Today we are presenting to you some exercises that you can do using our ballet bars, focussing on your legs and abs, with the help of Iokasti Method, one of our dear clients. For further information about other workouts and exercises, go check out their Youtube Channel.

Between March 29th and April 2nd took place at the Opera Theater in Rome La Nuit Blanche, a ballet in homage of the American musician and composer Philip Glass. For the gala, Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic creator of Dior, designed the costumes of the 16 dancers merging culture and fashion. The sets, which merge perfectly with the movement of the dancers, combine lightness with functionality.

The main dancers of La Nuit Blanche were the German Friedemann Vogel, principal dancer of the Stuttgart ballet and Eleonora Abbagnato, star of the Paris Opera Ballet and director of the ballet of the Rome Opera House.

The rehearsals were performed at the Teatro de la Opera in Rome, a client of Dinamica Ballet for years. In both the photo sessions and the test videos, we can see the classrooms equipped with our Arabesque Double wall bars and Pina freestanding barres. We are very proud to be present together with fashion and ballet referents such as Dior and Balletto di Roma.

Photos: Paola Mattioli
Source: Nuit Blanche | Dior 

When it comes to purchasing ballet barres, there are a number of considerations to take into account and one of the most important of these is the height of the barre itself. Quite often we here at Dinamica Ballet are asked to give a recommendation and as straight forward as the request seems, the answer is not so simple.

Today we’ve decided to finally put the issue to bed with the publication of this article to help guide you in determining the best height for your ballet barres. We’ve researched and collated information from a wide range of sources to present to you the most authoritative guide on the recommended height for ballet barres.

Will the ballet barre be for personal or public use?

It’s important to distinguish between barres for personal use and those intended for a studio. The reason is quite simple. A barre for private use should be specific to an individual’s height, whilst studio barres need to accommodate a range of people with different stature. This is especially true for a space that will be used by children and adults alike. So let’s begin with a personal barre.

How high should a ballet barre be for an individual?

You can find many different recommendations on the internet for the height of a personal ballet barre. Unfortunately, most of the advice comes across as old wives tales, or is quoted as something that “a friend of a friend once said…” which isn’t particularly reassuring!

But if you delve into the most commonly made recommendations, you’ll find that they all suggest quite similar heights for a ballet barre. The following are the four most commonly made recommendations that can be found on various dance websites and forums:

So based on this information, Dinamica Ballet recommends:

The height of a ballet barre should fall between your elbow (when the arm is resting) and the position of your hands in the second position

Anything below the hip is too low and above the mid rib cage is too high. When it comes to purchasing a barre for a child, we’d strongly recommend something that is height adjustable. Unlike that Sesame Street t-shirt that can be thrown out once it’s been outgrown; the cost of a ballet barre is significantly more. Therefore, making the investment in a height adjustable barre can offer better value for money in the long run.

How high should a ballet barre be for a studio

Ballet barres for studios offer their own challenges and knowing the best height is essential if you wish to ensure most people can use the barres comfortably. It’s worth pointing out that a majority of studio owners choose to install a double row of barres which give their space greater flexibility.

Very specific measurements have been recommended by some well respected dance organisations, but once again these vary from one organisation to another. Most of the following advice state the height for both upper and lower barres and are true for both fixed and freestanding barres.

The national organisation representing dance in the United Kingdom, One Dance UK and CEDFA, who are a United States based educator in fine arts, both state that the height of the upper barre should be somewhere between 90cm. and 1.2m

Falling within this range are the recommendations from Dance Studio Owner (1.07 – 1.17m). Sport Scotland (just over 1m) and Cecchetti’s Complete Manual of Classical Dance (93cm)

However the Centre national de la danse (CND) of France recommends an upper barre well above all of these, at 1.5m! Although they do specify that this is for wall mounted barres only.

Remember that if you’re installing a row of double ballet barres, you want to give your space the capacity to deal with the widest range of users, so give a respectable distance between your upper and lower barres.

Dinamica Ballet suggests:

La altura de la barra inferior debe estar entre 77 – 83 cm y la barra superior entre 101 – 106 cm.

Ultimately the choice really is yours. This guide has drawn on available information and has also been based on our own experience as a ballet barre designer and manufacturer. At whatever height barre you choose to purchase, or at whatever height you choose to install them, Dinamica Ballet can offer you barres to meet your needs.

Sources: CEDFA, Centre National De La Danse, Classical Dance: ‘A Complete Manual of the Cecchetti Method Vol 1’, DanceClass.com, DanceStudioOwner.com, ehow.co.uk, One Dance UK, Sport Scotland iVideofitness.com

The American ballet theater prodigy  Misty Copeland, recorded an advertising campaign for the sports brand Under Armour. Copeland, which has its own collection with this brand, collaborated with the photographer Little Shao for this campaign. Copeland and Shao used our ISA adjustable ballet barre for this session held in Paris. We love to see our barres in the best scenarios and accompanying great dancers? Here’s the video of the making-off of the session.

At Dinamica Ballet we tested our wooden bars to determine their resistance to pressure. The laboratory of elasticity and resistance of materials of the Technical School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona took to the limit more than 20 of our bars to check how much they could resist. Below we show the conclusions.

The test

The test consisted in applying pressure progressively in the center of the ballet bar until reaching the point of rupture to be able to analyze its maximum resistance. The laboratory performed the test with southern yellow pine wood barres of 2m and 3m, mounted on both single and double supports.

The unit of measure of force is the Newton, which equals the force necessary to provide an acceleration of 1m/s2 to an object of 1 kg mass. A Newton equals 0.102 Kilograms or 1 kg equals 9.81N. Below we present the results on the single support with a 3 meters bar.

3m southern yellow pine bar test results

The average of the three tests carried out on the 3m bar determines that the average maximum strength resisted before breaking  is 2119N, the equivalent to 216 Kg. Being a living material, the wood shows Certain deviations between the 3 tests performed with the same support and bar. The weight of a dancer or dancer can obviously be very different, to illustrate the results graphically we decided to get the reference from to the great Misty Copeland and establish a reference weight of 50kg. That would mean that Dinamica Ballet 3m southern yellow pine bar on a single support can resist the weight of more than 4 dancers on a specific point of the bar. If the dancers were distributed along the bar, the resistance would be greater.

2m yellow pine wooden bar test results

With the same simple support and a 2m bar, the resistance grows to 3857N or 393Kg, or the equivalent of almost 8 ballerinas on the same point of the bar. Tests performed on double supports showed similar results.

We conclude as a result of the studies carried out that the Dinamica Ballet wooden barres are resistant and totally safe for people. At Dinamica Ballet we research to create products with high aesthetics that provide the maximum durability, performance and resistance, and above all, that are safe to carry out any type of exercise for young and adult dancers. 

Download the results of the test performed by the laboratory of elasticity and resistance of materials of the Technical School of Industrial Engineering

Outside the town of Münster in northern Germany is the Tanzzentrum Hiltrup dance school. Created by Sandra Landwehr in 2013, today it has more than 250 students of different ages. Hiltrup offers training in various dance disciplines; In addition to classical ballet, the school coaches children and adolescences in styles such as jazz and modern dance.

In 2014, Sandra Landwehr created the non-profit association “Flics” to help talented young dancers fulfil their dreams of gaining access to an artistic vocational university course.

Flics offers training programs with specific choreographic work and individualized sessions, and also promotes participation in national and international dance competitions. The association, financed by small donations, has been instrumental in helping several students to qualify for the Dance World Cup. Held in Jersey and Offenburg in 2016 and 2017, this year’s event was in Sitges where eleven young Flics dancers represented Germany.

Hilltrup has been a Dinamica Ballet customer for many years and we’ve always had an excellent working relationship. This year, Dinamica Ballet took the decision to contribute funding towards the travel equipment of the school’s dancers and the flags for the team. We’re glad to say that the performers were very happy with the anorak vest we provided.

At Dinamica Ballet, we love seeing the youth enjoy ballet and dance. If you would also like to contribute towards the association, you can find their crowd-funding initiative at betterplace.org.

We’ll leave you now with the broadcast of the Dance World Cup event held in Sitges in March where hundreds of young dancers from all over the world demonstrated their talent. Congratulations to all the participants!

This next weekend, the IBStage Gala will be celebrated at the Grec Theater in Barcelona, ​​featuring prestigious dancers such as Iratxe Ansa, Igor Bacovich, Alexander Bozinoff and Gonzalo García.

Ibstage offers a summer training program that gathers 160 students with internationally renowned teachers for 3 weeks. 100 of these students will be selected to participate at the final event on September 1st and 2nd. Among the teachers are Clara Blanco, Conservatory Director of Castila Leon and Former dancer at San Francisco ballet, Vincent Gros, former first Dancer of Leipzig Staatsballett and Sandrine Leroy, Director of Essayat  Het Nationale Ballet, among others.

Dinamica Ballet collaborates with the IBstage Gala offering two Isa height adjustable ballet barres for the dancers warm up prior to the galas.

IBStage summer training program

IBStage on Barcelona TV

Last week started a talent show on Spanish TV named ‘Fama, let’s dance’. 16 contestants are going to train and compete to become the best dancer of the show. Last week, the students did a ballet class and DInamica Ballet was present. All the students used our professional Avant freestanding barres.