Would taking ballet classes ruin my Irish dancing technique?

Miss Molly: Would taking ballet classes ruin my Irish dancing technique?
I’m 17 and I love Irish dancing. I’ve recently heard of recreational ballet classes for young adults in my area and I thought it might be fun to take up ballet as an addition to my regular Irish dancing. What I’d like to know is how ballet will effect my dancing technique? Will it improve my posture and strengthen my legs and ankles or will I just end up being terribly confused?

Answers and Views:

Answer by V.Nijinsky ✩
That is a really good question. Normally I say ballet helps with all dance, but it might not be so with Irish dancing. Ballet is turned out and Irish dance is turned in parallel. It may help your ankles but you will be building them in turnout, so I am really not that sure if it is a great idea or not. Your upper body is still for the most part but not so in ballet. You should probably ask your teachers what they think. I would hate to give you wrong advice.
You certainly can use some of the feet and ankle strengthening exercises, like using a theraband, even releves and eleves but done in parallell. But I would think taking ballet classes with ballet technique might actually be counter productive to Irish dance from what I have seen of it.

Pilates may be helpful though.

Answer by JenGen
This troupe mention they do ballet and Irish dance

so they must consider them compatible.

The turn out/parallel thing causes me problems. I did ballet (and skating) when I was young and it seems so unnatural not to turn one’s feet out, use the outside edge of the foot, and as for pressing the base of the big toe into the ground in Pilates – I hate it – it makes me feel like a parrot. I still find it easy to balance in turn out and difficult in parallel – but I’m still glad I had a grounding in ballet.

I would have thought that since you have dance Irish dance first you’ll find the ballet positions difficult instead. Nothing insurmountable though, and I’m a great believer in ballet as the foundation of all dance. It will improve your posture, and help avoid the ugly head position a certain famous Irish dancer has.

Answer by greengirl
Irish dancing is not “turned in parallel;” as I’m sure you know, it’s all about “turnout, turnout, turnout.” So in that respect, ballet would help greatly (a girl from my ISD class does ballet also and has the best turnout I’ve ever seen).

However.

I’ve been interested in taking ballet as a complement also, but decided against it because ballet is everything that ISD is, but exacerbated. What I mean is that ballerinas have to stand up straighter and stiffer with a longer neck and more turnout, precision, grace and stretching. If I took both ballet and ISD, I wouldn’t be able to walk normally!

If you can see at all where I’m coming from, let me suggest that a better complement might be modern dance–that way you can bring in the fluidity and ease of motion to your Irish dance.

Am I making sense? Definitely ask your dancing teacher. And yes, I think ballet would increase leg and ankle strength and, of course, posture. You might be confused as well, thought!

Good luck–and have fun!!