Like many other little girls, my mom put me in dance class growing up. My favorite class was hip hop, of course, but not until recently have I realized the impact the years of ballet have had on my life.  Ballet is a very technical style of dance, with many different schools and practices.  Each school has a specific way each motion needs to be executed.  For a 6 year old girl, ballet takes cognitive and physical work that, I believe, is vital to development.  Here are some reasons why everyone should take a ballet class in their lifetime.

1.  Ballet’s main focus is body awareness.

There is a very specific place your head, hips, shoulders, knees, hands, and feet should be in every position.  Every part of your body has a place and an angle. This concentration takes acute body awareness for someone to perfect an arabesque in third, or even the simplest plie.

2.  Ballet builds muscles you didn’t know you had.

Ballet dancers’ bodies are extremely underrated in comparison to a mainstream athlete’s build.  With the articulation of the art form, each muscle serves a purpose.  In order to point your toes, every muscle in your foot, ankle, and calf needs to be working as hard as it can. Just to prove my point, look at Misty Copeland.

3. Ballet improves memory and brain sharpness.

Ballet requires dancers to think of so many things at once; it exercises brain activity, resulting in sharper minds.  Also, it is vital a dancer can pick up choreography quickly, and execute it with the technique learned at the barre.  

4.  Ballet helps one better understand art.

Being a human art form itself, ballet is fundamentally lines and angles.  Every position is a measurement and creates a picture once perfected.  Choreography with multiple dancers is designed to be an illusion to the audience.  Ballet defines beauty without a paint brush or a pen.  

5.  Ballet helps other athletes to perform better in their sport.

I always enjoy the scene from The Game Plan with The Rock doing ballet, but in all reality, professional football players gain from being technically trained in the art of ballet.  Research shows that cross training between football and ballet can improve a player’s performance.  Professional athletes, such as Vance Johnson and Akili Smith, attribute ballet to their overall success. Ballet is fundamentally based on flexibility, speed, agility, strength, balance, mental focus, and endurance, much like many other sports.  Injuries among ballerinas and football players are similar and the same muscle groups are worked.  

Yes, you often see little girls in pink tights and a skirt taking ballet in the little pink shoes, but this stereotype is not always accurate.  Ballet can benefit all genders, ages, and body types. It is an artform, like many others, that you get out what you put in.  If you work hard, ballet can reshape your body and mind, and you can also learn a little French along the way.