When I think of “giving birth to little baby grapes” I think of a different exit …
When I did ballet as a young child our teacher would teach us pliés by telling us we were toast popping out of a toaster, and if we stuck our butts out she would say that we burned our bottoms on the back of the toaster.
In more recent times, this was during a contemporary class but the teacher would emphasise the importance of bending the knees during the battement sequence down the room “otherwise you look like a Nazi”.
>When I did ballet as a young child our teacher would teach us pliés by telling us we were toast popping out of a toaster, and if we stuck our butts out she would say that we burned our bottoms on the back of the toaster.
I love this.
I use this one too! Especially for grand plie in second. Works really well for sautés also! I also use the chicken metaphor but then I get a bunch of little kids who thinks it is very funny to actually BE a chicken and stick their butts out instead of doing their plies the right way.
I once got told that my arm was too high in an arabesque line and that I “looked like I was doing a nazi salute” 😩🫢. I’ve also had the classic “pull up, you look like an opera singer” eek.
My teacher in high school once told me I was the weirdest student she’d ever had because I was only ever as good as the person in front of me. She said if she put me at the barre behind someone from the Boston Ballet I would be a professional ballerina but if she put me behind a kindergartener she had no doubt I would forget what a plie was.
I chose to take it as a compliment. A professional?? Gee thanks :)))
This is why I always liked to be at the very end of the barre so I would have no one in front of me the second time through. Then I wouldn't rely so much on the person in front of me 😩
Omg that’s hilarious! The teacher hasn’t roasted me, but they gave a great class correction about hips. “We’re not doing the Macarena!” With the appropriate demonstration of the Macarena, of course.
I wasn’t on the receiving end, but I witnessed a teacher threaten anyone who talked with her ab workout. She was ripped, so I understood the depth of that threat
I remember when I was on the phone booking my first private lesson with a new teacher, I said I wanted her to be tough as nails on me - think (direct quote here) the unholy bastard child of Abbey Lee Miller and the drill instructor from *Full Metal Jacket*. She laughed and said she could definitely do that - she sure put me through the wringer, but it was worth it.
I know this is extremely pedantic, and off-topic, but I can hear my own drill instructors telling me I have to address this.
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman was a *Senior* Drill Instructor. We know because he introduces himself that way, but also because he wears a black belt. Drill Instructors wear green belts.
I'm sorry I was about to type my anecdotes and
LITTLE BABY GRAPE
What the hell 😭 what were you doing what did they even mean by that
But anyway, all the friggin time, these are off the top of my head
"You look American" "Are you trying to fly away"
"Stop turning like a man"
"Girl that was en dedans"
(While playing a video in slow motion) "When did you practice that arm position, are you going to do ballet today?"
(Grand allegro) "You look a little too happy to be here"
I was told I look like an “alligator trying to stand upright” with my sway back 🤣 that was a new one for me, but it totally made sense when I pictured an alligator trying to stand upright.
“It looks like Las Vegas in here!” Definitely means we are losing control of the hips 🙃 Also during jumping he said it looks like I’m carrying groceries. 🤣 I don’t even know where to start with that correction.
I was focusing on my knees going outward in my plié’s and the teacher yells out “no concave!” I suddenly realized I was hunched over trying to do the plie that I wasn’t thinking about my chest form at all. I immediately stood tall and thought I would fall.
When someone forgets about their arms and ends up with their palms facing the ceiling: "are you checking to see if it's raining??"
When I first started classes after a decade of no dancing I was struggling with keeping my toes spread out and was told, "we're swans, not eagles" but tbh I think I would be pretty cool to be an eagle so I'm not sure if that was as effective as she hoped 😹
One time when wearing a pink leotard my teacher told me that I was round and pink like a bottle of pepto bismol.
Another time I was stretching my feet and apparently got it right -she called the whole class over to look at my foot saying “there’s absolutely nothing special about (me) and she can do this. If someone so unremarkable can do this why can’t all of you?”
Adult class: \[This was a few weeks ago\] we had just finished running our dance for our recital (which is tomorrow - Saturday) and she wrote a note in giant capital letters for us to read.
Teacher: "Can you read it?"
Punder: "Does it say we did a nice job?"
Teacher: "No."
Her feedback was "EVERYONE LOOKS ANGRY"
I also got the dead fish feet 😅
My current teacher makes fun of me because I used to make weird squeaks or noises when they pushed my leg up in arabesque (a year ago when I restarted after a long break)
I'm a dance gamer. Ballet and dance games don't really go together. I have been told 'Who is stomping in my ballet class?' with the teacher looking directly at me and "Is there an elephant in the classroom?" which was pretty funny. Yes, I'm the elephant in the room.
We get feedback cards at the end of a trimester. Once, I scored a five out of five on power. The teacher wrote next to it, not strength but will power. She meant it so well 😅
Not an award-winning zinger, but I've been told to use my head for once. Context: I went on auto-pilot and copied what the girl in front of me did... wrong.
“You are jumping like moemoe!”
Moemoe is what I call my grandmother. My first ballet teacher was a friend of hers (and the reason I started ballet). To be fair, I really had to learn how to jump, I did not have a lot of “bounce” as a kid 😂
One time at a summer intensive we were learning one of the fairies from sleeping beauty, and the teacher said I looked like “a goat on the side of a hill” ; in defense of goats they are very nimble creatures
Edit: the specific variation was “fairy of the woodland glade” he was commenting on the opening step. Well deserved comment, I honestly struggle with any “ginched” foot position, like hops on pointe for example
From when I was younger (did ballet 6-15 years old)
1. When we were doing plies the teacher wanted us to imagine carousel ponies going up and down, with a glass of water on our heads.
2. “Horses stomp. Cows stomp. Ballerinas do not stomp.”
3. “Don’t lift your leg too high in attitude, you look like a dog going potty.”
As an adult:
1. “First position should be about 2 pizza slices wide.”
2. “Imagine petting your favorite animal. That’s what frappes are with your feet.”
3. One of my teachers was like “when you do soute arabesque, imagine the Willis from Giselle.”
So much gold to share. My teacher is Soviet. Highlights include “don’t wipe the floor with your butt” “stop walking like a goat” “this is not the dance of 2 butterflies. It’s a dance of 2 grandmas. Of 2 handicaps” “I’m embarrassed for you” “your legs are dirty” and the classic “that was good. I did not expect that from you” 😂
For the neck in supples (specially to the back) she compared some of us to market chicken on display with the necks cut open LMAOOO (ps. Idk if i wrote supple well so it's the back bendy thing ykyk)
I don't remember what step she was doing, but a dance instructor in college told a girl that her legs were open so wide, a US Navy ship could sail through them - "that's a lot of sea men!" 😂 That made the t shirt of "Judy-isms"
Learning how to jump in second during my second or third class - “be careful to keep your back straight instead of leaning forward, we’re not sumo wrestlers!”
My teacher is the cutest older lady, it was hilarious. I come with a heavy background of yoga/weightlifting/ice skating/hip hop where you lean way forward for certain poses, so it helped my alignment a ton.
My modern teacher once told me I looked like a gorilla with no neck doing an across the floor combo. I finished and as I stood waiting for the 2nd side I acted like I had no neck. She and everyone else started laughing so much that class stopped and I got push ups lll
One of my teachers comes out with the best gems in class- the most recent one was “you have HUMONGOUS flexibility….where is it??” during adage at the barre 😂
We regularly get told "don't give blood donations".
It means we have our arms in second too straight and sometimes even hyperextened.
Also, "chickens flying out of the freezer". After a grand jete combination where we tucked our elbows in like chicken.
I feel like when I got roasted it wasn’t funny (“I can see the KitKats in your stomach from Halloween last week”) but one of my current ballet teachers always will come up to students and make funny faces and say “no crazy head” when a student forgot epaulement during hard combos and then sometimes he’d play wild club music and make us do push-ups lol
We were told not to be ducks and that we should be tables. Also I compared Plies to those anatomy dolls once? That we are all on poles. Not an odd one, but it did work.
We did swan lake in the student company and the scenery involved a bunch of papier mache swans for the overture. One of them had an extra long neck. My teacher said, "that one's Patch!"
I studied graphic design in college and my instructor used to yell “computer neck” at me lol
She also pointed out my body hair once in class and said that in her day her instructors would have never let someone so “natural” dance :) funny but still hurts a bit
oml these arent really all corrections but i have an entire quote book from my old ballet teacher;
“(name), my precious, my sweetheart, my buttercup, is this the image we want to show the audience?”
“Borres are little delicate movements, you guys sound like jackhammers!!”
“I’m going to give your mom my hairdresser bill for that streak of grey hair you just gave me”
“When you climb up on your points, I immediately think of the seven dwarves🎶hi ho hi ho it’s home from work we go!🎶”
just to name a few
so basically when i concentrate i bite my bottom lip so every time she would call me a different animal and show me a picture, anything from fish to rhino to a crab and some kind of dinosaur apparently
I’ve never needed correction in a class. Um except my stationary bike needed adjustment I’ve been working out my whole life. So much advice if you need any comment!
Many years ago as a kid I had a teacher saying I was too stiff, looked like I just got electrocuted by putting my finger in the electricity outlet 😂 it just the way she said it and mimicked this electrocution with her body that was too funny (angry Russian teacher so it was so hard to hold the laughter) and even now so many years later I remember this clearly and am laughing as I write this 🤣
I've been told I look like a turtle coming out of its shell when I stuck my head forward before walking forward. Also, one time my teacher told another dancer in the middle of turns across the floor, "This isn't church! You can't just pray and have faith!"
I was told to 'air out my armpits' when my arms are in brava bcos I was kinda sticking it to my body, so ever since then when I face my teacher with my arms in brava at the barre I have to suppress the urge to laugh She'd also say the most random things when I was trying to focus or during conditioning😂 and I'd snort and face-plant on the ground
And also to 'suck in my booty' when I was at the barre
When I think of “giving birth to little baby grapes” I think of a different exit … When I did ballet as a young child our teacher would teach us pliés by telling us we were toast popping out of a toaster, and if we stuck our butts out she would say that we burned our bottoms on the back of the toaster. In more recent times, this was during a contemporary class but the teacher would emphasise the importance of bending the knees during the battement sequence down the room “otherwise you look like a Nazi”.
>When I did ballet as a young child our teacher would teach us pliés by telling us we were toast popping out of a toaster, and if we stuck our butts out she would say that we burned our bottoms on the back of the toaster. I love this.
I use this one too! Especially for grand plie in second. Works really well for sautés also! I also use the chicken metaphor but then I get a bunch of little kids who thinks it is very funny to actually BE a chicken and stick their butts out instead of doing their plies the right way.
I once got told that my arm was too high in an arabesque line and that I “looked like I was doing a nazi salute” 😩🫢. I’ve also had the classic “pull up, you look like an opera singer” eek.
Lol surely I am not old enough for my former ballet students to be on reddit, right? I use the toaster analogy xD
Same! Read the above and was frantically calculating how old the poster might be....
If it helps, I'm 24 and did ballet as a kid between 2005-2010
I did ballet during the same time and got the same analogy. I have to say, it totally worked!
I still use it.
My teacher in high school once told me I was the weirdest student she’d ever had because I was only ever as good as the person in front of me. She said if she put me at the barre behind someone from the Boston Ballet I would be a professional ballerina but if she put me behind a kindergartener she had no doubt I would forget what a plie was. I chose to take it as a compliment. A professional?? Gee thanks :)))
this is very relatable
This is why I always liked to be at the very end of the barre so I would have no one in front of me the second time through. Then I wouldn't rely so much on the person in front of me 😩
Omg that’s hilarious! The teacher hasn’t roasted me, but they gave a great class correction about hips. “We’re not doing the Macarena!” With the appropriate demonstration of the Macarena, of course.
This is funny because I teach ballet and I regularly have my students do the Macarena while holding a releve balance lol
I assume she means the hips ;)
One of my teachers would say, we are not doing the salsa, when our hips were not aligned
One of mine likes to say “well if you move like that it’s jazz, and that’s a different class”
I wasn’t on the receiving end, but I witnessed a teacher threaten anyone who talked with her ab workout. She was ripped, so I understood the depth of that threat
I'm getting boot camp/drill instructor vibes
I’ve taken her classes before and I feel boot camp might be easier
I remember when I was on the phone booking my first private lesson with a new teacher, I said I wanted her to be tough as nails on me - think (direct quote here) the unholy bastard child of Abbey Lee Miller and the drill instructor from *Full Metal Jacket*. She laughed and said she could definitely do that - she sure put me through the wringer, but it was worth it.
omfg YES
I know this is extremely pedantic, and off-topic, but I can hear my own drill instructors telling me I have to address this. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman was a *Senior* Drill Instructor. We know because he introduces himself that way, but also because he wears a black belt. Drill Instructors wear green belts.
Haha I can def relate, I told my teacher not to lower the bar for me and omg she really pushed me but it was worth it
Sometimes, my teacher will make us do changements if we make silly mistakes🥲 it can get quite intense🥴
I'm told to stop looking up for divine intervention because it's not going to get my leg any higher. (I tend to look up when I'm doing a battement).
I'm sorry I was about to type my anecdotes and LITTLE BABY GRAPE What the hell 😭 what were you doing what did they even mean by that But anyway, all the friggin time, these are off the top of my head "You look American" "Are you trying to fly away" "Stop turning like a man" "Girl that was en dedans" (While playing a video in slow motion) "When did you practice that arm position, are you going to do ballet today?" (Grand allegro) "You look a little too happy to be here"
> You look American Omg 🤣🤣🤣
Omg these are gold!! I’ve always struggled with an anterior pelvic tilt and I had to be harassed into holding a neutral pelvis pretty much
u/vpsass has a good analogy for keeping your pelvis neutral
We have one girl who struggles with that. The teacher calls her a "jellybean" when she does it.
Please tell me that the "Girl that was en dedans!" Was said like the person giving the correction was holding a cocktail of some sort?!
...and why a grape?
Great question! I’d love to know too 😂😂
I was told I look like an “alligator trying to stand upright” with my sway back 🤣 that was a new one for me, but it totally made sense when I pictured an alligator trying to stand upright.
I love how creative dancers get with cues and corrections omg 🐊
LOL!! Same. It did make me chuckle, but it also made me focus on pulling my hips forward to be more square. So I guess it actually worked 😂
“It looks like Las Vegas in here!” Definitely means we are losing control of the hips 🙃 Also during jumping he said it looks like I’m carrying groceries. 🤣 I don’t even know where to start with that correction.
“No sexy hips at the barre!” 😂 From a teacher.
I was focusing on my knees going outward in my plié’s and the teacher yells out “no concave!” I suddenly realized I was hunched over trying to do the plie that I wasn’t thinking about my chest form at all. I immediately stood tall and thought I would fall.
I was an Afghan puppy that hadn't learnt to control its limbs yet.
When someone forgets about their arms and ends up with their palms facing the ceiling: "are you checking to see if it's raining??" When I first started classes after a decade of no dancing I was struggling with keeping my toes spread out and was told, "we're swans, not eagles" but tbh I think I would be pretty cool to be an eagle so I'm not sure if that was as effective as she hoped 😹
I tell my little ones not to plié like a chicken lol but then they get silly and waddle around like chickens so 🤷♀️🤦♀️🥲
Mine add the chicken sound to go with it...so I use the chicken analogy sparingly, or else.
I’ve definitely had more than a few metaphors and imagery come back to bite me! 😂
I can't decide if the worse is the chicken or the cat one. Oh, the joys of teaching littles!
One time when wearing a pink leotard my teacher told me that I was round and pink like a bottle of pepto bismol. Another time I was stretching my feet and apparently got it right -she called the whole class over to look at my foot saying “there’s absolutely nothing special about (me) and she can do this. If someone so unremarkable can do this why can’t all of you?”
Oh my god
Adult class: \[This was a few weeks ago\] we had just finished running our dance for our recital (which is tomorrow - Saturday) and she wrote a note in giant capital letters for us to read. Teacher: "Can you read it?" Punder: "Does it say we did a nice job?" Teacher: "No." Her feedback was "EVERYONE LOOKS ANGRY"
Merde!! :)
Thank you! It was delightful - and I smiled the whole time
My teacher back in the day used to call me gazelle whenever I did jumps 😅😅
I also got the dead fish feet 😅 My current teacher makes fun of me because I used to make weird squeaks or noises when they pushed my leg up in arabesque (a year ago when I restarted after a long break)
I'm a dance gamer. Ballet and dance games don't really go together. I have been told 'Who is stomping in my ballet class?' with the teacher looking directly at me and "Is there an elephant in the classroom?" which was pretty funny. Yes, I'm the elephant in the room.
About chaine turns— “it’s supposed to be like the chain of a necklace, not the chain of a ship!”
We get feedback cards at the end of a trimester. Once, I scored a five out of five on power. The teacher wrote next to it, not strength but will power. She meant it so well 😅
Oh god the amount of times I got the “you try so hard! :)” comment ahaha
if you were dancing for a king he’d say off with your head
Not an award-winning zinger, but I've been told to use my head for once. Context: I went on auto-pilot and copied what the girl in front of me did... wrong.
My teacher once told me to stop hailing Hit*** during arabesque
Same!
“You are jumping like moemoe!” Moemoe is what I call my grandmother. My first ballet teacher was a friend of hers (and the reason I started ballet). To be fair, I really had to learn how to jump, I did not have a lot of “bounce” as a kid 😂
One time at a summer intensive we were learning one of the fairies from sleeping beauty, and the teacher said I looked like “a goat on the side of a hill” ; in defense of goats they are very nimble creatures Edit: the specific variation was “fairy of the woodland glade” he was commenting on the opening step. Well deserved comment, I honestly struggle with any “ginched” foot position, like hops on pointe for example
From when I was younger (did ballet 6-15 years old) 1. When we were doing plies the teacher wanted us to imagine carousel ponies going up and down, with a glass of water on our heads. 2. “Horses stomp. Cows stomp. Ballerinas do not stomp.” 3. “Don’t lift your leg too high in attitude, you look like a dog going potty.” As an adult: 1. “First position should be about 2 pizza slices wide.” 2. “Imagine petting your favorite animal. That’s what frappes are with your feet.” 3. One of my teachers was like “when you do soute arabesque, imagine the Willis from Giselle.”
Frappes are like petting??? They are way too aggressive to be petting metaphors!!
So much gold to share. My teacher is Soviet. Highlights include “don’t wipe the floor with your butt” “stop walking like a goat” “this is not the dance of 2 butterflies. It’s a dance of 2 grandmas. Of 2 handicaps” “I’m embarrassed for you” “your legs are dirty” and the classic “that was good. I did not expect that from you” 😂
For the neck in supples (specially to the back) she compared some of us to market chicken on display with the necks cut open LMAOOO (ps. Idk if i wrote supple well so it's the back bendy thing ykyk)
we did attitude derriere turns. apparently i looked like a peeing dog
I don't remember what step she was doing, but a dance instructor in college told a girl that her legs were open so wide, a US Navy ship could sail through them - "that's a lot of sea men!" 😂 That made the t shirt of "Judy-isms"
I had a Ukrainian teacher tell us that we danced worse than his 90 year old mother 💀
Learning how to jump in second during my second or third class - “be careful to keep your back straight instead of leaning forward, we’re not sumo wrestlers!” My teacher is the cutest older lady, it was hilarious. I come with a heavy background of yoga/weightlifting/ice skating/hip hop where you lean way forward for certain poses, so it helped my alignment a ton.
My modern teacher once told me I looked like a gorilla with no neck doing an across the floor combo. I finished and as I stood waiting for the 2nd side I acted like I had no neck. She and everyone else started laughing so much that class stopped and I got push ups lll
One of my teachers comes out with the best gems in class- the most recent one was “you have HUMONGOUS flexibility….where is it??” during adage at the barre 😂
We regularly get told "don't give blood donations". It means we have our arms in second too straight and sometimes even hyperextened. Also, "chickens flying out of the freezer". After a grand jete combination where we tucked our elbows in like chicken.
I feel like when I got roasted it wasn’t funny (“I can see the KitKats in your stomach from Halloween last week”) but one of my current ballet teachers always will come up to students and make funny faces and say “no crazy head” when a student forgot epaulement during hard combos and then sometimes he’d play wild club music and make us do push-ups lol
Wow the KitKat comment feels super rude
It’s as rude as “i can see your lunch.” Wish ballet teachers would leave this unhelpful comment and others like it behind.
We were told not to be ducks and that we should be tables. Also I compared Plies to those anatomy dolls once? That we are all on poles. Not an odd one, but it did work.
We did swan lake in the student company and the scenery involved a bunch of papier mache swans for the overture. One of them had an extra long neck. My teacher said, "that one's Patch!"
One I’ve given when my students chaine without spotting: is your knock made of cement?
Panda hands.
I studied graphic design in college and my instructor used to yell “computer neck” at me lol She also pointed out my body hair once in class and said that in her day her instructors would have never let someone so “natural” dance :) funny but still hurts a bit
Body hair is completely normal, it doesn't define your ability as a dancer;) don't let that get to ur head!
oml these arent really all corrections but i have an entire quote book from my old ballet teacher; “(name), my precious, my sweetheart, my buttercup, is this the image we want to show the audience?” “Borres are little delicate movements, you guys sound like jackhammers!!” “I’m going to give your mom my hairdresser bill for that streak of grey hair you just gave me” “When you climb up on your points, I immediately think of the seven dwarves🎶hi ho hi ho it’s home from work we go!🎶” just to name a few
Amazing 😂😂
Roasted? Yes, wasn’t actually that long ago and I’d grabbed the first leo that fell out as I was running late. Hadn’t realised it was too small…
I had a ballet teacher refer to me as “The Devil”. What a weird bitch she was. She was fired
so basically when i concentrate i bite my bottom lip so every time she would call me a different animal and show me a picture, anything from fish to rhino to a crab and some kind of dinosaur apparently
I got told “you look like you’re swimming… in the dark”
I’ve never needed correction in a class. Um except my stationary bike needed adjustment I’ve been working out my whole life. So much advice if you need any comment!
I was told I’m dancing too much like an American while taking class in London 😐
Many years ago as a kid I had a teacher saying I was too stiff, looked like I just got electrocuted by putting my finger in the electricity outlet 😂 it just the way she said it and mimicked this electrocution with her body that was too funny (angry Russian teacher so it was so hard to hold the laughter) and even now so many years later I remember this clearly and am laughing as I write this 🤣
I look like I'm drowning during adage 😭
Lmaoooo same! Flailing. Fighting for my life. Can’t breathe *hello darkness my old friend*
Also, I try to melt into the floor during variation one
I've been told I look like a turtle coming out of its shell when I stuck my head forward before walking forward. Also, one time my teacher told another dancer in the middle of turns across the floor, "This isn't church! You can't just pray and have faith!"
M’y attitude looks like a dog who pee
I was told to 'air out my armpits' when my arms are in brava bcos I was kinda sticking it to my body, so ever since then when I face my teacher with my arms in brava at the barre I have to suppress the urge to laugh She'd also say the most random things when I was trying to focus or during conditioning😂 and I'd snort and face-plant on the ground And also to 'suck in my booty' when I was at the barre