump into the air. My system lands the body with the knees bent, otherwise you might undermine your health. To come down full weight on your heels repeatedly would prove very injurious.
Keep your muscles exercised. There is no better exercise for the dancer than walking, and three miles a day is none too much. Take long deep breaths out of doors. Horseback riding, golf, tennis, all are good for you. Dancing itself is the best exercise you can have, but when you have a one-hour lesson or more, and then practice at home three or more hours daily you will find walking a rest, a relaxation, because it is a change of work.
Occasionally we have a Pupils' Frolic in our own Demi-Tasse Theatre, to give you a chance to do a turn before a friendly audience. This is good experience and encourages talent.