Why Can't I Go On Pointe?

But what if you're eleven or older, and your teacher says you're still not ready? How can you convince her to let you start pointe?

The answer is - improve! Your teacher must see some weaknesses in your technique - and the only way to change her mind is to fix those weaknesses.   If she'll tell you where your problems are, all the better - and a reasonable teacher should be prepared to give you details. So if she won't, it's likely you need to work on all aspects of your ballet technique.

Your teacher is basing her judgment on how long it takes a typical student in her classes to develop the skills for pointe. So if you want to get ready faster than usual, you're going to have to do something special.  You're not going to progress fast enough if you just do your normal classwork.

I don't recommend doing your regular ballet exercises at home - alignment and accuracy are very important in all ballet steps, and it's just too easy for you to allow tiny bad habits to creep in when you're practicing without a teacher to correct you.

Luckily, there are plenty of prepointe exercises which you can do unsupervised - and because they're very targeted at preparing for pointe, you can make progress much faster.

I recommend The Perfect Pointe Book as the ideal source of exercises which target all the most important areas for pointe work. It's not a book, really, it's 4 whole DVD's which will help you with everything from getting more arch in your foot, to holding your turnout en pointe. What's more, you can get help and advice from the author, Lisa Howells, who's a qualified physiotherapist. So if you want to get on pointe fast, it's an indispensable buy!