by Rhonda Ryman Why a new dictionary of classical ballet terms?
It has always been a revelation for me to discover how centuries
of studio work have evolved into a mechanically sound system of
training the human body. Ballet movements that appear to surpass
anatomical limits and to defy the laws of gravity are actually
based on an intuitive understanding and application of
scientific principles. Blasis, Cecchetti, Bournonville, and
Vaganova are among the visionaries whose insights advanced
ballet training as a whole, yet they developed separate streams
that often interwove and other times ran parallel within
classical ballet. When I began teaching dance at the University
of Waterloo in 1975, I encountered students whose training
spanned all methods. I needed a Rosetta Stone to help me sort
out differences between the Russian, RAD, and Cecchetti
vocabularies. The same name might describe different movements,
the same movement might be described by different names. But
most subtle were the positions or action w