Perfecting ballet during COVID-19

I am a sophomore in Guangdong Country Garden School, in China, and I am currently working towards my Bronze Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Due to COVID-19 I have found new ways of completing my Award from home.

My choice of skill is Emperor Ballet. Before that, I had studied ballet for nearly 12 years. The goal I set for myself is to participate in the GDC International Dance Competition in April 2020 and get a good ranking and strengthen my ability in all aspects of dance. Before the epidemic, I had completed the choreography of the dance, so during the epidemic, my main job is to consolidate exercises and expression management.

 Basic skills are an indispensable part of ballet, so my daily priority is to maintain my soft opening and perform some corresponding exercises. In addition, I also hope I can pay more attention to my body language expression and strive to resonate with the audience. Therefore, every day I make a video recording of my program exercises and watch it back to find the most suitable emotional introduction and expression. All in all, although the epidemic has affected my ultimate goal of participating in the GDC Dance Competition, my ballet ability can be improved in different ways.

Girl doing ballet

Originally, my service was being a teaching assistant in the Emperor Ballet class on campus, but due to the impact of the epidemic, all ballet classes were suspended. After thinking about it, I followed the current online teaching, contacted the members in the ballet classroom, and conducted weekly online teaching activities to achieve my goal of making students love ballet more.

In each online teaching session, I talk to them about my ballet learning experience and inspire them to think to strengthen their recognition of ballet practice. In addition, I teach them on-line skills in order to make the ballet presentation cleaner.

 The only difficulty with online teaching is that you can’t help the students correct the movements themselves. However, this is also an improvement on their own thinking ability, I found that they can correct their own movements during the practice and respond to my comments in a timely manner.

 

I hope that after reading my story, you can get effective information and find your own solution."