Ballet is a beautiful dance form originated in Italian Renaissance. I’m a trained Indian classical dancer. But I’ve always wanted to learn ballet, to explore a new, completely different dance form. Hence I joined ballet classes occurring every Wednesdays. 

L4-commitment to and perseverance

A lot of perseverance and commitment was required towards them. I thoroughly enjoyed them and hence would always be very excited and enthusiastic to attend my classes. However, lack of transportation and bad weather stood as obstacles. Because of almost non-existent public transport in the countryside of Central New York, I had to rely on my host parents or friends for rides, which was often challenging as I had to be dependent on their schedule and convenience. In winters, snow storms, rains and ice would make the roads dangerous, making it difficult to travel to the class. Despite these obstacles, I was successful at attending most of the classes and making the most out of them. Perseverance and commitment played a very important role in my learning as I could become a lot better at it. 

L2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken developing new skills

Being a completely different dance form, ballet developed a lot of new skills in me. It taught me different techniques of taking circles (pirouettes) as opposed to my classical dance, different steps, leg movements and so on. It was very interesting to spot the similarities and differences between the two dance forms. It was often challenging as sometimes its steps differed a lot from my dance form. But with practice, I got better at it.

L1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

It also made me learn about my strengths and weaknesses. Being a trained dancer, my strength was that I already had a good posture and could do my steps gracefully. However, circles were my weakness since my dance used heels as opposed to toes in ballet to take turns. Keeping my knees straight was also a challenge. But on the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed my ballet classes and I’m glad that I was able to attend them. Knowing my strengths and weaknesses solved half the problem as my teacher and I knew where I had to work and we improved on it effectively.

I general, ballet classes were really fun and a great learning experience. I’m glad that I got to learn from a wonderful teacher who really helped me adapt to this new dance form.