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.

On Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 February we will be at the Danzainfiera dance professional fair. This event is held annually at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence and has become a benchmark among companies, dancers, schools and dance companies throughout Europe. This year Danzainfiera celebrates its 15th anniversary and the event will be packed with shows, masterclasses and workshops with the best professionals in the sector.

If you want to try our ballet bars and mirrors come visit us at Stand B 18/20 where we will carry out workshops during the weekend with Dance Distribution. We will make demonstrations with our products to show yo all their functionalities and see how you can make the most out of them. 

See you in Florence!

Danzainfiera Stand B 18/20
22-23 de febrer
Fortezza da Basso,  Florència

I guarantee that alongside today’s early morning Donald Trump Tweet, this is going to be one of the most unbelievable things you’ll read all day!

No word of a lie, the following is a true story.

Even Sean Spicer has confirmed the validity of the facts – PERIOD.

It all began innocently enough in July of 1518 in the town of Strasbourg. As the townsfolk went about their usual business of contracting incurable illnesses, a woman began to dance in the street. This might not sound too strange, but keep in mind that the age of people dancing unabashedly to their MP3 players in public, was still some 450 years away. This woman was not dancing to any music and was doing it during a time of widespread starvation and disease in the area.

So how long do you think she danced for? An hour? All morning? The whole day? She danced for around five days! The longest physical exertion I’ve done that comes close to five days was the time I watched the entire 10 seasons of Friends back to back. I can’t even imagine how sore her feet were, because my eyes were killing me by the time I had reached the episode when Phoebe sang smelly cat.

But this is where the story becomes truly odd.

Within a week, 34 more people began to do the same and within a month the figure grew to 400! Authorities became worried and consulted physicians who declared that the dancing plague was not caused by astrological or supernatural causes, but rather it was “hot blood” and a natural disease. You know one day it’s a cough and runny nose, the next day it’s an uncontrollable desire to dance continuously for 120 hours.

“Did you get food poisoning from eating those yellow mushrooms? Then it’s best you eat more of them”

To cure people, the authorities encouraged more dancing. (“Did you get food poisoning from eating those yellow mushrooms? Then it’s best you eat more of them.”) They went to the extent of constructing a stage and hiring musicians. The belief was that people just needed to dance the dancing out of their system.

And dance the dancing out of their system they did. To such an extent that some of them died of heart attacks, strokes and pure physical exhaustion.  At one stage the dancing plague was killing 15 people per day. I can only assume how fit the ones who survived must have become, Jane Fonda eat your heart out! In fact, a modern historian claims that a marathon runner wouldn’t have survived the ordeal these people went through.

There are some modern day theories about what caused this humorous… I mean… horrible, horrible plague. One idea is that it was caused by a mass case of stress-induced psychosis. Another theory is that it was brought about by food poisoning from a particular fungus that has properties related to LSD.

Thankfully there hasn’t been another widespread dancing plague that has inflicted people with an insatiable desire to dance, in quite some time. Wait a minute…

I forgot about the devastating dancing plague of 2012!

Ballet Masterclass

Barcelona July 17 – 27, 2017

Following on from their successful 2017 Grand Audition, D&D Art Productions is running a summer intensive ballet masterclass in Barcelona. The ten day training program will start on the 17th of July and finish on the 27th. The programme is open to 12 – 20 year old ballet students.

Students will be given the chance to work with some of the best ballet professionals in the world. This year’s course will include

• Ludmila Kovaleva (Professor of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, St.Petersburg)
• Grigori Chicherin (Professor of the Het National Ballet Academy, Amsterdam)
• Natalia Hoffmann (Professor of the Ballet Academy of the University of Music and Performing Arts, Munich)
• Brian Maloney (Pedagogue of the Royal Ballet, London)
• Daria Makhateli (Prima Ballerina Finnish National Ballet, Soloist Mariinsky Theatre, International Guest Principal Ballerina)
• David Makhateli (Former Principal Dancer of the Royal Ballet, founder of the Grand Audition, director of D&D Art Productions)

We’ve partnered with D&D Art Productions to offer you a 15% discount off the total course fees. Simply type in “Dinamica Ballet” in the comment section of the registration page to receive your discount.

Don’t miss out, the deadline is June 20th!

Register online here: www.ddballetintensive.com

The hard work of organizing this year’s Grand Audition has brought about another hugely successful event. In case you’re not familiar with the Grand Audition, the event offers young dancers the chance to take part in a single audition for a number of different ballet companies from around the globe.

This year’s occasion had artistic directors from France, Canada, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Panama, Russia, the USA and the Czech Republic. Dinamica Ballet were also there. We partnered with event organisers D&D Art Productions and provided our PINA freestanding ballet barres for the dancers to use.

At the end of it all, the 2017 Grand Audition has lead to 24 job offers and 37 interviews for the dancers involved. We wish all the participants the best of luck in the future. If you missed out this year, there’s always the 2018 event which has been confirmed to take place again in February in Sant Cugat.

This weekend, the Dance Worldcup Spain (DWS) event will be held at Burgos. From the 17th to the 19th of February, young dancers will compete for a position in the Spanish national team. Dinamica Ballet have partnered with DWS and are providing our PINA and ISA portable ballet barres.

A number of different dance categories are available for participants to compete in. Dancers will be judged by a panel of experts and the best performers will join the Spanish team that will travel to Germany to compete in the finals of the international Dance World Cup running from the 23rd of June to the 1st of July.

The Dance World Cup is a huge event which sees non-professional competitors representing 47 different countries from as far as wide as the USA to Australia. Some of the past finals have been held in France, Italy and England. The competition is akin to the Olympics, right down to the opening ceremony on the first day and the awarding of gold, silver and bronze medals to competitors.

Dinamica Ballet wish the best to all the participants at this weekend’s Dance Worldcup Spain qualifications and we’ll be keenly looking forward to the final in Germany later in the year.

Celebrating milestones

 

Most people have a tradition of celebrating milestones, the most common of which are probably the Birthday, the Wedding Anniversary and England’s sole 1966 world cup win.

However, milestones can vary from the lame “Hey it’s the weekend again, let’s celebrate with moderate amounts of alcohol and respectable behaviour” to something hard won, such as scaling Mount Everest. (…or even not scaling Everest, as these two people eventually took “acclaim” for. *click me*).

Today, Dinamica Ballet are celebrating a milestone. It’s a momentous occasion that puts the two billionth copy of the Angry Birds apps in the shade. Just in case this article’s headline is a little too ambiguous for you, let me explain it in a long winded roundabout kind of way to make things clearer.

Since we recently launched our online shop, we’ve seen a steady increase in our sales of ballet barres. And damn, why wouldn’t we? We’ve been offering an easy and convenient way for people to purchase our equipment, including free shipping to most countries within Europe… and even the UK! (That was a Brexit joke by the way).

I’ve been eagerly awaiting this moment for the past week and now I’m ecstatic to the point of dribbling down the front of my shirt as I type this, because….

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve now sold our 100th barre online!!!!!

 

And boy are we celebrating! I’ve just thrown in “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac on the CD player and the boss has let us turn the volume up to the second notch… oh wait a minute…. he’s just asked me to turn it off… Anyway, when it comes to partying, the Dinamica Ballet crew know how to do the aforementioned thing in a manner which most of you would label as “crazy”. I’ll get the first round in!

 

 

It’s all thanks to you, our precious clients, who trust in Dinamica Ballet to provide high quality ballet barres and I’m certain it won’t be long before I’m back here writing about our 1000th online sale with a series of perplexing comments and random photos. Do you know why? I’ll tell you why:

 

The entire range of Dinamica Ballet portable barres are now available online

 

It’s no longer just the PRIMA and ISA, we’ve now got the MAURICE and PINA on there as well. So I think I’m going to need to top up the fridge soon with more bottles of Evian!

Dinamica Ballet has partnered with D&D Art Productions to bring you Grand Audition 2017 which will be held right here in Barcelona on the 7th and 8th of February. The Grand Audition provides the opportunity for dancers to do a single audition for several international ballet companies at the same time. Open to professional dancers and graduate students from 17 to 25 years old, representatives from the following dance companies have so far been confirmed:

• Ballet de l’Opéra National de Bordeaux – France
• Ekaterinburg State Academic Ballet Theatre – Russia
• Finnish National Ballet – Finland
• The National Ballet of Canada – Canada
• Norwegian National Ballet – Norway
• Ballet Nacional de Panama – Panama
• Mikhailovsky Ballet Theatre – Russia
• Atlanta Ballet – USA
• The Czech National Ballet – Czech Republic

The idea is so clever you wonder why job applications can’t be done in the same way. Imagine only having to do one interview with the opportunity to be employed by several important businesses!

Registration for the Grand Audition 2017 is now open and you can apply to take part by going to the official website: www.grandaudition.net. The deadline is January 6th 2017, but don’t delay because the application process may close earlier if the applicant limit is reached.

Guess the dance films

Love dance? Love film? So how much of a dance film buff are you? Can you guess the following eight films about dance from these brief (and not completely inaccurate) descriptions? Click on the “Answer” buttons to find out. No cheating!

Number 1:

A well to do family whose youngest daughter has lovingly / patronizingly been nicknamed “baby”; stay at a resort for their summer vacations where the resort’s performance staff have late night parties that involve “(insert adjective here) dancing”.

ANSWER

Number 2:

A teenager from Chicago discovers to his great shock and horror that the generic god-fearing small American town where he’s just moved to with his mother has banned dancing and rock music.

ANSWER

Number 3:

Uninterested in the “masculine” pursuit of boxing and the pleasures that come from repeatedly punching someone else in the face, our film’s protagonist one day notices a ballet class and immediately takes an interest.

ANSWER

Number 4:

An Australian ballroom dancer….. (Need I say more?)

ANSWER

Number 5:

Unable to convincingly perform the role of an evil character in a ballet, the female lead of this film pops some ecstasy, has vivid sexual fantasies involving a female colleague and spirals into madness which naturally leads to her performing spectacularly well on the opening night AND bleeding profusely from a self inflicted wound.

ANSWER

Number 6:

With the advent of talking pictures, a silent movie star struggles to find success with amateurish dialogue and his co-star’s grating New York accent. Fortunately his recent love interest and his long time friend (the film’s persistent “third wheel”) create a highly successful talking picture musical.

ANSWER

Number 7:

The monotony of his dead-end job and living under the roof of his parent’s home is broken each Saturday night when our main character dances at the 2001 Odyssey club to the most famous over indulgence of falsetto singing, baseline driven 70’s disco track known to humankind.

ANSWER

Number 8:

This film follows some teenagers as they audition for the New York School for Performing Arts, right through to their graduation, which includes pleasant scenes such as a student considering suicide and another who has an abortion so as to avoid jeopardizing her career. Let’s just assume they all live happily ever after.

ANSWER

So what was your total: ?/8

What is the iokasti method?

The ancient Greeks created gods that personified their natural world. The sea was represented by Poseidon, love and beauty by the goddess Aphrodite and the sky by Zeus. They prayed and made sacrifices to their gods and the tales from their mythology have persevered to the present day. But our practices have evolved and we no longer beg deities for good fortune. So what is the modern recourse for someone seeking an improvement in their health and wellbeing?

Part Hebe part Hygeia

Iokasti is a goddess in all but name. She is a living embodiment of eternal youth and her studio is a place of worship for those seeking a love and confidence of themselves. Whilst marble temples lay dormant with spoilt offerings and unanswered prayers, Iokasti delivers her blessings to each and everyone who performs her ceremonies – the iokasti method.

“Give me twenty three minutes of your day and I will give you the body of a dancer”

No bloodletting required, but a small commitment of your time is richly rewarded! The iokasti method improves your posture and excess weight is banished from your body without the need to sacrifice the pleasure of eating. Iokasti shows you a way to have satisfying meals that are also healthy and natural. Over time you will reconnect to your self-esteem, sensuality and feminine being.

You won’t run through repetitive routines, her method is more akin to dance than an exercise regime and with this comes both the health benefits and the joy of movement. The symmetry between wellbeing and dance is paralleled with Iokasti and our PRIMA ballet barre: her methodology performed on our dance equipment.

“I’ll be by your side with every step you take”

Iokasti has spent a life of dancing. Her love of body movement led her to train in ballet, contemporary dance and acrobatics. Her passion ran strong and her training translated into professional work as a dance and circus artist in theatres throughout Europe. She has infused this wealth of experience into her self-named method and is now dedicated to helping others stay in shape.

This is not mythology; it’s methodology!

Click here to find out more about the iokasti method