<B>Keep fit, look fit: ballet fusion</B><BR>Total body awareness is crucial<BR>By Jennai Cox, Fitness Editor for The Times <BR> <P>CORE stability is the fitness industry’s buzz phrase at present. If your exercise routine does not include a considerable chunk of trunk training, it is out of date and of little overall benefit to your health. Having neglected the needs of the torso in pursuit of leaner legs, smaller backsides and more muscular arms, regular exercisers are now being trained to pay more attention to the needs of their middle. <BR>Exercise instructors now realise that without a stable middle, better-looking arms and legs are of little use if they cannot keep us upright and properly balanced. Yet according to Alex Rees, an award-winning instructor who teaches at the English National Ballet, not enough focus is being placed on the importance of total body awareness. <P>A former ballerina who put together the Ballet Fusion class format, Rees says that it is an exercise regime which, when adapted for the general public, helps to show us how to become more alert to the strengths and weaknesses of each part of our body. <P><A HREF="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,4-362014,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

Rosier outlook for your bottom line
Yoga-ballett fusion classes can help you achieve the preferred 21st century body shape, says Anna Selby for The FT


"One member of my class told me she couldn't believe its effect on her bottom. It had lifted up by at least an inch. That's probably mostly due to the ballet element in the class - all those leg movements to the back. But, by combining ballet with yoga, you get that toned, sculpted look without any muscular tensions."

David Olton's fusion of the principles of ballet and yoga may offend those purists who believe you should perfect just one discipline. But for those of us who aim to be neither prima ballerina nor yogi, the yoga-ballet fusion class gives us the best of both worlds and looks like being the Next Big Thing in the exercise world.

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Called to the barre
Sarah Jessica Parker and Madonna are among those swapping Ashtanga for arabesques. Ballet can improve strength, posture and fitness - and anyone can do it, says Linda Watson-Brown for The Independent.

It is credited with giving Kylie the dreamiest of derrieres. It is alleged to have been the real reason behind Sarah Jessica Parker's amazing pregnancy legs, which held no truck with the usual compulsory plague of varicose veins and fluid. It is even being lauded as this month's favourite Madonna exercise fixation. Ballet is on the way back and moving into a new audience.

For grown women across the land, the notion of signing up for ballet classes may, until recently, have been pretty remote.

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<small>[ 17 June 2003, 01:02 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>