Russia’s Honored Cultural Worker, teacher at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet Galina Enikeeva teaches classical dance to gymnasts at the Academy training camp.
She shared how rhythmic gymnastics and ballet are connected.
"Now a lot has been taken from ballet into sports. I mean this musicality, this way of revealing an image, they don’t just do some elements, but they do some sort of entire composition. It looks like ballet! Sometimes I think about how great the gymnasts perform certain things," Galina said.
She explained what an expressive top and a working bottom mean, and also noted that coordination is important in movement sensuality.
"For example, I explained to small children that top and bottom are very important. If the top is moving, if it is organic, if it is expressive, not only the face, but also the turn of the head, hands, that is, how do you convey this feeling of any part. Then it looks good. Because as I see it, many of them lift their shoulders, lift their arms with their shoulders, that is absolutely not allowed. Coordination, so that everything here is strong, the body must be motionless, the legs work, and the head is free, not even the neck is pinched, and the arms also move, like a swan. So the hands must express something. The top is expressive, and the bottom is functional," she said.
Galina added that during classes it is important to instill in children a love for what they do.
"For example, when I have younger students, our task is to teach them, first of all, to work. I mean to love this work that you are doing. I think it's the same here. I see how very attentive everyone is with these little children. This beauty, nature is first of all instilled in them. Even how everything is beautifully done here, I think this is also an upbringing. Not to mention the conditions created for children, they also instill some kind of attitude towards art. I believe that gymnastics is also now an artform," the choreographer added.
Academy training camp helps girls learn how to convey an image on the stage, they are taught both modern and classical dance.
The rules of the International Sky Grace Rhythmic Gymnastics Clubs Association pay great attention to the nature of the composition, choreographic connections, movement expressiveness since all of this is included in the assessment for artistry.