 West Coast Classical Ballet Society, a 501(c)3 non-profit 1365 Westwood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024 Tel: 310-477-6414 • Email: balletla@hotmail.com |
The Vaganova Ballet Training System emphasizes that all movement originates from the center of the body which ensures strong, powerful, reliable support with full artistic coloration of the steps. The principals of Agrippina Vaganova's (1879-1951) system is the melding of perfect technical virtuosity with truthful expression and elegance, training that leads to technical and artistic freedom.
Specific attention is given to epaulement (the cohesive turning of the shoulders, head and the upper body). The system aims to teach students to dance with their whole body in order to acquire a harmony of movements and a broadening of artistic expression.
Dance students at most levels, and without any prior training in the Vaganova Ballet Training System will find that the process and application of training will be both rewarding and fulfilling given the level and care of our instruction.
Those students wishing to matriculate into our ballet system of training, but who have had other dance and ballet training such as (Modern, RAD, Cecchetti, Paris Opera, Royal Danish, Balanchine, etc.) will find the Vaganova Ballet Training System approach to be very rewarding, providing immediate results.
This is partially owing to the fact that the Vaganova Ballet Training System merges the pure academic dance from Russia's past with important scientific and contemporary innovations in ballet methodology. We recommend that students look at their individual progress over periods of months as opposed to days.
Injuries can be prevented and this is where the Vaganova Ballet Training System has its strong hold. Students and dancers who have completed numerous hours of training in the Vaganova Ballet Training System are able to dance professionally, if they so desire, well into their fifties.
Any proper dance training program requires students to be as healthy as possible; an enormous amount of energy is used up during training and rehearsing, therefore the body requires regulated physical therapy such as chiropractics and massage, rest, and a well balanced diet. As an entry requirement of our dance company program, students must undergo a brief physical (chiropractic) evaluation by a member of our medical panel. In the very near future, the Vaganova Ballet Training System program will become widely available throughout North America, and a teachers training program is currently nearing completion.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF BALLET
(a short history)
The Art of Dance has been a cherished form of expression enjoyed by mankind since the dawn of human civilization. Over the last two centuries, dance and especially Ballet has flourished and evolved, however, not without change, but adding to the quality of life. Today, hundreds of thousands of people the world over have come to recognize a variety of rewarding experiences which may be gained from dance training including, but by no means limited to; a deeper appreciation and respect for ourselvesour bodies, minds and our overall well-being, and the sharing of cultural differences which go to shape our lives. Although not usually associated with dance in this light, dance can be seen as an exercise in ethical awareness as well, by way of its disciplinary virtue; much the same way several Eastern disciplinary arts have professed for thousands of year Russian Ballet, which has its roots in the Petipa-Vaganova Method has steadily developed over the past 270 years. Since 1917 (the beginning of the Russian Revolution) the Vaganova method has safeguarded and evolved well beyond its well respected oral handing down of traditions.
In fact, our own “American style” of ballet has been greatly influenced by such dance luminaries (Russian immigrant) as Mikhail Mordkin, Anna Pavlova’s partner, and founder of the American Ballet Theatre, and George Balanchine, founder of the New York City Ballet. Both Mordkin and Balanchine were formerly from the Maryinsky-Kirov Ballet.
Let us not forget that even the great theatrical dance stars such as, Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, were both classically trained ballet dancers.
Legendary Russian trained ballet stars such as Alicia Alonso, Balanchine, Baryshnikov, Nijinsky, Makarova, Mukamedov, and Nureyev have greatly added to the popularization of ballet as we know it today. Many well known dancers of today have also greatly benefited from Vaganova training.