Ballet Dancers always have slender bodies that are both strong and lean with lovely proportion and gorgeous body lines. One of the greatest secrets to a dancer’s body is ballet conditioning which focuses on all muscle groups. In this unique program your muscles will work smoothly in unison to create a long streamlined silhouette with flat abs a lean lower body and beautifully defined curves. Moving gracefully and fluidly through this series of exercises you will strengthen and stretch your way to a dancers body. Elise Gulan has over 18 years in dance education including Ballet Pointe Tap and Jazz. She was a principal soloist for the Virginia Ballet Company where she danced for seven years appearing in productions such as Copelia Swan Lake and Nutcracker Suite. She brought her love of expression through movement to her new career as a certified personal trainer and instructor of Yoga Core Fusion® and Core Energy Flow®. Elise enjoys helping her students to find their inner strength and to energize their joy of life through physical and mental fitness.
Element is proud to support the Arbor Day Foundation. For every four ElementDVDs purchased a tree will be planted (up to 20000 trees annually). In addition to generating oxygen trees provide air pollution control and decrease atmospheric carbon dioxide levels thereby reducing global warming. www.arborday.org.
The instructor, Elise, was kind enough to answer some questions from Amazon.com about the Element line of DVDs.
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Why do you think the recent trend for women is to seek the dancer’s silhouette?
Elise: A dancer’s silhouette is the ideal physique for a woman today. It provides strength through lean, elegant, streamlined muscles. The strengthening of the dance conditioning movements will help melt away fat while creating lean musculature that is still feminine and graceful. The stretching element of dance creates length, not only in the muscles, but in the spine as well. Training with ballet conditioning will give a woman a strong, tall slender body.
How did you manage to create a ballet conditioning program that doesn’t use a barre or any other equipment?
Elise: I created a workout that uses the strength of the core to create balance and stability in the body. The sequences on this dvd are both accessible and challenging for anyone! Many ballet conditioning exercises actually don’t use the barre as a weight-bearing tool—it’s only for balance. In this DVD a beginner can use a chair to aid in balance, as they build core strength. A more advanced practitioner can do much of the series without the aid of a chair, simply by bracing the body with the strength of the abdominals, and a lifted, elongated spine.
Who is this workout good for?
Elise: This workout is amazing for women and men of all shapes and sizes! Ballet Conditioning uses one’s own body weight as resistance, so it is safe to do every day, for women AND men… from the strongest athlete, to the ultimate newcomer to fitness. It works to build strong, lean muscle, raise the heart-rate, and speed up metabolism. Dance also helps create rhythm, grace, and balance while building a supple flexible spine. .
What do you think consumers will find different about Element DVDs from other workout programs?
Elise: I know that consumers will enjoy the pure elegance of these DVDs. This is what truly sets the ‘element’ series apart from other brands of DVDs. The Element DVD’s encourage a solid mind/body connection, which encourages practitioners to explore their physical edge, while being truly mentally & emotionally present in the moment. These programs are fluid and graceful in their movement, and provide a HUGE physical fitness element in a nurturing and encouraging environment. .
Tell us about the connection with this DVD and the efforts to reduce global warming.
Elise: Element DVDs support the harmony of mind and body, which encourages a social and global awareness. This harmony encourages us to do what we can to make a difference in the world. For every four Element DVDs sold, a tree will be planted in a national forest. Consumers are therefore doing their part to reduce their carbon footprint, and the dangerous effects of global warming. If we work together, we can spread health and happiness one deep breath at a time.
Buy “Element: Ballet Conditioning” For Only $7.33
March 22, 2008
#1
First of all I didn’t like the production quality of this video. The instructions are in voice over, the setting is nothing special and the music is awful.
I don’t usually like voice over instructions because I find it harder to get involved into the practice and I feel too much distance between the people in the video and myself. The setting (Elise performs on a wooden surface in the garden of a villa by the ocean) although beautiful, also added to the feeling of distance and coldness of this practice. Last but not least the music is totally uninspiring, not the classical music you would expect from a ballet-inspired workout.
The first part of the workout is traditional barre exercises where you use a chair as your support. Those movements are extremely boring if not performed at tempo with music. Elise does not instruct at all about posture and the right way to perform the movements. This will make this part of the video pretty useless if you don’t have a solid background in barre work. In fact, the right muscles will only be engaged if the movements are performed with extreme precision. I know this because I used to take ballet classes 2 times a week and it took me one year of constant reminders by my teacher before I was able to engage the right muscles and feel the work.
You then put your chair aside and start a session of jumps. Again, useless if you don’t have the right technique and Elise is not there to give you any hint. The last part is a series of pilates abdominal work of around 10 minutes which is ok.
I purchased this dvd hoping to add some variety and a change of pace to my workouts (I used to enjoy my ballet class years back), but this is so boring and uninspiring that I will seldom reach for it.
If you’re after the myth of a dancer’s long, lean body (which is in fact a myth, the important thing is to be healthy and feel good about oneself) I think you can achieve better results by alternating some light cardio, pilates, light weight training and occasionally dancing to real music!
On a side note – the comment about the production company doing mostly softcore porn, although made me lol, might be on spot. The production quality of this video is very cheap indeed.
March 22, 2008
#2
I was really excited about this one but it’s not that great. I stopped after about 10 minutes because I was pretty bored with the routine. I also agree with the other people that it hurts your knees!
March 22, 2008
#3
This is not a conditioning class; it’s simply a beginning ballet class taught by a very average ballet dancer. I wouldn’t even recommend it to a beginner ballet student because you’re liable to pick up some bad habits like sticking out your thumbs, and not working through your feet, both of which the teacher does routinely. And she doesn’t have any business talking about how to develop the long, lean look of a dancer — which she does ad nauseum — since that’s not the type of body she has. She has a nice figure, but it’s definitely not a ballet dancer’s body. If she has primarily been using dance as her means of exercise (as she implies) then she’s been using her quadriceps to lift her legs into developpe, which is a definite no-no. If she comes out with an actual conditioning DVD, that might be good, but this one has no redeeming value to me.
March 22, 2008
#4
This was a fun-to-do video that was a great addition to my collection of home work-out videos. Now I have Yoga, Pilates, Cardio Kick-boxing, and Ballet. A well-rounded collection.
March 22, 2008
#5
I really dislike this DVD. I think her technique is very poor and don’t like her combinations much. The scenery is very beautiful but the workout is not great. There are so many better workouts based on ballet out there.