Numerous studies show that, beginning at around 40, balance is a vital skill associated with longevity and quality of life. In one study, 20 percent of people over 50 couldn’t balance on one leg for 10 seconds. This correlated with a twofold risk of death within a decade.
Ballet classes often focus on single-leg balance or keeping your balance as you transfer weight from one position to another. “I don’t know many disciplines that can train the lower limb the way ballet does,” said Dr. Madeleine Hackney, an associate professor at Emory University’s School of Medicine.
While yoga and Pilates offer similar flexibility training and core strengthening, ballet offers a wider variety of movements. “We jump in the air, we rise all the way up on our toes, we lower all the way down as far as we can,” Dr. Hackney said. “It’s that whole range of what the human body can do.”
Ballet also offers cognitive benefits: In one 21-year study funded by the National Institute on Aging, people who danced a few times a week had a 76 percent lower risk of dementia.
“You have to remember the sequence of steps, you have to remember how to do them” and then you have to do them, Dr. Hackney said. “Cognitively, you are certainly involved, trying to remember all that, trying to coordinate it to the music.”
Persuading would-be students to enter the studio is a hurdle because many perceive ballet as exclusive to the young and hyperthin, said Michael Cornell, the founder of Align, an adult ballet school in California. “We’ve been trying to remove that toxicity from the ballet class, to be open, inclusive, supportive, diverse.” He tells students to wear comfortable clothes instead of buying ballet gear, for instance.
Inclusivity also means welcoming people with physical differences, said Ronald Alexander, an instructor at the Ailey Extension in New York City: “If you have injuries, you have a knee issue, a foot issue, an ankle issue — we can work with this. ”
In Mr. Cornell’s classes, if a student is having trouble completing a full pirouette, he encourages them to try a half- or quarter-turn. If that’s too difficult, he will have them balance on one leg for three seconds.
