A Look Back at 2012: My Favorite Posts

cropped-img_0589.jpgWhen I started this blog back in September, I didn’t expect to fall in love with ballet like I have now, attending four classes a week. Although it’s been a struggle (between two ankles injuries and a number of sicknesses), I’m looking forward to a new year where I won’t be so bogged down by class work and can attend even more ballet classes.

Since it’s the end of 2012, I figured I’d share some of my favorite posts from this blog, especially if you haven’t been reading from the start.

Why Should You Take Ballet Classes as An Adult? One of the very first posts I wrote for this blog, listing a lot of reasons why you should do ballet (a lot of them from readers). I’d love for this post to keep growing, so if you’ve got suggestions, add them.

Ballerina Profile: Legal Ballerina Legal Ballerina was the first person to be interviewed for the site, and she’s been an awesome supporter of my blog, and she’s got an awesome blog as well you should definitely check out.

30 Day Stretch Challenge Although an injury got in my way, I still hope to continue to work on my splits using the 30 Day Stretch Challenge. Hoping to come up with more ideas to make in better in 2013.

Boyfriend Does Ballet I dragged my boyfriend to ballet at Koresh, and he helped write a post about it. I’m hoping to drag him to more classes in 2013.

What Was it Like to get Your First Pair of Pointe Shoes I love this post for how helpful everyone was in the comments. If you’re getting pointe shoes soon, read them.

Guest Post: Profile of Susan Attfield from Pretoria, South Africa Susan started her own ballet studio (although she is not instructor herself) in South Africa. She’s amazing.

Guest Post: Advice for Men: Scott offers some great advice for men in the adult beginner ballet world.

Q & A with Julia and Aaron, the creators of Barre: A Real Food Bar. Julia and Aaron took some time out a few weeks ago to answer some questions for ABP.

What are some of your favorite posts YOU’VE written this past year?

 

2012 in review: Thank-you to everyone whose been reading!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 11 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

I’ll have a post up tomorrow with some of my favorite posts from this year.

 

Looking for more Beginner Ballerinas to Interview!

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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hope everyone had a lovely holiday and is getting their ballet-related New Year’s resolution’s planned out. Since it’s in the middle of a holiday week, I don’t have a new interview ready for today.

However, I’m in need of new ballerinas to interview. It doesn’t matter what your skill level is, you are still invited to be interviewed for the website. Don’t worry if you don’t have a photo of you in your ballet gear, any photo will do. If you’re interested, please either shoot me an e-mail (adultballerinaproject@gmail.com) or fill out this super-short form at SurveyMonkey.

Here are some profiles you may want to check out:

Submit Your Dance Studio and Instructor Reviews

"corner", he said.  and they went.

When I posted my survey a couple of weeks ago someone had an awesome suggestion: include reviews of teachers and studios to make it easier for beginners to find a teacher in their area that was the best for them.

I had thought of it before, but it’s physically impossible for me (especially as a broke college student) to review every possible dance studio everywhere. In addition, I’m one person, with set opinions of what I like, so I figured it would be helpful if we could get multiple views up all in one place.

So, I’d like you to submit your reviews, and I’ll sort them by state (within the United States) and by country alphabetically. You can use the form below to submit it, and if you have any suggestions on how to make this better let me know. If you’d like to submit more than one review (studio or instructor) please leave a comment or send me an e-mail at adultballerinaproject@gmail.com.

Use this form to submit reviews about studios only:

Studio Reviews

Use this form to submit reviews about instructors:

Instructor Reviews

Please share these links, if you don’t mind, so we can make this page as useful to future beginners as possible!

Legwarmers Part 2: Making Your Own

legwarmers

Like some of the other adult ballerinas I know, I both crochet and knit. I’ve crocheted myself a few pairs of failed legwarmers. They always end up too short and slip like crazy if I actually try to wear them with ballet. I’m forever jealous of these wonderful looking legwarmers made by Knit Two, Pointe Two, Bake Two Together. Her pattern is here, and I’m tempted to break out my knitting needles to make them.

However, I’ve been searching for good patterns to crochet (I’m better at crocheting than I am at knitting) and I stumbled upon these, the Draft Dodger Legwarmers. Besides having a pun-y name, The cuffs at the top and the bottom made me think, even though these don’t contain elastic, they might not slip. I’m still working on them (they’re really long–if you’re considering making them I’d think about cutting back on how many stitches you start out with), but I’ll let you know how they turn out.

Have you made your own legwarmers? How’d they turn out?