Ballet Bites

I must confess that when it comes to doing ballet stuff at home, I'm a naughty adult ballerina as I rarely do any practice at home. Now that I'm doing my pre-professional grades, everything we do is so much bigger. Bigger jumps, further travelling steps, ergo no actual room to do the combinations at home. However, I have no excuse to not at least stretch at home.

I kind of gave up stretching to be honest as I realised I'm as bendy as I'll ever get. I also know that flexibility is only a tiny part of ballet and actually the quality of your movements and your musicality is so much more important. Elegance and grace does not rely on flexibility.

Doing practice at home also takes motivation. I am self employed so my home is also my workplace, which I think contributes to my lack of motivation because the boundaries of when works begins and ends become very blurred.

However, there might be some glimmer of motivational hope on the horizon thanks to Graham's Dairy, who are the health sponsor of Scottish Ballet. On their website they are hosting a series of small videos by Scottish Ballet called Ballet Bites, which feature little simple stretching exercises anyone can do at home to help relieve tension in areas of the body.

The first video is live here. The stretches you see are the kind of warmup exercises we would do before we begin class. The little neck stretch in this first video is the kind of thing that is very helpful if you spend all day hunched over a computer, for example.

You don't have to be a dancer to do these exercises and in fact anyone, any age, will benefit from these simple but effective stretches.

And I have no excuse not to do them....