EFFECT OF TEACHING WITH MIRRORS ON BALLET DANCE PERFORMANCE

This study assessed the effect of mirrors on the dance performance of beginning college ballet students in the classroom setting, using an evaluation methodology developed for this study. 13 women enrolled in one ballet class were taught using mirrors, 14 women in a second beginning ballet class were taught without mirrors. Both classes were taught by the same instructor. All students were videotaped performing the same adagio and grand allegro phrase during Weeks 5 and 14 of the 14-wk. term. At the end of the semester two ballet teachers viewed the videotapes for both classes. One evaluator was the instructor, and the other was a blind reviewer who had no knowledge of which was the mirror and nonmirror class during the evaluation process. They were instructed to choose a score for each dancer with anchors of 1: low skill and 5: high skill for both the adagio and allegro phrases. High interrater reliability was noted for both the adagio and allegro phrase data. In the nonmirror class, there was a significant increase in adagio scores, but no significant increases in adagio and allegro scores for the mirror class. These results suggest that the use of the mirror in a ballet classroom may negatively affect skill acquisition of the dancer.