In recent years there has been a remarkable proliferation of ballet competitions. This prompts a number of questions, in particular how much are they affecting current training and performance practice and, more fundamentally, whether the notion of competition may be antithetical to dance as art. Underlying these questions is the issue of…

The purpose of this research is to instigate a debate about the way in which professional ballet dancers are trained and the content of that training. The literature on the teaching of ballet has always focused on two areas: ballet vocabulary and training. The former is treated as both a fixed and autonomous form, and, for the latter, methods of…