ABSTRACT
Miss Nina approached dance as a transdisciplinary endeavor. Practicing ballet opened multiple avenues, not only in the art of ballet itself, but also in the many other areas in which those same techniques, skills, and understandings could then be applied. It’s not unusual for athletes to cross-train and compete in multiple sports, and many athletes include ballet as part of their strength and conditioning regimen to increase their agility and flexibility on the field. Ballet operates within a framework, as does any coherent system of dance. There are assumptions, innovations, technologies, traditions, guiding principles for movement, advanced techniques. Pointe shoes came about after the invention of a flying machine, one that used wires to lift ballerinas in the air so that they could perform more graceful, and also more complicated, movements onstage. Dance involves a lot of people, most of whom will never find themselves in main roles.
