The Giselle height-adjustable portable ballet barre offers great versatility in the classroom thanks to its two types of bases, its double wooden bar and the 10 positions of its adjustment mechanism. When we had to name it, we were inspired as you might have guessed, by one of the greatest ballet classics.

The ballet Giselle is one of the best known and most appreciated ballets of the world’s classical repertoire. With music by composer Adolphe Adam and choreography by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, this work premiered in Paris in 1841 and has since been performed all over the world.

The story of Giselle is about a beautiful young peasant girl who falls in love with Count Albrecht, who has disguised himself as a humble villager in order to court her. When the truth comes out, Giselle is so devastated that she loses her mind and dies.

In the second act, Giselle rises from the dead as a spirit, along with other prematurely dead maidens known as ‘Willis’. Although dead, Giselle remains loyal to Albrecht and tries to protect him from the vendettas of the Willis, who want Albrecht to join them in death.

The ballet Giselle is known for its thrilling pas de deux and difficult ballet steps, especially in the role of Giselle, which demand impeccable technique and grace on the part of the principal dancer. In addition, Giselle’s story of love and its everlasting loyalty remains a universally moving theme.

If you have the opportunity to see the ballet Giselle live, don’t hesitate. It is an unforgettable show that will not disappoint.

Auditions season is coming. November is the month when we usually start seeing many announcements of dance auditions online. This is why today, we want to share with you some tips to help you be more physically and mentally prepared for a dance audition.

1. Being mentally prepared is as important as being physically prepared

It is natural to worry about being in shape when you are going to an audition, but being mentally prepared is just as, or more important, than being physically prepared. When attending an audition, you will find yourself in a new environment and surrounded by people you don’t know, that’s why having a calm and positive mentality is key for doing a good audition.

2. Do not overthink and enjoy the moment

An audition can be as pleasant or unpleasant as you want it to be. Thinking too much about what the audition will be like is counterproductive. Creating expectations, whether positive or negative, will only make you more nervous and make you miss the magic of the moment.

Every dance audition is unique and different. If you go with an open mind you will probably enjoy it a lot more, so instead of trying to foresee what will happen or what other dancers are going to attend, focus on learning and enjoying every second, because this opportunity will not be repeated. Also, if you look happy during the audition, you have a much better chance of attracting the attention and liking the jury.

 3. Trust your hard work

BestBeing consistent in your daily work is key to preparing your body and mind for a dance audition. Before an audition, it’s important that you imagine that every class and every rehearsal you do, is like an audition. Arrive early to the studio to warm up, ideally 1 hour or 30 minutes before class. Start moving your body gently and increase the force as your muscles feel more prepared. Pay particular attention to the parts of the body where you have suffered a previous injury and gently stretch before starting the ballet bar.

At the end of class and rehearsals, stretch for a longer time to relax your muscles and prepare them for the next day. If you go to the audition knowing that you have been following a good exercise routine and have given your best in each of the classes and rehearsals before the audition, you will feel more confident and better prepared.

4. Be humble and don’t compare yourself

Each dancer has their own flaws, and you are no different. No one is better nor worse than anyone else. Is important that you work feeling a good atmosphere inside the studio, getting along with the rest of your peers. Being competitive in excess won’t benefit you. Feeling envy is never a positive thing. No dancer is born knowing how to dance. Remember how you were when you first started, and use this memory to motivate yourself to improve and get better every day.

Whenever you look in the mirror and start having self-critical thoughts, tell yourself a positive affirmation about something you do like about yourself. During the audition, imagine that no one else is there and focus on showing the jury what you are capable of. Dance humbly, because no one is perfect and don’t compare yourself with the rest of participants.

5. Follow a healthy diet and sleeping routine

Following a healthy diet is important for maintaining an ideal weight, but it’s also important for having a good energy level and avoiding getting injured. The secret is not to eat less, but to eat slowly until feeling satisfied. Vegetables, fruits, and legumes are low-calorie, high-nutrient foods, so you can eat them in abundance. Eat your food raw, steamed, or grilled with a small amount of olive oil, as these are the healthiest ways. Avoid sugar, do not use a lot of salt, and keep the fried food out of your diet as much as possible. And don’t forget to drink enough water! Before the audition, you shouldn’t eat too much. The right thing to do would be to eat a good healthy meal 2-3 hours before starting the exercise and take with you some fruit or nuts to maintain a good energy level during the dance audition. If you have any concerns about your diet, consider seeing a nutritionist.

Good sleep is also very important to let your body rest and recover your muscles. Keeping to a routine, getting up and going to bed at the same time each day is an essential part of reminding our minds and bodies when we should be awake and when we should be asleep. Don’t eat too much close to bedtime, and avoid watching TV or your phone time before bed and in the bedroom, as doing so could prevent you from getting a good night’s sleep. Consider reading a book or writing down the corrections that the teacher has given you during the day in your journal. These are activities that will help you turn off your brain at bedtime. If you suffer from anxiety or insomnia, it’s best to ask a health professional for help.

6. Don’t give up

Some days will be harder than others. When you are feeling tired or when it seems like everything is going wrong, you can use those days to do some inner work of introspection. Ask yourself: Why am I dancing? What positive emotions do I feel when I dance? How willing am I to do whatever it takes to achieve my dream? Reminding yourself of what motivates you to dance will be enough to keep you going that day.

What if the audition doesn’t go well? Should I quit? If the result of the audition is what you wanted, don’t give up because there will be many more opportunities. Each audition is a new opportunity that brings you closer to realizing your dream. The most important thing is to be sure if dancing makes you happy enough to do it for the rest of your life. If so, you there’s no doubt you will find the strength needed to succeed.

By Júlia Muxinach | Dancer and entrepreneur | shesapiens.com

Today we are presenting to you some exercises that you can do using our ballet bars, focussing on your legs and abs, with the help of Iokasti Method, one of our dear clients. For further information about other workouts and exercises, go check out their Youtube Channel.

Between March 29th and April 2nd took place at the Opera Theater in Rome La Nuit Blanche, a ballet in homage of the American musician and composer Philip Glass. For the gala, Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic creator of Dior, designed the costumes of the 16 dancers merging culture and fashion. The sets, which merge perfectly with the movement of the dancers, combine lightness with functionality.

The main dancers of La Nuit Blanche were the German Friedemann Vogel, principal dancer of the Stuttgart ballet and Eleonora Abbagnato, star of the Paris Opera Ballet and director of the ballet of the Rome Opera House.

The rehearsals were performed at the Teatro de la Opera in Rome, a client of Dinamica Ballet for years. In both the photo sessions and the test videos, we can see the classrooms equipped with our Arabesque Double wall bars and Pina freestanding barres. We are very proud to be present together with fashion and ballet referents such as Dior and Balletto di Roma.

Photos: Paola Mattioli
Source: Nuit Blanche | Dior 

When it comes to purchasing ballet barres, there are a number of considerations to take into account and one of the most important of these is the height of the barre itself. Quite often we here at Dinamica Ballet are asked to give a recommendation and as straight forward as the request seems, the answer is not so simple.

Today we’ve decided to finally put the issue to bed with the publication of this article to help guide you in determining the best height for your ballet barres. We’ve researched and collated information from a wide range of sources to present to you the most authoritative guide on the recommended height for ballet barres.

Will the ballet barre be for personal or public use?

It’s important to distinguish between barres for personal use and those intended for a studio. The reason is quite simple. A barre for private use should be specific to an individual’s height, whilst studio barres need to accommodate a range of people with different stature. This is especially true for a space that will be used by children and adults alike. So let’s begin with a personal barre.

How high should a ballet barre be for an individual?

You can find many different recommendations on the internet for the height of a personal ballet barre. Unfortunately, most of the advice comes across as old wives tales, or is quoted as something that “a friend of a friend once said…” which isn’t particularly reassuring!

But if you delve into the most commonly made recommendations, you’ll find that they all suggest quite similar heights for a ballet barre. The following are the four most commonly made recommendations that can be found on various dance websites and forums:

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So based on this information, Dinamica Ballet recommends:

The height of a ballet barre should fall between your elbow (when the arm is resting) and the position of your hands in the second position

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Anything below the hip is too low and above the mid rib cage is too high. When it comes to purchasing a barre for a child, we’d strongly recommend something that is height adjustable. Unlike that Sesame Street t-shirt that can be thrown out once it’s been outgrown; the cost of a ballet barre is significantly more. Therefore, making the investment in a height adjustable barre can offer better value for money in the long run.

How high should a ballet barre be for a studio

Ballet barres for studios offer their own challenges and knowing the best height is essential if you wish to ensure most people can use the barres comfortably. It’s worth pointing out that a majority of studio owners choose to install a double row of barres which give their space greater flexibility.

Very specific measurements have been recommended by some well respected dance organisations, but once again these vary from one organisation to another. Most of the following advice state the height for both upper and lower barres and are true for both fixed and freestanding barres.

The national organisation representing dance in the United Kingdom, One Dance UK and CEDFA, who are a United States based educator in fine arts, both state that the height of the upper barre should be somewhere between 90cm. and 1.2m

Falling within this range are the recommendations from Dance Studio Owner (1.07 – 1.17m). Sport Scotland (just over 1m) and Cecchetti’s Complete Manual of Classical Dance (93cm)

However the Centre national de la danse (CND) of France recommends an upper barre well above all of these, at 1.5m! Although they do specify that this is for wall mounted barres only.

Remember that if you’re installing a row of double ballet barres, you want to give your space the capacity to deal with the widest range of users, so give a respectable distance between your upper and lower barres.

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Dinamica Ballet suggests:

La altura de la barra inferior debe estar entre 77 – 83 cm y la barra superior entre 101 – 106 cm.

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Ultimately the choice really is yours. This guide has drawn on available information and has also been based on our own experience as a ballet barre designer and manufacturer. At whatever height barre you choose to purchase, or at whatever height you choose to install them, Dinamica Ballet can offer you barres to meet your needs.

Sources: CEDFA, Centre National De La Danse, Classical Dance: ‘A Complete Manual of the Cecchetti Method Vol 1’, DanceClass.com, DanceStudioOwner.com, ehow.co.uk, One Dance UK, Sport Scotland iVideofitness.com

The American ballet theater prodigy  Misty Copeland, recorded an advertising campaign for the sports brand Under Armour. Copeland, which has its own collection with this brand, collaborated with the photographer Little Shao for this campaign. Copeland and Shao used our ISA adjustable ballet barre for this session held in Paris. We love to see our barres in the best scenarios and accompanying great dancers? Here’s the video of the making-off of the session.

At Dinamica Ballet we tested our wooden bars to determine their resistance to pressure. The laboratory of elasticity and resistance of materials of the Technical School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona took to the limit more than 20 of our bars to check how much they could resist. Below we show the conclusions.

The test

The test consisted in applying pressure progressively in the center of the ballet bar until reaching the point of rupture to be able to analyze its maximum resistance. The laboratory performed the test with southern yellow pine wood barres of 2m and 3m, mounted on both single and double supports.

The unit of measure of force is the Newton, which equals the force necessary to provide an acceleration of 1m/s2 to an object of 1 kg mass. A Newton equals 0.102 Kilograms or 1 kg equals 9.81N. Below we present the results on the single support with a 3 meters bar.

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3m southern yellow pine bar test results

The average of the three tests carried out on the 3m bar determines that the average maximum strength resisted before breaking  is 2119N, the equivalent to 216 Kg. Being a living material, the wood shows Certain deviations between the 3 tests performed with the same support and bar. The weight of a dancer or dancer can obviously be very different, to illustrate the results graphically we decided to get the reference from to the great Misty Copeland and establish a reference weight of 50kg. That would mean that Dinamica Ballet 3m southern yellow pine bar on a single support can resist the weight of more than 4 dancers on a specific point of the bar. If the dancers were distributed along the bar, the resistance would be greater.

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2m yellow pine wooden bar test results

With the same simple support and a 2m bar, the resistance grows to 3857N or 393Kg, or the equivalent of almost 8 ballerinas on the same point of the bar. Tests performed on double supports showed similar results.

We conclude as a result of the studies carried out that the Dinamica Ballet wooden barres are resistant and totally safe for people. At Dinamica Ballet we research to create products with high aesthetics that provide the maximum durability, performance and resistance, and above all, that are safe to carry out any type of exercise for young and adult dancers. 

Download the results of the test performed by the laboratory of elasticity and resistance of materials of the Technical School of Industrial Engineering