Reflective Practice in the Ballet Class: Bringing Progressive Pedagogy to the Classical Tradition

ABSTRACT

This research seeks to broaden the dialogue on progressive ballet pedagogy through an examination of reflective practices in the ballet class. Ballet’s traditional model of instruction has long required students to quietly comply with the pedagogue’s directives, and it has thus become notorious for promoting student passivity. Despite strong recent efforts, particularly in academe, to advance student agency in ballet, the field struggles to transcend its authoritarian pedagogic history. I propose here that open-ended reflective practices can allow ballet pedagogues to bring a progressive approach to preprofessional training paradigms—to empower students as they prepare to enter the ballet profession. To reconcile ballet’s formal traditions with reflective practice’s progressive underpinnings, I draw from literature in ballet and educational philosophy. Using Max Van Manen’s (1991) and Donald Schön’s (1983, 1987) frameworks for reflection, I describe elements of my reflective approach to teaching university ballet majors with professional potential and aspirations.

Notes

1. See White’s (2009, 135) chapter titled, “Which Is More Important, Learning or Self-Esteem?”

2. There are some exceptions, notably the publications of Anna Paskevska, whose books address student well-being, growth, and development through a systematic approach to classical ballet training (Paskevska 1981, 2002, 2005); also see Jennifer Jackson’s (2005) article, “My Dance and the Ideal Body: Looking at Ballet Practice from the Inside Out.” Historically, the textbooks of Louis H. Chalif endeavor to fuse early twentieth-century educational philosophy with ballet instruction.

3. Maggie Black, David Howard, and Robert Joffrey were three such pedagogues.

4. I wish to acknowledge Jan Hanniford Goetz, Maggie Black, and Rochelle Zide-Booth.

5. Van Manen (1991) refers to Schön’s work as a “dominant model” of reflection, which he finds “suspiciously similar to the process of scientific inquiry itself” (225).