By Lorenza

Dancers who study in an academy usually do exercises to warm up their bodies as soon as they wake up in the morning. They get dressed, eat a healthy breakfast and have morning school lessons like in any normal school. After lunch they don’t do their homework but take dance classes: every student at the beginning of the year can choose the dance courses to follow. Usually there are the lessons of ballet, modern, contemporary, neoclassic, or hip hop dance. Anyway, the courses can change according to the school.
After dance lessons, students have dinner, and in the evening they have to do their homework!

But let’s talk about what ballet dancers do: there are universal rules, for example the name of dance steps or some types of exercises. The most important dance exercises are at the bar and in the center of the room. Those at the bar are used for the posture of the back and to learn how to take the steps correctly. While those in the center of the room are the development of what has been learned at the bar.
Ballet dancers have two types of shoes: there are the soft ones that are used for simple exercises; the hard ones in chalk that are called “tips” and are used to stand on the tip of your toes. They hurt but it’s fun to use them.
Every 4 months, the dancers of every academy take a universal test that comes directly from the Royal School of London (an important English dance academy). This test is like a language certification. If you pass it, you can move to the next level, if you don’t pass the test you have to repeat the 4 months of preparation.
I am not a dancer of an academy but I take part in internships with very important teachers: I had a lesson with Rossella Lo Sapio, a teacher from San Carlo in Naples; with Giovanni Patti and Stefania Cantarelli (who organize these internships in Verona); but the most important teacher I have had is certainly Tania Fairbairn of the Royal Ballet School. It’s been an honor for me to have had class with these important people.