“Adult ballet” is a fairly recent term that denotes a particular approach to the teaching and practice of ballet. As a teacher, I specialized in the adult ballet approach when I owned a local studio, and have carried that into my online classes. As a dancer, shifting from a professional focus to an adult ballet focus has enabled me to re-embrace dance as a lifelong pursuit.

So, what is and what isn’t adult ballet?

What IS Adult Ballet?

Adult ballet is adult-oriented instruction for non-traditional students dancing for wellness, fitness, and joy. These three facets guide both my teaching and practice of adult ballet.

Adult-Oriented Instruction

Adult-oriented ballet instruction uses language and methods that aim to connect with students who have a wealth of life experience and know their bodies well.

For me as an instructor, this involves acknowledging the linguistic, cultural, and historical complexities of ballet. It also involves exploring how ballet works as a system and demystifying a complex art that has developed over hundreds of years.

As an adult ballet student, I value instructors who encourage dancers to listen to our bodies and make responsible decisions about when to push ourselves further and when to pull back. I value instructors who encourage dancers not to take ourselves too seriously, to enjoy the time we’ve taken out of our busy adult lives, and to appreciate the opportunity to just be present in our practice.

For Non-Traditional Students

Who constitutes a “traditional” ballet student varies depending on cultural context. In the contemporary United States, popular conceptions of ballet students often conjure images of young girls in pink tutus spinning and leaping to Disney songs. For those familiar with the professional ballet world, a traditional student is a child, or a young adult who has been training intensively since childhood. A traditional student has a “ballet body” with high foot arches and lean muscles. A traditional student comes to class each day in uniform ballet attire, hair in a slicked-back bun, shoe ribbons tucked in, and stands quietly at the barre awaiting instructions.

I think of teaching “non-traditional” ballet students in terms of accessibility. I offer explanations and adaptations that people with diverse experiences, body types, and gender identities can relate to. I draw from my own multifaceted identity as an anthropologist, a polyglot, a writer, and a parent; as well as my experience as a professionally trained dancer who knows how to listen to my own body and emotions, and make my dancing my own.

Dancing for Wellness, Fitness, and Joy

Adult ballet places wellness, fitness, and joy at the center of both teaching and practice. At Find Your Center, we approach ballet as a holistic centering practice:

To Find Your Center is

To find balance and calm.

To find confidence and power.

To control your center of gravity.

To move with efficiency and strength.

To know and honor yourself.

To respect those around you.

My own journey of rediscovering ballet after having given it up as a professional career fuels my approach to teaching. When I take a ballet class, either at home or at a local studio, I find myself in an all-encompassing state of flow. I’ve embraced ballet as a lifelong pursuit that keeps me healthy and fit as I age. On days when I dance, I go to bed feeling sleepy, strong, and happy. This sense of well-being is what I seek to share with my adult ballet students.

What ISN’T Adult Ballet?

Now that we know what adult ballet is, let’s take a look at what it’s not. Reminding myself of what isn’t adult ballet helps me stay focused as both a teacher and a dancer.

Adult Ballet is Amateur, NOT Professional

Classes designated “Adult Ballet” are NOT intended for professional performers. Even when adult ballet students practice advanced steps and techniques, it is an amateur practice and not a professional one.

I have many colleagues from my pre-professional ballet training days who are now adults performing (or retired from performing) professionally. Professionals generally take company classes provided by their employers as part of their daily work. In rare cases when someone who learns ballet as an adult goes on to dance professionally, they transition from taking amateur adult ballet classes to taking professional company classes.

Adult Ballet is Recreational, NOT Competitive

The adult ballet approach lets go of competition. In the professional dance world, only the most highly skilled and determined artists arrive at a level where others will pay them for their art. Add to that the urgency of youth in dance, and you have an inherently competitive atmosphere, even without the competition events that are now ubiquitous at many schools. Adult ballet is NOT competitive. Instead, it starts with the premise that everyone can enjoy dancing ballet.

When I teach adult ballet, I focus on longevity, rather than competition. I want my students to be able to dance for the rest of their lives (which is also what I want for myself). I emphasize safe, healthy ballet technique with adaptations for aging bodies. There’s no urgency for adult ballet dancers to be able to perform the most physically challenging and jaw-dropping feats. With professionally guided holistic recreational training, my adult students have the rest of their lives to gradually work toward the most physically challenging steps if they so choose.

Adult Ballet is Dancer-Focused, NOT Audience-Focused

Adult ballet is focused on practice over performance, on dancers dancing for themselves rather than for an audience.

For me and other former (pre-)professional performers, the focus on dancer over audience is key. It’s okay to be past our prime performing years and still dance. It’s okay to have no interest in performing and still dance.

As a teacher, I consider performance at some level to be an integral part of the art of ballet. I teach my adult students to imagine a stage and an audience, to embody the confidence of stage presence and the spatial awareness of a theatre. When my adult students do perform in front of an audience, it’s primarily for their own learning, well-being, and joy.

Adult Ballet is Ballet, NOT Ballet-Inspired Exercise or Barre

Perhaps most importantly, adult ballet is ballet. It’s NOT a fitness class inspired by ballet (such as Barre). The adult ballet approach teaches the art of ballet in all its glorious complexity to recreational, amateur, adult students. It incorporates music, artistry, performance, choreography, expression, language, physical conditioning, quality of movement, and more.

Adult ballet instructors need to know the nuances and complexities of ballet just like any ballet instructor. It’s our job to make this complex and athletic art accessible to a diverse range of adult students.

Physical conditioning is an important component of adult ballet, enabling dancers to move with greater ease and dance without hurting ourselves. But when physical conditioning is isolated from the rest of the art, it is just that—conditioning, Barre, Pilates, or fitness.

In sum, adult ballet is adult-oriented instruction for non-traditional students dancing for wellness, fitness, and joy. Adult ballet isn’t professional, competitive, audience-focused, or ballet-inspired exercise. The challenge and joy of teaching adult ballet lies in taking a complex art that has traditionally been reserved for the elite few, and making it accessible as a lifelong practice for all kinds of people.

Pilates? Yoga? What Is It?

Sometimes it feels like everywhere we look there's a Pilates or yoga studio. Every gym and community center seems to offer Pilates, yoga, or a combined Pilates-yoga class. While both are mind-body practices on a mat, Pilates and yoga have different histories, different techniques, and different goals. In my own practice, I’ve used both Pilates and yoga to cross-train for ballet and to keep myself centered and healthy in daily life.

Mind-Body Practice on a Mat

The Mind-Body Connection

As mind-body practices, both Pilates and yoga focus on coordinating breath with movement. Because of the focus on mind-body connection, Pilates and yoga are typically done slowly, with careful attention to the details of each movement, position, and breath. Both tend to focus on flowing from one movement or pose to the next, with deliberate transitions in between.

Like many mind-body practices, the principles practiced in the studio (such as harmony, flow, and centering) are intended to be applied holistically in everyday life.

This type of exercise is often referred to as holistic fitness. At Find Your Center, we think of mind-body exercises as centering practices.

The Mat

The mat is an important spatial component for both Pilates and yoga. It creates a sort of bubble for each individual to shift their focus inward. In a group class, students confine their exercises to individual mats, staying out of each others’ way. For solo practice, the portable mat makes it possible to mark out a space in a variety of environments–say the living room, a boardwalk, or a balcony.

Both yoga and Pilates mat exercises can also (but not ideally) be done without a mat on any clear flat surface that is the size of a person lying down.

The Yoga Mat

Typically, yoga exercises and sequences are done on a "sticky mat" or "yoga mat." The "stickiness" of the mat grips the floor on one side and your feet and hands on the other, providing a safe and stable surface for balancing.

The Pilates Mat

Pilates mats are usually thicker and don't need to be "sticky." The thickness protects the tailbone, spine, and ribs during rolling exercises, and the hip bones and elbows during side work.

Not all Pilates exercises use the mat. Many studios have specialized equipment that guides correct technique. Pilates instruction with equipment is typically one-on-one and costs considerably more than a group mat class. If you're looking for Pilates without equipment, the term to look for is "Pilates mat."

Different Histories, Different Techniques

What Do “Pilates” and “Yoga” Mean?

You might have noticed that I always capitalize Pilates, but not yoga. This has to do with their different histories. Pilates is named after Joseph Pilates, who created it. We capitalize it because it's a name. Pilates is a technique attributed to a single individual who developed and documented his work in the early 1900s.

Yoga, on the other hand, is a Sanskrit word meaning "unify" or "unite." Yoga developed as a cultural tradition in northern India thousands of years ago. Because it's simply a word and not the name of a person or company, it doesn't need to be capitalized in English.

Pilates for Recovery and Dance

Joseph Pilates developed his movement system to overcome illnesses and injuries. He later worked with leading ballet and modern dance companies to train their dancers. Because of this history, Pilates technique overlaps in many ways with American ballet and modern dance.

Pilates stabilizes the core and aligns the body in low-impact positions, building a strong foundation from which to perform all kinds of high-impact movements.

Pilates is an accessible exercise method for people of all body types and levels of physical fitness, while also being a key training component for some elite athletes.

Yoga for Meditation

Yoga, coming from Buddhist and other Indian traditions, conditions the body to sit still in meditation. It is made up largely of asanas, or poses. Different poses engage different chakras, or energy centers throughout the body, in order to achieve spiritual and physical balance.

Historically, yoga exercises were designed to increase strength and flexibility to make more yoga positions (asanas) accessible. The goal was to find meditative stillness in a variety of bodily postures, in order to cultivate a spiritual sense of unity.

In practice, many contemporary American yoga classes de-emphasize the meditative aspect and cultural roots of yoga, instead focusing on physical fitness as a goal in itself.

Pilates Technique

Pilates focuses on small precise movements to target core strength. While many Pilates mat exercises appear on the surface to be like any other workout, the holistic approach and precise technique are what make them Pilates.

Pilates alignment targets muscle engagement for a sleek and toned look. The principles of alignment are generally the same as ballet, with an emphasis on lengthening and toning.

Pilates, like ballet, uses lateral (or intercostal) breathing. The lateral breathing technique makes it possible to keep the abdominal muscles flat while breathing through the rib cage.

Yoga Technique

Yoga includes more weight-bearing balance and flexibility work. There tends to be less emphasis on precision and the movements are usually bigger.

Rather than focusing on how the body looks, yoga alignment has to do with connections among chakras for optimal benefit, and with ways to deepen stretches and increase the ability to hold a pose.

Yoga includes a wider variety of breath techniques than Pilates. One important breath technique for yoga is belly breathing, or filling the belly with air on an inhale and flattening the belly to push air out on an exhale.

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Can Pilates and Yoga Be Combined?

There are some basic aspects of Pilates and yoga techniques that are impossible to do at the same time. For example, we can't keep our bellies flat with Pilates breathing at the same time that we round our bellies with yoga breathing.

There are similar incompatibilities with many aspects of Pilates and yoga alignment. Both are anatomically safe when done correctly within the corresponding movement system. But if we try to combine them, we run the risk of mixing techniques in a way that is no longer safe.

If you want to combine Pilates and yoga in a single class, make sure you have a teacher who is properly trained in both, and able to guide you in a safe practice.

When I teach or train Pilates and yoga together, I start with Pilates exercises to engage core muscles with low impact. I then make a clear switch to yoga, taking a moment to reorient to a different practice before delving in.

Why I Do Pilates

In my pre-professional ballet training in the 1990s, Pilates exercises were always present. My teachers Nan and Mia Klinger had ties with George Balanchine, the “father of American ballet,” who had worked with Joseph Pilates in New York. Many of our ballet warm-ups overlapped with Pilates mat exercises. I didn’t know this at the time, but learned it many years later, when I took my first Pilates class and discovered that the technique was already familiar.

In the early aughts, I had not been training ballet for several years and had started to develop lower back pain. I tried a Pilates session at a local studio, and discovered that not only were the exercises and techniques familiar to me, but they made my back pain disappear. I began using Pilates mat exercises to redevelop some of the core strength I had lost since leaving ballet. I developed a practice to align my body and engage my core muscles every morning, and I've carried the practice with me to this day. I find that if I do 5 minutes of focused Pilates every day, I can bring strength, alignment, and mind-body connection into my daily life.

Why I Do Yoga

I took my first yoga class when I was training ballet as a teenager. In the 1990s, yoga was not yet popular, and I was by far the youngest person in my class. One of my ballet teachers had noticed that I wasn't connecting my movement with breath, and this was making my pirouettes awkward, tense, and off-balance.

I started making time for an hour a week of yoga, amidst my 20 hours of weekly ballet training. I found that it not only helped with my dancing, but that I also felt calmer and more in control of my life when I walked out of yoga class each week.

These days I practice yoga on my own to stretch tight muscles, challenge my balance, and meditate. Yoga is much more focused on stretching than Pilates, and I quickly find myself feeling stiff if I do Pilates alone.

Sometimes I find it hard to have patience for a full stretch session. But, if I take a yoga approach to stretching, I can gently flow through different positions, discovering tight areas I didn't know I had, while continually moving.

I like the balance challenge of yoga because the positions are very different from ballet. Ballet balances help me correct and maintain a healthy and confident posture. Yoga balances often put weight on the upper body and challenge me to strengthen muscles that are less emphasized in ballet and Pilates.

Finally, I find yoga a great way to meditate through movement when I'm feeling too restless to sit in stillness. Sometimes, when I want to meditate but feel antsy, I'll start with meditative flow yoga and then sit or lie down briefly in stillness to connect with my breath and observe my thoughts.

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From about age 4 to age 18, I had one primary goal: to become a professional ballet dancer. Ballet was not something that any of my close friends did. It was not my parents’ idea. But from the moment I discovered it, I craved more.

As a child, my mom took me to see the Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet. I told her I wanted to dance with them. At age 8, I started studying at their pre-professional school. At age 9, I auditioned for the company and was rejected. At age 10, I auditioned again. At age 11, I finally got in.

I did not have natural talent. But I had drive. The joy I felt when I danced ballet was unlike anything I felt in any other space. I lived for it. I couldn’t imagine living without it. In my understanding of the world, the only way to keep ballet in my life after high school was to dance professionally. And so I worked hard to make that happen.

By my senior year in high school, I was dancing lead roles with the Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet. I was preparing to audition for professional companies, or to continue my training at professional schools if I wasn’t yet good enough to be hired. For me, “good enough to be hired” meant good enough to be a soloist. My teachers agreed that my strength was classical ballet, but I was too short to be in the corps. Classical ballet companies, they said, look for a corps de ballet of uniform height. At five-foot-one, the only sure way for me to make it was as a soloist.

I auditioned for American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company, and was not surprised when I didn’t get in. I made the second cut at Julliard, but ultimately wasn’t accepted. Butler University, well known to have one of the top college ballet programs in the country, offered me a merit scholarship, and I accepted. There I would stay, I thought, perfecting my skills until I could finally get paid to do what I loved.

But during that summer between high school and college, I discovered that I no longer loved it enough to give up everything else. I couldn’t have told you at the time exactly what changed, except that I found a new sense of courage. I remember sitting in the studio at Richmond Ballet’s summer intensive. The school director was giving a professionalization talk for advanced students, and there was a moment when something clicked–when I realized that I was in the studio because I was afraid to leave.

I had always been led to believe that ballet is an all-or-nothing pursuit, that if we stopped training for more than two weeks, we shouldn’t bother coming back. I had not allowed myself to even consider trying out for a play, joining an international service program, going on a wilderness adventure, or applying to a college that did not have a professional ballet school.

That summer, I was living on my own for the first time. Not in a dorm and not with a host family, but with a roommate in an apartment, where we had to buy our food and cook our meals. We were subletting from Richmond Ballet trainees who were away for the summer. Perhaps it was this newfound freedom that enabled me to see with clarity two paths ahead. I could see the lives of the professional ballet dancers whose steps I was tracing, whose furniture I was using. I knew these dancers, and I had always longed for that life. I knew it was a life to live while young, and one that I would not be able to return to once I left.

But I could also see a path where I allowed myself to consider all of those other interests that had long been lurking at the edge of my mind. I could see myself going to college and choosing my courses, not just taking the dance classes assigned to me. I could see myself reaching beyond the walls of the dance studios and theatres, doing the things I had always made myself say no to. I could see myself studying philosophy and traveling the world. At that moment, I could only see two paths, and I chose the second.

It would be another ten years before I could enjoy a ballet class again. I was afraid to set foot in a studio and see how terrible my dancing had surely become. I was embarrassed to be seen at less than my prime. I feared that a ballet class would only bring frustration over what I could no longer do.

In the years after I stopped performing, I was occasionally asked to teach ballet—first to young gymnasts in Indiana, and later to professional flamenco dancers and amateur folk dancers in Chile. Eventually, I began seeking out opportunities to work with students who enjoyed ballet and whose lives and careers were enriched by practicing it, but who were not pursuing it as a profession in itself.

I taught middle and high school students who cared more about orchestra, drama, academics, and athletics than ballet. I taught children who were enjoying their childhoods. I taught adults who were finishing their PhDs, building their careers, and raising their children. Through these students, I rediscovered my own love for ballet and discovered that it could be part of my life—and so many other people’s lives—without giving up everything else.

Only recently have I come to terms with the idea that I am not only a ballet teacher, but a ballet dancer. I did not choose the path that would have led me to perform in national theatres and opera houses. But I do dance, and I do perform. Every time I’ve taken or taught a ballet class after years of being away from a studio, someone has always told me that they enjoy watching me dance. If this is not performing, then what is?

Many people will only ever see ballet when they watch me demonstrate in my classroom, perform at a community event, or give a class on YouTube. And I am confident that those who see me dance are seeing high quality ballet. I know my limits, I know when to laugh at myself, I know how to choreograph steps that my students or I can perform well.

I’ve discovered that as a dancer, I still have a spark, a grace, an intuition that grows stronger with age. My hips and shoulders creak. My back and ankles inform me immediately when I do too much too soon. And I listen. I center myself, find my breath, find that essence of ballet that has always felt like home to me.

I let go of the athletic feats that professional performers and pre-professional students must achieve. If I can do fouetté turns or grand jetés today, great. Let it be fun, thrilling, exhilarating. Let it strengthen my heart and lungs. But when my ankles, my knees, my sense of balance tell me, “Not today”--and even the day when they tell me, “Not ever again”--I will still dance.

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In a grainy video, I watch myself with a long white tutu dancing Balanchine’s Chopiniana. It was my last year in high school, and I didn’t know at the time that it would be my last classical ballet performance. I’ve never liked tutus. They’ve always felt too frilly for my taste. I’ve always preferred stories where the princess sheds her dresses in favor of more appropriate attire for wilderness survival. This was a student performance, and we usually wore leotards and skirts. But I remember someone suggesting that my princess costume from the company production of Fly Away Flock would be perfect for this piece. I remember reluctantly agreeing to wear it.

I’m proud of how I danced in that video. When I watch it, I see a dancer light on her feet, at one with the music, precise with the shape of each movement. She looks calm, collected, confident. Never mind that my feet in pointe shoes never formed stunning arches, and I wobbled on my relevés. It is the calm, collected confidence, and the careful attention to Chopin’s masterful music and Balanchine’s masterful choreography that make it breathtakingly beautiful.

It is this essence of ballet, this feeling one with the music and one with my body and mind, that compels me to keep dancing as I move into my 40s, my 50s, and beyond.

I did another performance two years later, of which I am equally proud. I had retired from performing ballet, but was persuaded by dance professors at Bard College to choreograph and perform a contemporary piece for myself. I thought of it as my final goodbye to the stage, and I called it “Letting Go.”

As I watch this piece (equally grainy and dark, but with a costume more to my liking), I’m amazed at how well I was already adapting my artistry to my changing body. I hadn’t worn pointe shoes or trained intensively in years, and yet I was able to create and perform a stunning piece. At the time, I didn’t think I would ever perform again. I saw myself as letting go of my identity as a dancer.

Now in my 40s, I think back on all the times I’ve graced a dance studio, a YouTube video, a community stage since what I thought was my final performance. Each time, it has taken courage to reinvent ballet, to rediscover and convey its essence through my dancing.

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