Above photo by Eduardo Patino courtesy of Gaynor Minden. As a former dancer, I’ve always been fascinated by pointe shoes. Like most guys, I’ve never worn pointe shoes, but have been intrigued by the strange rituals that women go through, …
Category: Ballet-General
Olivia Cowley Debuts New
Ballet and Fashion Website
Olivia Cowley, Soloist at The Royal Ballet, has a new website. balletstyle.co.uk explores two of her passions, ballet and fashion. The site gives readers a behind the scenes look into the ballet world and a sense of her fashion tastes after …
Pointe Shoes, Part I
Above photo courtesy of Freed of London. Think of classical ballet and a woman dancing in pointe shoes immediately comes to mind. Pointe shoes were originally designed to allow women to appear weightless in Romantic era supernatural, otherworldly roles as …
First Anniversary of Balletfocus.com
Today is the first anniversary of my blog balletfocus.com. I’ve had a great time over the past year writing about the New York City ballet scene combined with photography commentary. The blog is an outgrowth of my love of dance, …
Counterclockwise Ballerina Found!
My last post looked at directional preference for dancers and athletes and reported that dancers tend to turn clockwise (CW) on pirouettes and jumps while figure skaters, gymnasts, and divers prefer the counterclockwise (CCW) direction. I looked at 50 female …
Why Do Ballet Dancers Turn Clockwise?
Above photo: Creativity103.com The Winter Olympics are approaching and figure skating will be a main attraction. While watching skating several years ago, I noticed that almost all skaters turned in a counter-clockwise (CCW) direction. This contrasts to ballet in which …