Teaching the Most Important Levels in Ballet. - Brief Article - Review - video recording review

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2000 by Rose Ann Thom

Take some tips from the teacher who taught Darci Kistler. After being invited to teach directors and teachers at Regional Dance America/Pacific's Festival 2000, Mary Lynn (Kunkel) decided that a good way to use her thirty-plus years of experience to continue raising standards--even from a distance--would be through a fine series of easily accessible videotapes.

The trio of tapes covers Mary Lynn's syllabus for three semesters of training at a level she calls Ballet I, Teaching the Most Important Levels in Ballet. It's a series that is, by turns, enlightening and perplexing. First, what exactly does Mary Lynn consider the length of a semester? Fifteen weeks, as in most colleges? Second, she does not make it clear whether the exercises she demonstrates are meant to be used in exact sequential order or interspersed with other material. Are these the exercises that she feels need special attention?

They are, however, sound from a pedagogical point of view in that they progress slowly and methodically. Mary Lynn has thought through the basics of beginning ballet and she presents them to the three children on the video simply, clearly and imaginatively. The pace allows the viewer time to follow her explanations and to see how the children apply the information. Her past students who have applied her teaching well include Kistler, principal at New York City Ballet, and Stephen Legate, principal at San Francisco Ballet.

Although most authorities seem to prefer stretching later in a class (after warming up the body) or at the end, Mary Lynn begins the first two semesters with some simple stretches on the floor. At the barre, Mary Lynn has the children do most exercises facing it (as is practiced at the Paris Opera Ballet school). She also has two parallel lines imprinted on the floor in front of each student. These are perpendicular to a full turnout and provide the students with a visual aid to better understand the path of the foot in a tendu en devant. Mary Lynn advises the young dancers to lead with the heel in this seminal exercise.

Questions could easily be raised about her insistence that the tops of all the toes touch the floor in a tendu en devant even at the risk of angling the ankle. She asserts that elongating the foot can be stressed later in the training. But since she maintains throughout the tapes how important it is to get things correct from the first, it appears contradictory to expect students to easily alter something as critical as the alignment of the foot. It is also possible to quibble with her introduction of port de bras. The students place their fingers at the base of their ribs and then extend their arms out to a second position that is somewhat low. It is quite possible that here she is compensating for their natural tendency to raise their arms too high.

The tapes give little indication of student work that involves the essential transfer of weight from one leg to the other, either at the barre or in simple center practice. Nor does the teacher include much dancing that travels in space. Beyond balance and glissade--which Mary Lynn teaches well--she lists gallops, skips, hops and other locomotor activity but doesn't discuss teaching them. To give the students some freedom, she includes a few minutes of unstructured improvisation to music at the end of the third semester class. This is far from convincing. The three youngsters on tape appeared awkward, repeating cliched ballet moves insipidly rather than exploring new territory with vigor.

Mary Lynn suggests that these tapes be for teachers but will also help parents to judge good teachers. Certainly, both will find in Mary Lynn an example of a teacher who is knowledgeable, thoughtful and generous with children. Videotapes are available from: Mary Lynn's Ballet Arts, P.O. Box 471, Fairfax, CA 94978 or marylynn@ml-ballet-arts.com and for more information, www.ml.ballet.arts.com. Each VHS-format tape runs about one hour and the price for the three is $90, including notes. An additional $20 is requested for PAL format.