Ballet Feet at Any Age: Practical Tips for Teaching Adult Beginners

Nine times out of ten, adult beginners will pick up on concepts more quickly than children. The extra time they've spent in their bodies plus their high motivation level and abstract/analytical thinking skills really add up. But none of those bonuses seem to help when working with adult students on foot shapes.

Why Adult Feet Present Special Challenges in Ballet

We're working against a few factors here:

• Many adult dancers have spent years in shoes that limit foot mobility. High heels, pointy-toed shoes, flip-flops, stiff-soled sneakers . . . . They're so cute but so not great for foot health.

• It's common for adult dancers to be averse to touching their feet. Often people think their feet are "gross." Many students have asked me not to touch their feet as I correct them, even when they are okay with corrective touch on their legs or arms.

• The older the dancer is, the less excited they are to get on the floor and do some of my go-to foot stretches and strengthening exercises. Getting up and down is hard for many adults (often sooner than you under-40s are imagining) and reaching your feet requires more flexibility than some adult beginners have.

Teaching adult beginners? I have a few posts with helpful tips, just search for adult ballet!

Foot-Friendly Teaching Approaches That Work

But building strength and flexibility in adult dancers' feet definitely isn't a lost cause! I find it's helpful to take advantage of their complex thinking skills and examine how the feet work in each exercise and why. For example:

• Pliés: Sure, plié is more about the hips, knees, and ankles, but if you relax your toes during the plié you'll be able to go down farther. Imagining the longitudinal arch of the foot getting even longer—from heel to past the toes—also helps the movement of plié in addition to encouraging mobility in the muscles of the arch. Not a ton of mobility, but it's a great starting place.

• Tendus: Tendu means "stretched" so I encourage my students to imagine their feet as a label on an Amazon package that we're trying to peel off. We start with the heel, carefully move to the ball of the foot, and then finally it's just the tips of the toes on the ground. You know how satisfying it is when that Amazon label comes off in one piece? From the looks on their faces, when adults realize they're performing a gorgeous tendu it's just as satisfying!

• Dégagés: I'm not a fan of slow dégagés. If you are, I'd love for you to share why in the comments. But I find that dégagés better prepare dancers for jumps when we do them faster than tendus so the label-peeling-off imagery doesn't work anymore. Instead, I encourage dancers to imagine sweeping something disdainful off the floor. Actually, it works best if we think of lots of little somethings—like crumbs on a counter. Just like we use most of our hand to start gathering the crumbs and then transition to the fingertips as the crumbs reach the edge of the counter and fall into the trash, we start with our whole foot and transition to just the toes.

• This is where adults' abstract thinking skills can be really fun. It doesn't have to be crumbs. You can just as easily sweep away the unread emails you don't want to deal with or your coworker's strong opinions about hairless cats.

You get the idea. By going through each barre exercise and taking the time to teach how and why the foot works during each of them you can help your adult ballet students make a lot of progress towards those gorgeous ballet feet they thought were out of reach.

What's your favorite way to explain foot articulation to adult students? Have you found other exercises particularly effective for developing foot mobility? Share your experiences in the comments!

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