ALETHEA ALEXANDER

Ballet Rituals was co-founded in 2022 by Alethea Alexander, Hannah Simmons and Maya Tacon. The project is born out of an active interest in queering the technique and culture of ballet. Class begins on the floor with a sensory and somatic warmup that encourages softness, proprioceptive tuning, and efficiency. From there, we move into a barre practice that offers both familiar exercises and those that explicitly diverge from classical structure and are rooted in more contemporary research. Class culminates with four juicy and expansive center phrases: tendu, adagio, waltz, and jumps.

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Our classes are designed to help contemporary movers revel in what the familiarity and structure of ballet has to offer while simultaneously shedding any parts of the practice that don’t serve us. Pop-indie playlists underpin the ritual and rhythm of ballet shapes and pathways and help to root us in togetherness and joy. We indulge in and subvert the familiarity of form through creative pathways, anatomical clarity, and collective practice. We play and laugh our way through experiencing ballet as a ritual, in community.

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We treat ballet as a practice, not an ideology, and reject hierarchy, patriarchy, silence, and authoritarianism wherever possible. We use a co-teaching model, encourage singing along, and offer classes at a sliding scale whenever we can to help meet these goals.