Why Babies & Ballet Barres Don't Mix

Every now and then, someone asks me why I don't use barres with the kids.  (While I do bust out my portable barres for our six year olds on select occasions), the reason is: they're just not needed yet. 

Maybe I should hang a self portrait in the studio too (ha)!

Barres are balancing aids that help dancers master complex, non-intuitive, fine muscle articulations (aka ballet steps).  The idea is, you do enough arabeques at the barre (see awesome old-school pic on the left), eventually, you'll be strong enough to do them on your own.

The under-seven set are just discovering their basic large/fine motor skills, spacial awareness and qualities of movement.  The leaping, spinning, and balancing in shapes we do will eventually lead to grand jetes and triple pirouettes, but the muscle control needed for barre work is way beyond the developmental stage they are at.  It's like asking a kid who's just learned to sing ABC to write a story.  We follow the Royal Academy of Dance Syllabus, which introduces a few basic barre exercises in grade one (minimum age seven).

Here is what actually happens when you send toddlers to the monkey, er.. I mean ballet barre (see right).  They engage with it at their own level by hanging, climbing, pulling, etc. (not by feeling their deep lateral rotators and turning out their legs from the hip socket).

So now you are the wiser!  Every time you see a cute picture of a babies doing plies at the barre, you'll know it's, at best, all for the cute factor, or at worst, a sign of a teacher who doesn't understand the developmental stages of young children.

Bonus: things-that-make-a-dance-teacher-shudder - this pic kept floating around my facebook, and while I get the sentiment, I just couldn't get past the horror I would feel if this were my classroom! :)