Product Description

David Howard's Ballet Class for Beginners is an excellent learning and teaching tool especially designed by America's foremost ballet master to introduce the beginning dance student to the technique and vocabulary of classical ballet with the emphasis on posture, placement, and movement potential. Featuring Allison Potter with music by Whit Kellog.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5919 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-08-31
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 40 minutes

Customer Reviews

Is He Really Serious?
I am an adult ballet student with about five years under my belt. I have heard and read much about the legendary David Howard and his ground-breaking technical ballet training. I ordered this DVD hoping to improve my understanding about fundamentals like posture and the impetus of movement, for which he is known. After watching this DVD, I can not believe that he even bothered to put this out. This is only the most basic of reviews of steps that anyone with a year of ballet training will already know. He spends less than a minute talking about posture and really doesn't say anything all that helpful. The only section where he gives any technical information at all is the plie section. The rest of the video is "this is a tendu", "this is a ronde de jambe". Honestly, what an embarrassment. To top it off, the student dancer doesn't even display good technique. She doesn't push her foot into the floor at all on tendus, and it looks like she's about to fall over when executing pirouettes (only singles). She's no better than a dancer you would find at any common ballet school (not necessarily a very good school, either). In my opinion, the only type of person that might get some value from this is a parent who has just started their child at a studio and wants to know what kinds of things the child will be doing, or perhaps an absolute beginner. I see that other commenters have seemed to get something from this, but for the life of me I don't know what. If this is all David Howard really has to offer dancers, he should just give it up now. Yes, this is for beginners, but this is the level where the critical building blocks of proper ballet technique are formed. He could have done way more with this. Incidentally, this DVD is only 40 minutes long. I guess I should be grateful that I didn't have to watch any more.

beginner review
I am a true beginner in need of very thorough instruction at a slower pace than this dvd provided. If you have no experience at all with ballet than this dvd may move too quickly and not provide enough detail of each exercise to follow along with the movements. It may be better suited for active beginner's who are already familiar with proper form. I agree with other comments about feeling frustrated when I had to rewind for every movement to do the other side of the body.

Awkward to use while watching
Because the exercises are not shown for both legs, I found the DVD too awkward to use. One has to stop the DVD, return to the beginning of the section and replay in order to exercise both legs. The sections are quite short, which makes the process really tedious. I wish I'd ordered something else.