When you decide to start taking ballet, you’ll be excited to start learning what you can. Outside of class you may be looking for resources to study up. There aren’t many books geared toward the brand new ballet student. A lot of books are advanced enough to confuse or intimidate the new beginner. There is a lot to learn about ballet and it comes with time. Here are 5 books that are suitable for the brand new ballet student.

1) New York City Ballet Workout by Peter Martins

This is a book and a DVD. I suggest the book to new beginners. I remember trying the DVD before I started taking ballet, and the exercises moved a bit fast for me. With the book you can go at your own pace (which will probably much slower than the book suggests). The first section of the book also includes a lot of interviews with NYCB dancers. This book will help to inspire you, and the stretches and exercises will introduce your body to the movements of ballet.

See my earlier review of the book and dvd here.

Purchase a copy of the New York City Ballet Workout Book here.

2) Basic Ballet: The Steps Defined by Joyce Mackie

This is a small book featuring many illustrations and a glossary of ballet terms. I suggest new beginners pick this book up. However, I do not suggest that you try to learn positions strictly from the book. I think that books are great tools to refresh your memory, or review what you have learned, but it is very hard to learn correct positions just from a book. Use this book to review the names of the positions, and recognize what those positions are. In class, you can work on actually doing the positions.

Purchase a copy of Basic Ballet here.

3) Ballet Apparel for Men: A Complete Beginner’s Guide by David Hunter

I have to include my book in this list. It is specifically for the new beginner, so why not? This book covers the complicated apparel that guys wear in ballet.

Download the Free Ballet Apparel for Men E-Book here.

Purchase a copy of Ballet Apparel for Men from Amazon or HD Wear.

4) Conditioning for Dance by Eric Franklin

The thing that I find surprisingly helpful about this book, is the emphasis on visualization. There are plenty of great illustrations. Just by looking through the book you will start to understand some of the concepts that will help you understand dance movement. Combine this book with the New York City Ballet Workout Book, and you will have plenty of exercises to work on between your beginner classes. Conditioning and workouts are the best thing for the new beginner to work on by themselves. As I said earlier, it is best to leave the technique to when you have your teacher around.

Purchase a copy of Conditioning for Dance here.

5) A Notebook by You!

Keeping a dance journal is the best way for you to remember your corrections and reflect on your dance. It is also very helpful for you to recognize your own progress. Learning ballet is slow, and it might take you a while to recognize the progress you make.

Read my earlier post on keeping a dancer journal to learn more.

If you have any other suggestions for books that are suitable for brand new beginners, feel free to leave a comment. There are plenty of great books out there for dance and ballet. I’m limiting these suggestions to ones that I think are suitable to inspire, but not overwhelm the new dancer.

Thanks to Twitter user “DoctorDancebelt” for posting this link to an article on Maxim online.

Maxim is the ultimate “dude” magazine, meaning it is all about scantily clad attractive women and “college humor.” I’m not a reader (I prefer Esquire, the jokes are funnier), but I was interested to read what Sports Column blogger Joshua David Stein had to say about ballet.

Stein spent two weeks studying Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) followed by two weeks studying ballet. He compared the two, seeing which was more demanding. His comparisons were very interesting and worth reading. It seems that he started to understand one of the hard things about ballet: it is you versus yourself.

Anyway, it is worth giving this article a read and seeing what Maxim is telling guys about ballet. I’m pretty impressed with it overall. It helps to get the word out there.

Read the article here: Mixed Martial Arts vs Ballet

New York City Ballet Workout is nothing new, it has been around since the first book was published more than 10 years ago.  But it is a classic, it is what made me really think about taking ballet, and I think it is the best resource to inspire anyone thinking of getting into ballet, especially late starters or beginner adults.  The videos and book are a great resource for building ballet strength.

I was in Los Angeles, doing some book shopping.  I’m not sure what really put me onto the idea, but I had been thinking a lot lately about how I hadn’t really accomplished anything I was extremely proud of.  Deep, I know.  Bear with me through this crisis.  I had felt like I had done a wide variety of things.  I worked as a model, briefly.  I built a house.  I was in a Christina Aguilera video, in the back, in the shadows.  At this point I was working as a Merchant Mariner and traveling all over the world.  Stuff like this made for interesting stories, but I never felt like they were accomplishments I could be proud of.

Anyways, I was shopping in Counterpoint Books, one of my favorite used book and record stores in LA.  Along with my accomplishment crisis, I was considering the idea that I wanted to get into better shape.  That is when I found the New York City Ballet Workout book.  It was filled with plenty of amazing pictures (shot in black and white like everything in New York in the 90’s) of the most amazing dancers.  Their bodies were extremely admirable.  They stood proud, lean, powerful.  There were men and women.  I bought the book.  That was the type of body I wanted to have.  Not too muscly, still lean, but powerful and confident.  I’m sure I bought some other books.  I did feel a little strange buying a ballet book.  Even when I stopped at my friend’s house I was a bit hesitant to show it.

I read the book.  About half of it is workouts and the other half is about dancers and dancers talking about how ballet and the fitness that comes from ballet has affected their lives.  It is truly inspiring.  One dancer mentioned how she was at the wedding of a friend, and a lot of other dancers were there.  One of her friends mentioned that you could tell who was a dancer, just by the way they walked and carried themselves.  I decided I wanted that.  I wanted to stick out, just by the way I walked.  I wanted to portray that quiet confidence a dancer does just by their posture.  I began to imagine myself being able to move like a ballet dancer, and I realized I would be extremely proud of that.  If someone complimented me and said “you dance really well,” I would say “thank-you, I worked very hard at it.”  I would not brush it off like all of the other things I felt I couldn’t be proud of.

New York City Ballet Workout is filled with workouts to help you get the overall tone and workout that dancers get from ballet.  Almost all of the workouts are based on some ballet move.  There was a delay between when I bought the book, and when I decided to take a ballet class.  After several weeks of looking through the book I realized that I had no choice but to someday take ballet.  There was an even longer delay between when I decided to take class and when I actually took class.  This took about a year, because I was always away working on cargo ships.  It wasn’t until I quit that to go back to college that I could take my first ballet class.

While I was on the ships, I kept my NYCB Workout book hidden.  We had our own rooms, so everyday after work I would stretch and go through the workouts in my stateroom.  Sometimes it was hard when the seas were rough.  I really did fear what my shipmates would think if they found out I had a book about ballet.

Ballet is extremely complicated to learn and must be done in class.  So if for some reason somebody cannot be in a class, I think the next best thing is to work on conditioning yourself to prepare for classes.  NYCB Workout book is great for that.  I dramatically increased my flexibility, my strength, and I also learned some of the terms and ideas associated with ballet technique.

When I was ashore one day at a video store, I was extremely excited to find the New York City Ballet Workout DVD set.  I quickly bought this, and used it in my portable dvd player on the ship.  This video was great for the stretches, but once I got to the actual movement exercises I was extremely lost.  It took a while for me to figure out some of those moves, proving just how hard it is to learn ballet by yourself in a cramped state room on a rolling ship.

I suggest either the New York City Ballet Workout book or DVD to anyone who hasn’t already obtained a copy.  It is a classic and it is inspiring.  Any new dancer who would like to find some ballet exercise for men, this is where it is at.  Any male beginner who is preparing for ballet training would be smart to pick up a copy of either or both the book and the dvd.

You can find the New York City Ballet Workout book on Amazon.com.  It is out of print, so you will often see it for sale for $80 to $100. I kind of wish I didn’t lose my copy!

The New York City Ballet Workout DVD is also available at Amazon.com, and is cheapest to buy the 2 DVD set.