Rewarded for Dedication

We are so excited to congratulate these amazing humans on their accomplishments! The following dancers have recently auditioned and been accepted to various challenging programs:

Carrington Pentz: accepted and attending Colorado Ballet Academy Summer Intensive (with scholarship!!!) and Intrigue Dance Intensive
Vanya Paul: accepted to intensives with Boston Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Cincinnati Ballet, and Texas Ballet. Attending Boston Ballet Summer Dance Program
Nadia Ghani: attending Adult Ballet Festival hosted by Broche Ballet
Claire O’Loughlin: accepted to 17 intensives with Joffrey Ballet School, attending the intensive in Colorado Springs
Olivia Bird: accepted to 11 intensives with Joffrey Ballet School, attending the intensives in San Francisco and Colorado

Annalise Wood is On Her Way

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The first time I saw Annalise dance,

she had just graduated from Petite Ballerinas into FRCBA’s Teen-Adult program. At all of ten years old, she projected a presence that marked her as a dancer who was going places.

Her classmates have watched with delight and awe (and no small amount of pride) as Annalise has grown into a young woman whose humility belies the breathtaking quality of her dancing and the patient hard work she puts in day after day. None of us knew that she had auditioned for five nationally-renowned summer intensive programs, or that she was accepted to all five:

  • San Francisco Ballet School Summer Session

  • American Ballet Theater Virtual Summer Intensive Program

  • Boston Ballet School Summer Dance Program

  • Ballet Austin’s Senior Summer Intensive Program

  • Joffrey Ballet School 5 Week Advanced Summer Intensive

After viewing Annalise’s audition video for their summer intensive program, the Joffrey Ballet School invited her to audition for their prestigious year-round Conservatory Program. She submitted a second audition video and gained acceptance to both programs.

Congratulations, Annalise - We will miss you and look forward to seeing you on the national and world stage!

— Mary C., FRCBA student

Pandemic Ballet

Tentatively she enters the stage…… Softly and in silence she piquées to a low arabesque, fingers delicately searching the empty dark space of her emotions.  Tombé into chainée turns, her mind spinning… where are the boundaries?  Where does the stage floor end?  Where are the set pieces?  There is no audience.  She is alone on stage.  All is darkness.  A gliding run with arms outstretched, reaching to find something definite, something solid… Low jetés, chassées chasing – what? Emptiness? With a jeté entrelacé her spirit twists in angst as she feels the vastness of the void all around her… She slows and lengthens herself into a deep lunge, a grand port de bras, searching the space in all directions.  Nothing, no one to touch.  No breath from another dancer to ease her lonesomeness.  The darkness is deep and vast. The uncertainty overwhelming.

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The distant sound of a mournful French horn reaches out to her, lifting her into a full arabesque.  The cellos lend their loving voices, and she falls across into a liquid grand pas de basque, feeling the invitation of life. With violins and flutes joining the melody, she pirouettes through her thoughts as light gradually devours the pervasive darkness.   

In the distance, another dancer’s arms reach longingly through 4th arabesque, and our dancer reaches in return.  The energy from their fingertips connects their souls through the space.  Chassée saut de basques en manège fill the space of their minds accompanied by full orchestra and briefly the vast emptiness of the universe between their respective galaxies seems to close with swirling stars mingling.  It is more than illusion of connection – feeling each other’s gravity even though light years of space remain between.  Their movements influence each other’s dance and the dances become one ballet, no matter the separate stages… 

We are all soloists in this Pandemic Ballet.  Yearning to be a corps de ballet.  Swirl with me, let our gravities draw each other, our energies and light mingle.  While the distance is vast and the ballet seems never-ending, I will join my arabesque line to yours, our port de bras will fill the space between us, we will become as one…

Photos in this blog courtesy of Fort Collins Public MediaDancers: Deneice Dyer and Ixchel Levendosky in Space Between performed Feb. 29, 2020 as part of Front Range Contemporary Ballet Company Inner Voices production.

Photos in this blog courtesy of Fort Collins Public Media

Dancers: Deneice Dyer and Ixchel Levendosky in Space Between performed Feb. 29, 2020 as part of Front Range Contemporary Ballet Company Inner Voices production.

Vaganova Sixth or "Grand" Port de Bras

The final established Vaganova port de bras exercise is naturally the most complex and the most difficult to execute.  It takes everything learned in the previous port de bras exercises and adds the challenge of using the legs.  This exercise is also known as “grand port de bras.”  The upper body and arms do much the same as they do in Vaganova 5th port de bras while the legs take the dancer into a deep lunge forward and then a strong push onto the back leg to a tendu croisé devant.

arms in 1st position at the depth of the lunge
with arms in 3rd and 2nd at the depth of the lunge

By way of preparation, the dancer will often begin with a temps lié forward, arms moving from preparatory through 1st, arriving in tendu croisé derriére with the upstage arm in 3rd and the downstage arm in 2nd, with the focus downstage, head inclined slightly back.  From here, the dancer lifts the focus up and out in the direction the body is facing with a slight lift of the sternum and chin (as in the beginning of 5th port de bras).  Then the dancer’s back leg slides down into a deep lunge while the body bends forward into a diagonal line that is continuous with the back leg from the top of the head through the toe of the back foot.  Simultaneously, the arms may move into 1st position upon arriving at the full depth of the lunge (School of Classical Dance by Kostrovitskaya & Pisarev p. 143), or the dancer may keep the arms in the extended 3rd and 2nd positions during this entire portion of the port de bras (Basic Principles of Classical Ballet: Russian Ballet Technique by Vaganova, p. 49).  In either case, the dancer must be careful not to hunch the back or shoulders, and not to allow the hips to pike upwards creating an inverted V-shape. The dancer also must take care not to sink into the supporting hip.

After achieving the full depth of the lunge, the dancer forcefully pushes back onto the back leg to arrive in tendu croisé devant.  While pushing back, the leg which is to be the new standing leg must not bend and the dancer should be striving to push back as far as that back leg was in the lunge.  At this point, the dancer must be very careful that the front leg and hip are well placed in tendu croisé devant.  The hip must not be allowed to shift forward.  There should be no weight on the front foot in the tendu.  The arms are in 1st position here.

Remaining in tendu croisé devant, the dancer executes the rest of the port de bras as was done in 5th port de bras.  As the body bends upstage at the waist, the downstage arm rises to 3rd and the upstage arm opens to 2nd.  The focus here is downward over the upstage shoulder.  As the body arches back (with strongly engaged back muscles and waistline), the arms switch places while the head and focus change to the downstage shoulder.  Then the body recovers to vertical while the head remains inclined back, upstage arm in 3rd and downstage arm in 2nd.  During all of this, the legs and hips must maintain their stability and turnout.  The port de bras often concludes with a temps lié forward into the starting position of tendu croisé derriére.

Distortions caused by misaligned hips during the second half of sixth port de bras

Vaganova Grand Port de Bras! Try it yourself!

Vaganova Fifth Port de Bras

As we have seen thus far, the Vaganova port de bras exercises get more and more complicated with each higher number!  The 5th Port de Bras describes a circular pattern involving the entire upper body, requiring a great deal of control through the dancer’s core as well as coordinated movements of the arms and head and complete upper body, while the legs remain anchored and solid in 3rd or 5th position.

Ballet Technique - Vaganova fifth port de bras training form

Vaganova Fifth Port de Bras final form

This Port de Bras begins in the same manner as 2nd and 4th Port de Bras – standing in 3rd or 5th position croisé, the arms breathe and then move from preparatory through 1st position; then the upstage arm rises to 3rd position as the downstage arm opens to 2nd position, the focus following the downstage hand.  From here, the dancer turns the focus up and out towards the corner his/her body is facing with an inhale and slight lifting of the sternum.  Then the dancer bends forward by engaging the abdominals and then folding at the hips.  Both arms move down with the body until they meet in preparatory at the bottom of the forward bend.

Now the dancer begins to bring her/his body upward, but with a twist towards the upstage side.  As the dancer’s body arises, the arms pass through 1st position, then open such that the upstage arm is in 2nd while the downstage arm is in 3rd position.  Meanwhile, the body is arched at the waist over the upstage arm.  The dancer must be careful not to allow the shoulder of the downstage arm to crowd the neck; it should feel spacious and open with the shoulders wrapped down and around the back. 

While lifting in the waist, the dancer then begins to arc around the back, changing the arms simultaneously with a change in direction of the head from upstage to downstage shoulder.  In the training form when the dancer is first learning this port de bras, the arms arrive together in 3rd position during the cambré back while the dancer’s focus turns straight upward, then the downstage arm opens side while the focus turns downstage.  In the final form, the arms switch places (upstage arm going from 2nd to 3rd position; downstage arm going from 3rd to 2nd position) as the focus changes and they do not meet in 3rd position.  Once the upstage arm has arrived in 3rd and the downstage arm in 2nd with the focus downstage, the dancer returns to a vertical alignment, radiating upward from the base of the cambré back, with the head remaining inclined slightly back.

Common Mistakes to Watch out for

Ballet Technique - Vaganova fifth port de bras final form