Ready to step into the season with style and wellness?
✔️ Stay hydrated after every class.
✔️ Fill your plate with fresh, seasonal meals.
✔️ Gear up with breathable, stylish dance wear.
Find everything you need for your summer classes at The Ballet Shop! 🩰
👉 Check out our collection here: The Ballet Shop
Let’s dance through summer together! 💃✨
It's been a while, indeed it has! We've been busy updating our website and creating new content to make it an exciting place to visit!
If you take a look at The Ballet Shop's website, you will see we've updated it quite a bit.
First off, we have started with our dancer focuses. On some days, we publuish the story of an iconic ballerina. On others, we choose men in ballet to highlight their contribution too. Check out our blog for more information!
Our latest article features Dame Beryl Grey. Read up and leave some comments.
If you are interested in dance, make sure to head over to our shop to see what we've got on offer.
Whatever nature it takes, love requires management - of one's own way of being first. To love another, you have to know how to care for yourself first. The old cliche, that you cannot fill from an empty jug, comes to mind, but it is, of course true.
So, based on a recent experience that threw me, I delved into Thich Nhat Than's book, True Love, a veritable manual of how to deal with human relationships, the Buddhist way. I was brought up the Catholic way and I cannot say I've ever been given such an easy-to-follow and helpful 'manual' to human relationships. All I got, from my Catholic background, is a mountain of (sometimes-unwarranted) expectations from others, that have sometimes placed my relationships into question.
Naturally, the ones that give the most trouble are the ones where one is most invested. That's a true and painful admission. But the lessons you learn for 'romantic' love, can easily be translated into other forms of relationships.
The four basic principles of love that this book outlines are:
- loving-kindness - the ability to bring joy to the other
- compassion - the ability to ease the other's pain
- joy - if there is suffering, that is not love.
- equanimity or freedom - when you love someone, you bring that person freedom.
These are, in themselves, worthy of lengthy thought. These 4 simple rules are important for any form of love - familial, friendship, deeper attachment.
I have not written here in a while, the confines of trying to keep busy during the last one and a half years while locked inside having driven me crazy.
My COVID journey was long. Less than one week into the dreaded limited human contact (not a full lockdown but schools and offices and everything else, were closed on 17 March 2020), I fell of my bicycle and went into 6 weeks of using a steel brace and crutches as I was unable to get anyone to see my injury. Finally, an orthopaedic surgeon advised that if I wore the brace any longer I risked a thrombosis; and that I should do some gentle walking and swimming.
I'd already tried some swimming and gentle walking and this was all the impetus I needed. The ballet shop suffered because I was unable to climb 4 flights of stairs to the little outlet; but the online sales continued to the extent that people were still dancing. Not much of course - reduced or no classes at all, reduced salaries for some. It all adds up.
This year we are appearing to go back to the life we once knew, with classes carrying on - with masks, if you please, but carrying on. The performing arts get a new lease of life.
We still have some uniforms sourced from UK with pre-Brexit prices as they are on our shelves since before Brexit. Other EU-sourced merchandise remains the same, of course. We have increased our platforms to include Revolut besides PayPal; and BOV Mobile payments if you are in Malta. If you are present in our shop, our BOV Cards machine accepts all international and Maltese cards. You're spoilt for choice.
We will always have some bargains on - just look up our bargains corner from time to time, our check out our website for any ongoing deals.
That's it! Happy Shopping!
Schools in the performance / arts communities are reopening in Malta and this is such a relief. Although children have to wear masks, which can be a bit difficult when the activity involves strenuous exercise, it is always better than not being able to continue with tuition at all.
At The Ballet Shop, we have stocked up for all forms of dancewear for different forms of dance, but remember that if you have a uniform requirement for a particular school, you need to be specific about what it is you need. The colour and material of the leotard is important, for example. If you are in Malta, we are also happy to have you over for a fitting, especially since pointe shoes require proper fitting, for example.
Ballet shoes, tights and socks, hair nets, bunholders - these are universal. A pink bunholder is the same in any school as is a pink wrap-over cardigan (ok you might be asked to choose between fleece and normal knitted cardigan); hairbands are the same colour as the leotards (usually) and tights, socks and shoes are invariably pink.
Head over to our shop now and see if there's anything that works for you!
