A ballet dancer can perform the difficult steps of ballet only after many years of hard training. The best age for a person to begin ballet lessons is when he or she is between 8 and 10 years old. A serious student--one who plans a professional dancing career--may be taking three to six lessons a week by the age of 12. Most dancers become professionals before they are 20, and retire by 45. It is difficult for a dancer to practise at home, and most dancers go to a studio and enrol in a class. Practice requires the space of a studio, and a piano accompaniment is helpful.

Even professional ballet dancers practise daily to remain skilled and to stay in top physical condition. During a performance, they should show no sign of strain or effort, and should appear to be completely absorbed in their dramatic role or in the music. The audience should be aware only of the beauty and expressiveness of the performance, not its technical difficulties.

To dancers, technical ability is a means to an end, not the goal itself. For example, they develop the skill to stay in balance while standing on one leg and extending the other backward. But a dancer who takes this position is not saying to the audience: "See what I can do." Instead, he or she may be saying: "I am striving to reach something so beautiful that it does not seem to belong to this world."

The ideal ballet dancer. Desirable physical characteristics for a ballet dancer include long arms and legs, a long neck, and a comparatively short torso. The ideal body for ballet is flexible, slim, and strong. Dancers cannot change their body proportions, but they can develop most other desirable physical features by proper training. Every great dancer began with a less than perfect body for ballet.

Ideal dancers also have certain mental characteristics. They have a feeling for rhythm and an understanding of music. They are aware of the relationships between objects in space so that they can move exactly in any direction on the stage. Like good actors, they can express a mood and make a character believable. Above all, they love ballet and dedicate themselves to it completely. Otherwise, they could not train their bodies to move beautifully and expressively in unnatural ways.

Some ballet schools do not accept beginners whose physical and mental characteristics differ too much from those of the ideal dancer. Most of these schools are operated by ballet companies, which train students for work in their organizations. The schools give children a complete physical examination to make sure nothing is seriously wrong with their bodies. Most of them also test the beginners' feeling for rhythm and space relationships. Expressive abilities are harder to discover.

Selecting a teacher. Parents should be careful when choosing a ballet teacher for their children. A poor teacher not only is unable to teach ballet well, but also may cause the students physical harm. To please parents, he or she may force beginners to learn the difficult movements and positions of ballet too soon. For example, a girl should not be taught to dance sur les pointes (on the toes) until her feet are strong enough. She must first have a few years of training to develop her foot and leg muscles. Short cuts in training can cause serious and even permanent physical damage. Good teachers go slowly. They want to produce good dancers, not to assure parents that their children are unusually gifted.

During the early 1900's, most ballet instruction outside France and Russia was poor. Russian companies such as Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes toured western Europe and the United States and raised public interest in ballet. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, some of Russia's finest dancers came to stay in the West and opened excellent ballet schools. Dancers from many Western countries studied under these great Russian teachers. Many of these students later set up ballet companies in their own lands and established schools to train new generations of dancers.

Today most countries have at least one ballet company and school. Famous schools include the Russian schools of the Kirov Ballet Company in St. Petersburg and the Bolshoi Ballet Company in Moscow; the School of American Ballet in New York City; the Royal Ballet School in London; and the Rambert School of Ballet, also in London.

Ballet classes are held for both professional dancers and beginners. Professional dancers must perform various technical exercises throughout their career to keep in practice. They usually take a daily class in a dance studio and a warm-up class before each performance. Some professional dancers like to practise alone, but most prefer to work with other dancers under the watchful eye of an instructor.

Classes begin with exercises at the barre, a wooden rod attached to a wall at about waist level. Dancers rest one hand on the barre for support. This support permits them to work without having to concentrate on keeping their balance. The exercises at the barre strengthen and stretch the muscles, and warm them up for more energetic work. Beginners develop their leg and foot muscles at the barre. They also learn and practise difficult ballet positions there. Barre exercises may take from 20 to 60 minutes of a 90-minute class.

Exercises at the barre include such movements as stretching the leg and bending the knees. All the exercises are done many times to develop good dancing habits and endurance. After the students have learned the basic exercises, the teacher may speed them up. The teacher may also combine several exercises into a difficult series of movements that the students must learn quickly and perform exactly.

After the barre work, the dancers do centre work--exercises done without support. First comes practice in adagio (slow movements that develop balance and control). Then the teacher calls for allegro (fast steps that increase speed and exactness). The class ends with big, energetic jumps for the boys or men, and pointe (toe) work for the girls or women.

Classical ballet technique is based on a position of the legs called the turnout. For the turnout, dancers rotate the legs in the hip socket as far to the side as possible. The feet are in a straight line, with the heels together and the toes pointed away from the body. A perfect turnout is difficult because it is an unnatural position in which the thighbones are rotated sideways. But ballet dancers must work hard to achieve their maximum turnout, which varies from dancer to dancer. The legs can be moved more freely from the turned-out position than from a natural one. When lifted and bent, the turned-out leg helps the dancer to spin. The turned-out feet give a firm base for starting a jump. The turnout also gives a pleasing line to the design formed by the body.

The turnout is the basis of the five established positions of the dancer's feet. Every ballet movement and pose begins and ends with one of these positions. Starting from any one of them, the dancer can move freely in any direction.

Ballet dancers can vary their movements and poses in an almost endless number of ways. For example, they may start from the fourth position of the feet to form an arabesque. This is done by extending the back leg straight behind and pointing the foot. If the raised knee is bent, an attitude is formed. In either pose, the supporting leg may be bent or straight. Dancers may keep their feet flat on the floor or stand on the balls of their feet. Women dancers are specially trained to stand on the tips of their toes. During this kind of dancing, women wear special pointe shoes. Dancers can hold their arms in any of many positions, or change their position during the pose. They may hold the pose during a jump or a turn. They may also move into a pose quickly or slowly, and hold it for a note of music or for several phrases (units) of music.

A dancer expresses different moods through variations in movement and pose. A quick, sharp arabesque may indicate anger, and an arabesque held in a light jump may show joy.