Absolute beginners
Ballet for absolute beginners in Vienna
No experience, no flexibility, no idea what a plié is. That is exactly who this course is for.
Ballet Zero is the ARTIS course for adults who have never taken a ballet class. It is two classes a week in a group of at most eight, taught in English, German and Russian by a graduate of the Vaganova Academy, so English-speaking beginners and expats can follow every word with no German needed: one class standing at the barre, one on a mat. Nothing is assumed. You learn how to stand, how to hold the barre, the five positions and the first pliés and tendus before anything else.
You can try one class before you decide: your trial class is an ordinary single class, from €40, and if you continue with a membership it is credited towards the first month. Either class can be booked on its own in the ARTIS app; the membership comes later, if you want it.
The two halves of the course
Ballet Barre for absolute beginners is the standing class. Facing the barre with both hands supported, you work through posture, turnout from the hips, the position of the feet and hands, and the basic vocabulary of the barre, slowly and with individual corrections.
Floor-Barre is the same vocabulary done lying and sitting on a mat, the class ARTIS was the first in Vienna to teach outside a professional school. Without having to balance, a beginner feels what the muscles, the spine and the hips are meant to do, and learns correct alignment with far less strain on knees and lower back.
Your first class
Both classes of the course run every week; come to whichever suits you first.
- Ballet Barre for absolute beginners: Saturday at 11:30, 60 minutes
- Floor-Barre: Tuesday at 19:15 and Thursday at 18:00, 60 minutes
- Arrive ten minutes early; the studio is at Rockhgasse 1, a short walk from U2 Schottentor.
- Leggings and a fitted top, plus socks. No shoes and no leotard are needed for the first class.
- Sixty minutes, at the pace of the slowest person in the room. Most beginners are surprised how quickly it goes.
- Tell the teacher about any injury before class starts; every exercise has a gentler version.
Nobody is too old, too stiff or too late
Our beginners’ groups are made of adults who decided to start at twenty-five, at forty, at sixty. Flexibility is a result of practice, not an entry requirement; so is coordination. After Ballet Zero the next level, Ballet Set Light, moves the work into the centre of the room.
