The Top 5 Best Benefits of Ballet

There are many benefits of ballet. Ballet is an art that has been around for hundreds of years. Though ballet performances and dancers are known for their gracefulness and elegance, the art is anything but easy and can offer a surprisingly wide range of benefits, both mental and physical, and for children and adults.

1. Benefits of Ballet: Posture

Speaking of gracefulness, one of the first things one learns in ballet is posture, physical coordination, and the ability to move gracefully on meagerly-padded ballet slippers. Good posture is naturally associated with better health as it correctly aligns the bones and muscles in the body and can even aid in proper digestion.

Maintaining good posture and graceful movements also engage more muscles while moving and can help tone your entire body, especially your core. Working on correct posture and physical coordination exercise virtually every muscle group in the body and can make for a surprisingly intense workout. This is the start to achieving the so-called “ballet body.”

2. Social Skills

It’s not surprising that when spending an hour or more in ballet class with other students, one wouldn’t develop and refine their social skills. More than that, ballet class is the perfect environment to meet new people with similar interests. For those that have never done ballet before, learning something new together with others can build a sense of community.

This also allows dancers to grow their skills together and support each other as they learn while honing their ability to cooperate socially with others. Furthermore, not only does the dancer learn to communicate with fellow dancers, but also with the audience when the time comes to perform. One of a ballet dancer’s greatest skills is being able to use pantomime (the use of gestures instead of words) to convey emotions and to tell a story.

3. Focus

Ballet is nothing if not focused. Physical focus and strength is entirely different from its mental counterpart. It takes determination to be able to persist in ballet because of how difficult it is. A dancer must be able to have the ambition and focus to get up, put on the same leotard and tights, and practice the same moves over and over again, sometimes even for hours, in order to master them. Ballet is not simply a dancer throwing his or her body around and naturally looking good; on the contrary, ballet is all about technique and no one can have technique without plenty of focus and training. Beyond that, focus in ballet also helps greatly with self-discipline.

4. Benefits of Ballet: Creativity

Of course, besides focus and discipline, ballet can also be a great creative outlet. Ballet is a beautiful, traditional, and centuries-old artform and despite its age, there is always more to learn from it. Any creative personality interested in dance is sure to adore ballet with its artful movements and choreography and beautiful classical music.

5. Confidence

After spending some time learning ballet, one will eventually be able to perform exercises at the barre and away from the barre without any trouble and will able to perform increasingly advanced moves such as dancing on pointe, slowly approaching mastery. Arriving to a point where a dancer is able to move elegantly and gracefully can do wonders for self-confidence, especially when being able to perform on stage. Having the ability to conquer any fears of stage-fright is no small feat, let alone giving a flawless performance on stage all thanks to technique dedication, and self-discipline.