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Ballet Is for All Bodies: No Tutus Required By Lindsay Martell
"I love it," says Sonia Alvarez Wilson, 66, a retired schoolteacher and a longtime ballet enthusiast.
"It is a lifelong sport," she says, explaining how she's taken ballet class sporadically since she was a kid. But doing it as an adult has become a next- level passion for Wilson, who credits dance with helping to ease her joint pain. "I get achy joints when I don't dance," she says. While donning a pair of ballet slippers and taking a spot at the barre may traditionally be considered something just for younger people to pursue, adults can benefit from it in ways that might surprise you. Ballet is both a cardiovascular and a weight- bearing exercise. Instead of dumbbells or weight machines, your body is used as resistance when doing stationary exercises like arabesques and pliés.
Ballet is for anyone who wants to give it a go, whether you took classes as a kid and are just now returning to it as an adult or if you're a newbie. "Somebody new to ballet is going to get a good workout no matter what because it's hard and they're unlikely to be trying to strive for something other than just trying to learn the steps and get a workout," Cotton says. Dance also helps to "develop new neural connections, especially in regions involved in executive function, long-term memory, and spatial recognition." In a 2020 study, researchers found that female recreational ballet dancers report feeling ballet "can foster both a positive social identity and affect that engenders efficacy in managing successful aging."
"Ballet is both a cardiovascular and a weight-bearing exercise."
The shift to cardio comes later in the class when dancers move to the center for jumping and leaping across the floor. Kester Cotton, a physical therapist in Wellesley, Massachusetts, says ballet is excellent for sustaining bone health, which is an important issue for women in particular, especially as they reach menopause and lose bone mass and density. According to the National Institute on Aging, osteoporosis affects about one in five women over the age of fifty. "Ballet is great for strength, through the hips and the core," Cotton says.
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