ABOUT
My name is Bonnie Yu, and I’m a working adult who loves dance. As a kid, my mom took me to Ballet lessons once a week, but I hated it! I never practiced. It was a weekly chore – part of my mom’s greater plan to send me to college. I quit after a number of years, and never really learned anything.
Underneath everything, I did love dancing though. Whenever the radio was on, I’d just dance to myself, but I didn’t want to do classes. I didn’t want to be part of that “plan.” Throughout high school and college I didn’t dance or exercise for that matter. I was your regular ole couch potato. There was a moment when I wanted to join my college’s ballroom team, but I was too embarrassed about the way I looked and about myself in general to join.
Dance25.com is my dance diary. I currently reside in the Seattle area and take dance classes at PNB and Kirkland Dance Center. I am reentering this dance world as an adult at age 24.5 on 6/23/2010. The number 25 represents my starting point (25 sounded better than 24.5). I hope that this can also be a place for adults who love to dance and are just starting out to learn and share their thoughts.
It’s tricky learning how to dance as an adult. We’re less flexible and not as strong. And there’s never any time because of work and life responsibilities. There are also very few studios devoted to adult dancers – sometimes it feels like we’re second rate citizens 
I’m here to a build a supporting community, share tips on improving dance steps, and to share fun stories. I encourage everyone to be supportive and provide any helpful advice. I will be sharing my experiences and best practices. My main focus is Ballet, so most of the content will be focused in that area… for now.
Enjoy ! – please note content will be slow to come due to my newness to the web and work schedule.
Snapshot of Me Over the Years
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| 2006 | 2006 | 2008 |
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| April 2009 | October 2009 | March 2010 |
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| June 2010 | July 2010 | July 2010 |
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| July 2010 | ||
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| July 2010 | July 2010 | July 2010 |
Website start date: 3/17/2010
Thanks for sharing your research and methods. I started adult Ballet at 34 in NYC, where there are many adult-focused classes. I dance with professionals and with beginners in these classes, and as a result the instructor tends to turn up or down the difficulty based on how many of each attend from day to day. For example, Sundays tend to be almost entirely adult beginners, and instruction tends toward technique. During my Thursday class, it can range from very basic to mostly choreography with a focus on refining movements. That heightens the importance of self-study, as you said, because the classes are so big, and so varied.
I sat down tonight to put together a draft routine, and your site has been very helpful. Thanks for that.
Bill
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the support! How long have you been dancing now? I am glad you find my posts useful. I’m actually trying to put together a draft ballet practice routine. I hope to be able to share that next month. Work has been consuming so I haven’t had the proper time to do a good job with it. Would you mind sharing the routine you are putting together? I love learning from others and would like to see what kind of cool combinations you come up with.
BTW I wish I was in NYC. There are so many great companies and performances there. I am soo jealous of you! When I get a break from work, I’m planning to go down to NYC to dance my heart away.
Do you have recommendations for good ballet/dance studios for adults in NYC?
Not as long as you, just a couple months. It’s something I’ve been considering for many years, and working towards. I spent a few years working on my core strength and general fitness before I had the confidence to step into the classroom. I’ve also been applying to grad school, which takes a lot of time. This fall will be even more challenging, I think, with school + work + dance.
NYC is wonderful. I moved here five years ago, and can’t imagine anywhere else that would satisfy me. There are several adult schools, although I attend Broadway Dance Center near Times Square regularly (http://www.broadwaydancecenter.com.) Drop-in classes are $18 each (discounts for buying passes) if you want to try one out on your next trip to town. Folks regularly show up while visiting. Other options include Steps on Broadway (www.stepsnyc.com) which is highly recommended by my friends but lacks a good basic course when I can get to it. BDC has a basic course every day.
Thanks for the suggestions Bill! I’ll have to check them out when I come down. It probably won’t be until next year with my work schedule, but ah I can’t wait. If you have any other tips/photos/videos of your dancing or dance/exercise routines, I’d love to see it.
Either way please keep in touch and keep me posted on your dance progress. It always brightens up my busy workday to hear other people’s stories.
Bonnie,
It’s been a few weeks. Grad school has started (MSCS) and I’m in the swing of things. As you know from experience, school and a full time job are plenty – trying to excel at dance is a real challenge without practice, and so far, maintaining just 3 days of class a week is difficult. That leaves personal practice outside of class, whenever you can fit it in. So, what works for me right now – and by works I mean that I can go to class later in the week and correctly perform the movement – is to write down what I am not doing well in class immediately after class, in my dance journal, and any corrections or advice I received – or that I heard and thought was important. That’s the roadmap for practice.
But, once I’m home, I rely on Gail Grant’s Technical Manual & Dictionary of Classical Ballet – this clears up the spelling of the French names spoken in class, and describes the movement. Since it’s difficult for a novice to translate those steps into anything that looks like real dance, I was excited to find the ABT’s video dictionary: http://www.abt.org/education/dictionary/index.html – which provides short video clips of each movement, associated with it’s name. Find the movement you’re interested in, and watch the clip.
I find that I can grab the clip, trim it down to the segment I’m interested in with Quicktime, and loop it while I study. Then I can practice easily. For a few weeks, a simple pas de bourree would challenge me – coordinating the back foot in a back-side-front transition was difficult – but after practicing this way, I found I could do it with little thought.
This works for me right now. It’ll evolve over time.
Hi Will,
Good to hear you’ve found your groove. I wish I can be as studious as you are! I bet I’d see a lot more improvement lol.
I also got Gail’s book and use the ABT dictionary. I have a hard time reading ballet movements and French terms too. I recently bought
The Video Dictionary of Classical Ballet. I haven't had time to use it yet, but when I do I'll let you know if I like it.
BTW do you have your segmented videos posted anywhere so I can check them out? I’m curious how you’ve cut it down. I recall the ABT dictionary videos are pretty short.
It’s been tough on my side recently. Unfortunately I injured my knees and was diagnosed with patellar tendinitis. I’m stuck with doing physical therapy, ice, and ibuprofen for awhile. I know I probably shouldn’t, but I think I may try a ballet class this coming Wednesday.
Bonnie,
Injuries are so frustrating – it’s reminiscent of a parent telling you to go to bed before you’re done reading the most exciting chapter of a story, only you can’t get away from them with a flashlight and your bed covers. Several of the regulars in my classes will come in with all manners of mean looking bandages around their ankles or toes, probably from pushing themselves too hard, and they do what they can and sit on the side when they cannot. There is a lot to be gained from being there, (even if you have to sit out the demanding center work,) Ballet is also a mental discipline – counting steps to the music, trying to create a graceful line, etc.
I haven’t posted any of the shortened videos, and the ABT originals do start short, but they usually teach a few variations in a clip and I really want to focus on just one until I understand it well. So I trim the clip to focus on one part. Check out Quicktime; it takes less than 30 seconds to trim a clip this way, so it’s something you can do without distracting from your practice. If you need want, I can give you more detail.
I think we’re both type-A about our passions, (and it doesn’t help that Ballet favors the very young and forcing us to catch-up,) but for all this work I’ve found something that has been far more rewarding than the time, effort and money put into it. Few things we do pay off so well, and it’s worth giving them your all when they do.
yea, sometimes i think maybe i should take a year off from work and just dance and travel. Is it too crazy you think? Speaking of counting steps to music, i was also thinking of buying some ballet and salsa music CDs so I can work on the musicality part.
It’s kind of interesting. I find that some really good ballet dancers don’t know much about music. It’s also weird for me when they don’t count the steps. Like should tombe pas de bourree be 4 beats or 4 whole notes in 4/4 time music? I want to be able to do both.
Do you have any CDs you recommend? I saw a few on amazon by Dmitri Roudnev on sale. Not sure if they are good for newbies. Have you heard it before?
fyi – I use windows live essentials for trimming movies but sometimes i am too lazy to do it.
I am also thinking of getting some help to work on the website. Maybe I should add a forum?
hi bonnie, i just wanted to thank you for sharing your journey with us. i turned 25 yrs old this year and am in pretty much the same predicament. always loved dance. exposed to dance as a young girl and forced to go to classes. never really retained much except decent flexibility and a slim figure (fast metabolism). i joined a gym 3 weeks ago and am working with a personal trainer to get fit and some muscle definition. one of my biggest and dearest goals is to do a split! i’ve never been able to, but im working on it and he says im close. your site is a big inspiration.
@Danyelle Thanks Danyelle! The splits do take time. I lost a bit of my flexibility during this injury period, but hope I can get back into it.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help Sounds like we’re comrades in the dance world. Great to hear you’re making progress. Come back and let me know how things go for you. I always love to hear how others are doing.
Bonnie,
Take off a year and dance! DO IT! Not crazy at all! Sell the car, move to NYC, live in Brooklyn, dance, travel. If you’re in IT, you can /always/ find work to make rent. The cost of living isn’t a big deal, and there’s so much to do. Or go back to school for a degree in dance education! I’ve thought of all these things (done a few of them.)
So our pianist disappeared from class today for a bit and the instructor popped in a CD with just the right track for our barre practice. I’ll ask her which CD that was next time. I don’t have any to recommend right now, but I need to get my own. Lately I’ve been backlogged with a few events that my artist collective was involved with, plus homework for my CS class, and I only just managed to get three dance classes in last week.
I don’t know about the forum, they tend to need a lot of care and feeding – spammers, off-topic folks, and just keeping it alive are time-intensive, and I can tell you have high standards. I feel, although I’m no expert, that your best assets are your detailed posts and interacting with readers. I would ask what you want to get out of the blog before you invest a lot of time setting up a forum – it’ll take more time away from your practice.
Hi Bill,
which out of the aforementioned have you done
?
I ended up adding a forum a weekish back. I agree that I think growing a forum will be very time intensive. One of my main goals with the site is to grow a community of adult dancers – late bloomers learning how to dance. I hope that we can all learn from each other since we’re in the same situation. Also, I just want to meet more people who have the same passion as me! The forum is probably too large of an undertaking. I was thinking that it’d be a good way to grow a community. It was sort of fun trying to set it up at least.
do you think I can entice you to do some guest blogging from time to time ? everything you write is very well thought out and informative. I really appreciate all that you’ve shared and i’m sure other people would too.
btw you can e-mail me at bonnie@dance25.com
Of the aforementioned: Lost the car, moved to NYC, and I casually dance. I don’t travel enough to say “Travel.” I’m too old to seriously pursue a professional Ballet career, even if just to make rent for awhile in some small company. By the time I get proficient enough, I’d be at the age most professional dancers retire. You have better prospects than I, perhaps not ABT or NYCB (I don’t really know,) but there are other opportunities. I have a not-terribly-well-considered idea that I might apply to my school’s dance education program and take up teaching later when this computer fad is finally over. There are some very real considerations for you – family life at some point, how far and long you want to go with your technical career, and whether you have any real ties to an area – but don’t think inside the box either. Most of our well-worn life paths are in doubt today: no promise of pensions, career stability, corporate loyalty. People in big cities settle down much older, have children later in life, and take on non-traditional careers. The Internet has changed how we work and interact and what we consider to be “normal” modes of living. If ever there was a time to take “risks,” it’s now. Our biggest roadblocks would be our parents’ expectations – those are often the most powerful influences and the least flexible. Making money, I’m convinced, is easier for folks in the big financial centers with strong technical backgrounds than for most of the country, and there’s more I could go on about from experience.
The forum is a great idea! It will just need care, feeding, and weeding. There are other forums, there may not be forums that foster an adult beginner perspective. Think: How will the world beat a path to this door?
I think I could be enticed, and I’m flattered, naturally. Thanks for your compliment and confidence!
Yea, I don’t know. I’m probably too old too. I’m still trying to figure it out. Everything that you mentioned – family life etc – is indeed part of the puzzle. For now, I think I need to focus on my health and recovery. I am enjoying writing and communicating with others on the site. There’s a lot of dance info out there, but I haven’t found a good place for adult dancers – at least info that meets my needs lol. There’s a lot of other content that I want to put up and share with people. I wish I had a web development background then I could create all the stuff I want. I also want the forum to grow. Another case of, too many wants too little time.
As for the writing, I’m glad you can be enticed!! Let’s discuss that over e-mail when you have time. Can you e-mail me at bonnie@dance25.com?
Bonnie, your email address doesn’t work for me. Ping me at the address I post under.
Bonnie: Love your “about” page, and this whole thread. Highly inspiring. Enjoyed meeting you at the recent January WordPress meetup in downtown Seattle. Looks like you’re already well into the process of building a great site. I’m a fella dance lover, although my main interests are around Nia dance, African-inspired dance, modern, partner dancing, etc. Still, anyone and any place that helps get people movin’ to the music gets me excited. I hope your body is healing nicely and that you can get back to dancing ASAP.
Thanks Laila! Yea, I enjoyed meeting up with you too. When I get better, we should go dancing together
It’s great to meet someone else who loves the art of dance. I still haven’t seen your website yet. You can e-mail me at me@dance25.com if you’d like me to take a look at it. BTW If you have any feedback for me on how my site could be better, please let me know 