It’s done.

What you’re looking at now is the result of many long hours of conceptualizing, programming, writing, translating and an unforgivable number of coffees. It’s been a long journey, but we’ve finally made it without completely dissolving our stomach lining from the excessive caffeine. If you’re a returning visitor or you’re visiting us for the first time,

cue the fanfare

Welcome to the new look Dinamica Ballet website!

fireworks – lots of people dancing – DJ playing “celebrate good times” – an all round general party atmosphere

We’ve aimed to provide you with all the information you need, easily accessible so that you can make an informative decision when buying our products. Now you can…

• View a plethora of new photos that detail our product’s features.
• Access our product’s tech sheets and assembly instructions online.
• Download our entire product catalogue.
• Discover some of our collaborations with clients over the years.
• Keep up to date with the world of dance.

Wait a minute…. what’s that button up at the top that reads “Shop”? The more audacious amongst you are furiously pressing it right now to find out. For the rest of you who are so enthralled in reading this article, I’ll tell you what that button is. Basically, it’s a link to our shop… Dinamica Ballet’s Online Shop! ←Hyperlinked for your convenience.

You can now purchase some of our equipment directly online with a few simple clicks of your mouse, taps on your keyboard or oily swipes across your portable devices. And because we’ve included tax and transport cost in the price, you won’t need a degree from the school of Ryanair dodgy business practices to figure out how much you need to pay.

We still offer personalised price quotations, so if you’re an organization or someone who wants to buy multiple products or customized products, contact us directly.

One last thing… we´d like to know your feedback. If you feel there’s more we can do to improve your experience on our site, please let us know. As Albert Einstein once said:

“Nothing happens until something moves”

so go out there on a click fest and discover our new website!

It is somewhat ironic that the beauty of ballet hides a painful secret that most observers are unaware of. You won´t realise it by looking at the athletic, graceful and fluid movements of the dancer. The secret hides deep within the performer’s shoes. What most of us don´t realise whilst watching ballet, is the pain that professional fulltime ballet dancers experience whilst performing.

Not sure what I mean? Type “ballet dancer’s feet” into Google images and you´ll immediately understand. Warning! Some images may disturb viewers. So unless you don´t mind throwing up your egg mayo sandwich, I strongly suggest you only look at these pictures on an empty stomach. The feet you will see, are not the result of walking across the Sahara desert in flip-flops, no, rather they are from years and years of dancing ballet.

Think about all those movements a ballet dancer performs and it’s not too hard to imagine the results this has on their feet. Corns, blisters, bruises, bunions, broken nails, broken bones and stress fractures are common injuries for the ballet dancer. And whilst I would take a month off work for a scratched toenail and expect my family to bring me dinner in bed as I watch the entire five seasons of Game of Thrones, a ballet dancer continues to perform through all these injuries.

Hmmmmm…….. I guess that going to see Swan Lake will never be the same again.

I was surprised to learn that the Star Wars ballet made for French television during the glorious 1970’s, is not even in the top ten! Nor is the bear riding around in miniature pink car, on the list. Believe it or not, most people actually rate Swan Lake as the best ballet of all time!

But why?

Let’s not forget that the original staging of Swan Lake in 1877 was universally panned. Critics felt that Tchaikovsky’s music was “too noisy” and the choreography as “unimaginative and unmemorable”. Yet despite these blunt and unsympathetic reviews, the show lasted six years with a total of 41 performances. Could there really have been so many deaf and blind patrons back then?

If the story ended there, Swan Lake probably would have disappeared into the abyss of forgotten mediocrity. But in 1895 there was a Petipa-Ivanov-Drigo revival which changed the choreography and revised Tchaikovsky’s score. The ballet premiered on Friday the 27th of January and unlike the original version, critics weren’t competing to see who could write the nastiest review. The revised version of Swan Lake received unanimous warm praise.

And now?

The next time you feel like an adrenaline shot of culture and decide to go watch Swan Lake, the version you’ll be seeing will most likely be the Petipa-Ivanov-Drigo staging. Today, it’s the most popular version used by ballet companies across the world.

However, the most important event in the entire rich, century and a half history of Swan Lake is how this has all culminated into the film Black Swan. Yes. That’s right. This is the true ultimate version of Tchaikovsky’s ballet.

P.S. Is sarcasm lost in writing?

Each year the Expo Danza Milano hosted in Italy, brings together thousands of enthusiastic dancers from across Europe. Over the three day event, people experience an array of performances and the opportunity to listen to lectures from some of the leading national and international artists in dance.

This year’s expo saw one of our clients, California Dancewear, exhibit at the event. They required portable ballet barres as part of their programme. In close collaboration with California Dancewear, we prepared and shipped 15 of our PRIMA portable ballet barres in time for the expo. The photos below are from the show.

1. Eggs
2. Chicken
3. Rice
4. The head of a bat (Ozzie Osbourne style)
5. Sausages
6. Vegetarian Sausages
7. Processed Bacon Biscuits
8. Soya Latte 125ml
9. Soya Latte 1L
10. Uncle Joe’s homemade, freshly baked, all natural, organic snails in spicy tomato sauce.

Choosing the right food is a dilemma anyone looking to achieve peak fitness, needs to face. Fortunately, there is a plethora of information about healthy diets on the internet and some of it is actually factual. What most people suggest is a balanced diet with a mix of something like the following:

• 30% Fruit and Veg
• 30% Carbohydrates
• 20% Protein
• 15% Milk and dairy products
• 5% Fats and sugar

Does this sound reasonable to you?

Anyway, if you aren’t particularly keen on what one diet plan offers, you can always switch to another. For example, I couldn’t handle the World Health Organization announcing that bacon is as carcinogenic as smoking, so I’ve decided to bury my head in the sand and adopt the Atkins diet! Now I’m happily content consuming lashings of fried bacon as part of my fitness regime.

A ballet company is remarkably similar to a business company. Both have a dress code, both utilise the pirouette (some with the help of swivel chairs) and both involve lots of dancing. Although for some, this usually occurs after four hours of drinking at the pub each Friday after work.

These remarkable similarities also extend to the employment structure. A ballet company and a business both use a hierarchal system based on a person’s experience, skills and talent (which is why I’m still employed as the toilet cleaner here at Dinamica Ballet).

When a newly graduated dancer joins a ballet company, they normally begin as part of the “Corps de ballet”. These are the dancers that you see as the backdrop, performing in synchronization and supporting the principle dancers. In a business, this is equivalent to a Sales Representative. They’re the people who read off a sales pitch after calling poor unfortunate grannies who naively answer their phone at 5pm in the afternoon.

So what’s the equivalent of the other traditional hierarchal positions in a ballet company?

• Corps de ballet – Sales Reps.
• Coryphée – The Sales Rep who has been given an extra responsibility, such as buying the coffees.
• Sujet – Team boss. The one who usually bludgeons employees with motivational speeches.
• Prima ballerina / Premier danseur – THE boss. Normally meeting other bosses on business lunches…. and post business lunch drinks.
• Prima ballerina assoluta / Premier danseur noble – Mark Zuckerberg.

And you know what? We happen to have a portable ballet barre which is the crème de la crème of ballet barres to use at home. Do you know what it’s called?

The PRIMA

Yep that’s right, it’s like THE boss of the of the business world.