Maria Fay's Floor Barre Paperback – 15 Jan. 2009

There is no dancer in the world that should dance another day or live through the agony of another injury without having read this book and seen the accompanying DVD. Maria Fay and Christina Beskou take you through exercises that can keep you fit, not only throughout your career, but also throughout what can be a termination of your career--a broken leg, a sprained foot, a pulled muscle.The floor barre techinique also helps the rest of us, the amatuer dancers, the wanna-be dancers, or the simply fitness-cautious to keep in shape.

*This is a really fantastic book and I would strongly suggest that you get the accompanying DVD to really understand the techniques and progression involved and get maximum results from it.The only negative point I have to say is that this floor barre system is far beyond the capabilities of most amateur dancers that I know and even some professional dancers. The exercises are incredibly difficult as the system progresses and even the best local dance school students will stuggle with the most basic exercises.Having said that, the most valuble reason for buying this book and the DVD is the wealth of ideas and information that can be gleaned by teachers. Floor barre genuinely is a fantastic way of getting young students in all dance subjects to really understand and FEEL the muscles working and it really does help to develop a much greater body awareness. This is particularly relevant to ballet and jazz. Even if you can only use the odd exercise (depending on the ability of your students), I promise you that there is masses of scope for you to develop your own exercises and adapt the system to suit your own students.A really great piece of work, a first class buy - recommend this very strongly.