Emotionally Intelligent Ballet Training- Facilitating Emotional Intelligence in Vocational Dance Training

Emotionally Intelligent Ballet Training (EIBT) provides a research-basedcompendium of learning and teaching activities and offers a way forward forballet teachers and student dancers seeking to improve their social andemotional learning and teaching tools to enhance the quality of vocationaldance training and to foster artistic social and technical competence.Learning and teaching ballet at the highest level puts great demands on theindividual. Student dancers must cope with their own expectations andcareer goals alongside the intense demands of traditional authoritarian balletpedagogy. Ballet teachers are under pressure to foster nurture and teachballet to highly talented adolescents in mental and physical preparation for asuccessful career in dance an extremely competitive profession. This bookexplores the emotional aspects of learning and teaching ballet at elite danceconservatoires using an inductive-deductive research methodology outliningthe potential of applying the concept of social and emotional learning andteaching in a dance-specific context. This work will interest not only dancescholars but also ballet teachers and student dancers in vocational traininginstitutions. At present EIBT is the only programme that uses emotionalintelligence theories in a dance educational context bringing emotionallearning and teaching to the centre of dance education.