The Amazing Kneeland Methodology

Edition Contents

• The Amazing Kneeland Methodology

This edition of the ballet teaching methodology of Jo Anna Kneeland demonstrates a form of textual recovery. Kneeland intended to publish her manuscript, but she did not accomplish that objective before her death. As a result, her work was unavailable and therefore neglected.¹ The original manuscript of the Kneeland Methodology was handwritten or dictated by Jo Anna Kneeland, and typed on a typewriter by her colleague Derva Snider, during the 1980s. To the editor’s knowledge, none of these physical sources are extant. Mary Price Boday, a colleague of Kneeland’s, retyped the manuscript on her computer in the early 2000s and the original has been subsequently lost.² This retyped document–originally split into multiple files–provides the only known source for Kneeland’s work and for this edition. Frank Kneeland, Jo Anna’s son and heir, granted permission to publish his mother’s work. Prior to this edition, when dance scholars wished to learn about Kneeland’s contribution to ballet pedagogy, they had to turn to a four-article series in the 1966 Dance Magazine, “The Dancer Prepares.”³ “The Amazing Kneeland Methodology” builds upon the 1966 articles. It significantly addresses center work,⁴ especially the mechanics of turns such as pirouettes, while the articles in the 1966 Dance Magazine focus on Kneeland’s therapeutic exercise regimen at the barre. The target audience for this edition includes dance teachers, dance scholars, practicing ballet dancers, and anyone who has an interest in ballet methodologies.⁵

§Historical Context for Kneeland’s Work

Ballet originated in the sixteenth century and was traditionally taught in the oral tradition, by demonstration and word of mouth from teacher to student.⁶ While all this is true of ballet teaching today, the major methodologies (Bournonville, Cecchetti, Vaganova, Balanchine, American Ballet School, and the Royal Academy of Dance) have also been codified and published in print for instruction. Many have undergone editing and revision over time. A brief description of each methodology and its publication history follows.

August Bournonville (1805–1879) began his tenure as lead teacher at the Royal Danish Ballet School in 1851. Bournonville did not publish his methodology himself, but one of his dancers, Hans Beck (1861–1952), organized and systemized Bournonville’s pedagogy based on manuscripts and his memory.⁷ There have been many subsequent editions of the Bournonville methodology.⁸

Cyril W. Beaumont and Stanislaw Idzikowski first wrote about the teaching of Enrico Cecchetti (1850–1928) in 1922, and this methodology has been revised and reprinted several times.⁹ Most recently, Cecchetti’s son, Grazioso Cecchetti, has been working on a two-volume set, Classical Ballet: A Complete Manual of the Cecchetti Method, which is slated for publication in 2028.¹⁰

The Russian Imperial Dancing School opened in 1738 under Anna Ivanova, but it was Agrippina Vaganova (1879–1951) who published the school’s teaching methods in Основы классического танца (1934). Its English translation, The Fundamentals of Classical Dance (1946), was both edited and condensed. Many reprints have subsequently been issued by various publishers (Dover, Gremese, and Kamin Dance Publishers), with the latest, an ebook, released in 2025 by Editora Apris. In each edition, small editorial changes have been made.¹¹

George Balanchine (funded by arts admirer Lincoln Kerstein) founded the American Ballet School (ABS) in 1948 as the official training school for the New York City Ballet. Balanchine did not codify or publish his teaching methodology, but others have, notably Suki Schorer.¹² She was a Balanchine student and company dancer from 1959 to 1972, and is currently a teacher at ABS.

The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) began in 1920 under the title Association of Teachers of Operatic Dancing; it received a royal charter and its name change in 1936. RAD publishes its own syllabi and curriculum which have been revised over time to reflect changes in understanding about anatomy, safety, inclusivity, pedagogy, and so forth. Information about the most recent iteration (2024) is available on the RAD website.¹³

As previously mentioned, with the exception of the 1966 Dance Magazine articles, Jo Anna Kneeland’s methodology remained unpublished until now. These articles produced a major impact on ballet dance teaching as pedagogues followed Kneeland’s example in applying kinetic principles of movement in their ballet studios. The major ballet methodologies mentioned above have included principles of kinesiology in their revisions, thanks to Kneeland’s innovative teaching.

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§Brief Biography of Jo Anna Kneeland

Jo Anna Kneeland (1925–1999) was born on the island of Réunion as Mary Ada Forkin and grew up in Durban, South Africa, where she was a ballet student of the Cecchetti method under Eileen Keegan.¹⁴ Jo Anna, the daughter of musicians, became proficient at both voice and piano and was an outstanding drama student at Natal University, where she studied with Elizabeth Sneddon.¹⁵ She won a scholarship to study abroad, taking her to both New York City and Toronto before she landed in Los Angeles, where she spent several years working in television. She met her future husband, producer Ted Kneeland, on the set of The Laraine Day Show, and married him in 1953. The Kneelands moved to Florida in 1956, where Jo Anna opened a ballet studio. She also taught briefly at the Harkness School of Ballet in New York City.

Kneeland was also a choreographer of ballets, notably The Princess,¹⁶ with music by Mario Braggiotti, and Dr. Coppelius, a retelling of the classical ballet with music by Delibes. With her husband, Jo Anna collaborated on ballet film projects such as Dr. Coppelius, The Kingdom of Gifts, and The Mysterious House of Dr. C.¹⁷

After her husband’s death in 1980, Jo Anna Kneeland remained in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she taught ballet to students and gave training symposiums for ballet teachers, until her death on April 29, 1999.

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§Development of the Kneeland Methodology

Jo Anna Kneeland identified a need for short ballet films that could motivate her students. She approached philanthropist Frank J. Hale¹⁸ with the idea of making a series of affordable short films, titled “Great Moments of the Dance,” which would show respected ballet dancers performing classic solos and pas de deux.

Because of limited funds for the project, Jo Anna brought her musical training and ability to pay close attention to detail to bear as film editor. As such, she went through the footage using a moviola, a machine that allows frame-by-frame editing. There were three reels for each dance, each filmed from a different angle, which Jo Anna had to piece together in sync with the music.¹⁹ Because she literally examined the movement of the dancers in frame-by-frame detail in three iterations, Jo Anna could see exactly what the dancers were doing with their bodies as they executed the steps. She was very surprised to realize that they were not moving in the same way that dance teachers traditionally taught. David Howard,²⁰ who trained under Jo Anna at the Harkness Ballet, tried to explain how their movements played out using sequences of Don Quixote as an example. He noted that “as [a dancer] went to the corner to do a piqué turn, they didn’t turn with the shoulder to the right” as teachers would explicate the movement, but instead “they did it with the left shoulder coming round.”²¹ In other words, Kneeland discovered that ballet instruction did not always align with the way dancers needed to move their bodies.

To test the veracity of what Kneeland saw in the “Great Moments of the Dance” short films, she acquired performance films of the Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, and New York City Ballet and scrutinized them frame-by-frame on the moviola. This analysis confirmed for her that the same dichotomy existed: “what the artist-performers did was different in impetus, accent, and very often in actual movement” from what was typically taught in the classical ballet studio.²² Ballet tradition is centuries old, so this disconnect surprised Kneeland, who brought her discoveries to the attention of Dr. Murray Sanders, a biologist at the University of Miami, who worked closely with physicists. These academics introduced Kneeland to the science of kinetics, or kinesiology, as it is called when applied to the human body.²³ Finis Jhung, Kneeland’s pedagogical grandchild (David Howard was his teacher), described what Kneeland learned from the physicists: they “explained things from the standpoint of physical laws—how you turn, how you jump, push down to go up, the concept of opposition.”²⁴

Kneeland began to apply principles of kinesiology in her own Imperial Ballet Studio, which resulted in “less tension, less restraint, less fear and less misdirected energy” in her students.²⁵ She paid particular attention to accepting students whose bodies were less well-suited to the demands of ballet, students who were “bow-legged, knock-kneed, with bad backs, and with many other physiological difficulties.”²⁶ Kneeland treated her dancers as a continuation of her study of kinetic movement principles, and noticed that student outcomes improved under her tutelage: some of her students even began to excel professionally, a success that brought attention to her methodology.

An unexpected expression of interest came from the ballet consultant to the United States Women’s Gymnastics Committee, who in 1963 “recommended that the Kneeland method be taught to all members of the team.”²⁷ Fifteen male and seven female gymnasts received scholarships from Frank J. Hale to allow for three weeks of intense training in Palm Beach. Kneeland’s training included physical, psychological, and philosophical ideas that were new to the participants. “It was difficult in the beginning for us who had never been exposed to any training in the area of ballet to envision what carryover there would be into our field of gymnastics,” coach Bill Meade reported, but he conceded that “we have gained very valuable techniques and knowledge, and we’re getting real results by employing what we learned.”²⁸

Since the Kneeland Methodology proved to be “of great importance to fields that included classical ballet, other forms of dance, gymnastics, mental health, and physical rehabilitation,”²⁹ Frank Hale’s Academy Royale³⁰ sponsored a national seminar for ballet and dance teachers to share this knowledge more broadly. One of the invitees, Rebekah Harkness, who formed the Harkness Ballet Company in New York City in 1964, became interested in the Kneeland Methodology, and hired Jo Anna to bring her “pioneering research projects to investigate anatomical and kinesiological approaches” to movement training to the Harkness Ballet.³¹ At Harkness, Kneeland first trained and then taught alongside Ruth Petronovic³² and David Howard, both “apprentice teacher[s].”³³ At that time, David Howard documented “The Jo Anna Kneeland Therapeutic Barre” as it was used at the company.³⁴ After David Howard left Harkness, he became an internationally recognized ballet master with his own New York studio. In an interview with Ballet Review, Howard explained that Jo Anna was considered “crazy” by some, but that he “learned a lot from her,” and he continued to implement the Kneeland Methodology throughout his teaching career. Petronovic stayed on at Harkness Ballet after both Kneeland and Howard left. In the documentary film An American Ballet Story, Petronovic explains that she continued the kinesthetic approach to training she had learned from Kneeland, combined with traditional classical ballet training.³⁵

The Academy Royale seminar also resulted in the series of articles by Jo Anna Kneeland (with Lydia Joel) published under the title “The Dancer Prepares” in the March through June issues of Dance Magazine in 1966.³⁶ These are the articles for which Jo Anna Kneeland is known and remembered today and were, until now, the only published writing by Kneeland of her ballet methodology.

§Significance of the Kneeland Methodology

Jo Anna Kneeland’s methodology had an amazing influence on her co-teachers and students, who incorporated her pedagogy into their own teaching, but little has been written about that impact since the 1966 Dance Magazine articles. She became somewhat forgotten. A significant exception is Charlotte Hart’s 2012 master’s thesis, “Jo Anna Kneeland’s Therapeutic Barre: A Qualitative Analysis.” Hart shares Kneeland’s barre exercises as recorded by Ruth Petronovic, who had learned from Kneeland and then was Charlotte Hart’s teacher.³⁷ Hart explains that Kneeland had two purposes in mind by requiring students to do a specific sequence of warm-up exercises at the barre: first to “prepare dancers to be warm and ready for ballet class” and also to enable students to “easily incorporate the movement motivations” of the dance choreography the students would be learning.³⁸

The second purpose is the aspect that was most transformative for Mary Price Boday, who trained with David Howard and then taught ballet for forty years herself using Kneeland’s methodology. Boday explains the importance of Jo Anna Kneeland’s unique contribution to dance this way:

In ballet pedagogy, you have several different methods—The Royal Academy of Dance, Cecchetti, Vaganova, etc. They teach the steps. What they don’t include is the real “how” to do the steps. You could say ballet has different poses, but the movement impetus between the poses is the real truth of the movement. The Kneeland Method of Training can easily be applied to all of the historical ballet pedagogy methods. It is not teaching the steps themselves—it is the “how.” A lot of folks now days don’t realize how much her work is being taught today. Many of the methods now include some of what she taught.³⁹

Because Jo Anna Kneeland emphasized that proper application of kinesiology to ballet is vital for both the health and artistry of dancers, her contribution to ballet pedagogy should be firmly placed in the historical record of ballet instruction—her methods are still being taught, though they may be imparted by teachers who are far enough removed from Kneeland chronologically that they might not realize whose methods they are teaching. Other teachers may be only using part of Kneeland’s regimen because while “therapeutic pre-barre warm-up sequences have emerged as the preferred start of class” and have “great merit,” they also consume much of the “allotted time for barre work.”⁴⁰ In her master’s thesis Charlotte Hart also noted that the time needed to fully incorporate Kneeland’s system was a concern: past students of Kneeland who became teachers, as well as students who participated in Hart’s study, stated they did not always use it fully “due to time constraints.”⁴¹ However, whether Kneeland’s methods are used fully or only in part, it is important to ensure that she continues to receive due credit: she was the pioneer who first began to study kinesiology as it applied to ballet dancing, and the publication of “The Amazing Kneeland Methodology,” written over her long career but never published in Kneeland’s lifetime, recovers her contribution to ballet pedagogy in a tangible way.

§Transmission History

In October 1965 Dance Magazine convened a group of twenty-three of the top dance teachers in the United States at the American Ballet Center in New York City to attend a lecture and demonstration featuring the methodology used by Jo Anna Kneeland in her teaching. This event was an intimidating prospect for Jo Anna, who “expected to be crucified” for the unorthodox ideas she had added to the centuries-long traditions of ballet pedagogy.⁴² At least one audience member was antagonistic, claiming “she’s just talking about coordination, that’s all.” Another responded, “She’s found a way to teach pure coordination—she’s teaching movement in relation to technique…And what could be more important than that?”⁴³ Most of these pedagogues received the new information with open minds; some already had arrived at similar ideas through their teaching experience and could use Jo Anna’s ideas to build on their current practices.

The transcript of the workshop was reproduced in Dance Magazine serially over the months of March, April, May, and June 1966. In the live presentation, Kneeland used a film featuring seven of her students, and brought another student, Clara Cravey,⁴⁴ to demonstrate in person. For the article, images described as “filmed sequences,” which were basically stills from the film, were used. Because this format is less illustrative of concepts than a film would be, the articles also contain explanatory notes.⁴⁵

In the concluding article (June 1966), Kneeland points out that although her own Cecchetti training had followed traditional methods exactly, her analysis of “great dance artists under stop motion picture photography” had led her to look at ballet training differently. Her method was an attempt to answer the question, “Why train one way to dance another?” She believed it would be “preferable for the dancer to nurture and develop the motivation of movement which is in accord with the standards set by great artists.” This discovery led her to reexamine what transpired at the barre, retaining the traditional exercises but “teaching them in a different manner than is customary.”⁴⁶

During Jo Anna Kneeland’s time at the Harkness Ballet, and again when she returned to ballet teaching in Florida, her one-time apprentice teacher Ruth Petronovic participated in Kneeland’s pioneering research; Petronovic helped to “clarify and codify” movements “so that teachers could actually teach them.”⁴⁷ Any works created by Kneeland and Petronovic in tandem would have passed to Cheryl Ale, Petronovic’s student, foundational to her RPM (Revolutionary Principles of Movement) Ballet Training, which is based on the work of Petronovic and Kneeland but expanded in scope, given the twenty-five years that Petronovic continued to work beyond Kneeland’s death in 1999.⁴⁸ During the time that Jo Anna Kneeland was based in Las Vegas, she collaborated with fellow ballet pedagogues Derva Snider⁴⁹ and Mary Price Boday on teacher training seminars and workshops. Derva Snider was often the steward over the materials they used, which were all based on the Kneeland Methodology. That Jo Anna was writing and planning to publish her methodology is known because in a television interview on KVBC Las Vegas in 1989, she remarked that her book was coming out “next year.”⁵⁰ Something interrupted that plan, and “The Amazing Kneeland Methodology” was never published in Jo Anna’s lifetime. Recovery of publication is made possible through this edition.

§Editorial Approach

A historical approach has been taken in the editing of “The Amazing Kneeland Methodology.” The intent is to preserve it as documentary evidence of this woman’s pioneering work to add a kinesthetic approach to the teaching of classical ballet. Therefore, the methodology is reproduced as it appeared in documents (in Microsoft Word and PDF formats) received from Mary Price Boday. The materials received included the following seven documents, listed by the file names Boday gave them: “Kinetic Vocabulary” (Word format), “Kneeland Amazing Methodology” (Word format), “The ten basic elements of pirouettes” (Word format), “Turns Work Sheet – Pirouettes” (Word format), “Pirouette Clock” (PDF format), “Introduction” (Word format), and “Jo Anna Kneeland Resume” (PDF format). The editor decided to exclude the third document (“The ten basic elements of pirouettes”) because it was an exact replica of a section of the same title that appeared in the document titled “Kneeland Amazing Methodology.” The fourth document (“Turns Work Sheet – Pirouettes”) was excluded because it was a bare clockface with no text, and clockfaces were included throughout the methodology at relevant times, making this clockface redundant. Boday included the PDF “Resume” for interest’s sake, though it was not written by Kneeland herself; it had been prepared by Jo Anna’s son, Frank, in 1997, and he listed himself, rather than his mother, as the contact on the document. The editor decided to exclude this document from the edition because it was written by a different author, is not intimately connected with the methodology manuscript, and contains some factual discrepancies.

The four remaining documents that were used in preparing this edition include Kneeland’s introduction, subtitled “Pink Clouds,” which the editor placed first because its language makes clear that Kneeland intended for this section to be the introduction to the methodology. Next comes the computer file Boday titled “Kneeland Amazing Methodology.” This document had been formatted with running headers “The Amazing Kneeland Methodology” on every page, clearly indicating this as the actual intended title of the document. Such headers do not lend themselves well to an online format, so they are omitted in this edition. The “Kinetic Vocabulary” section is a glossary to aid readers in understanding the manuscript proper, “The Amazing Kneeland Methodology.” The editor placed this glossary after the main text as a part of the back matter, as is a common practice in publishing.

Jo Anna Kneeland used bold typeface, underlining, and italics for emphasis, sometimes all at once, and this formatting has been retained. The original text was not broken into chapters and has been left that way, with only headings to help in navigating through the text. By clicking on “Display Options” at the top of the screen, the headings can be seen, so readers can navigate to various segments of the document as they choose. Typing conventions have changed since Kneeland prepared her manuscript—for example, two spaces after a colon or period had been the convention, whereas one space has become conventional, and this was the standard applied in this edition.

There are some apparent typing errors in the manuscript. By default, the text shows only corrections made by the editor in square brackets and not the original errors. For example, if Kneeland’s manuscript denotes “a potential dance” where context indicates she was referencing a person, the default text in this edition reads “a potential [dancer].” To view the original text, click on “include original errors” in Display Options, and these errors will be included in the text with a red wavy underline indicating the error and the emended text in square brackets beside it. Similarly, if an extra word appears in the text that the editor has deleted, “include original errors” chosen in Display Options will cause the word to appear in the text with a red wavy underline, while the word will not appear at all if the reader is viewing the default text. Within the text, the editor attempted to supply missing accent symbols for French ballet terminology, but the correction taken may be imperfect, and the editor accepts responsibility for any omissions.

Notes have been used to add explanatory information. These appear throughout the text as numbers in red boxes. Click on them, and a pop-up box will appear as an editorial annotation, with the explanation provided in the box.

Kneeland did not include basic ballet terminology in her “Kinetic Vocabulary,” probably because her target audience of ballet teachers would already know these words. However, this edition aims to make Kneeland’s work more widely acknowledged and thus aims at readers who are not familiar with these terms, as well as those who are. Therefore, a glossary was prepared, and readers can access these definitions by clicking on words underlined in red, which will open a pop-up box containing the definition. These underlines can be removed by toggling the “glossary terms” checkbox in the micro-edition’s Settings.

Several images of clocks are included throughout the edition, because Kneeland used the idea of a clock to help dancers metaphorically “clock” themselves while executing turns, as if their body is at the center and their appendages are the arms of the clock. The “Pirouette Clock” at the end of the edition represents an actual Pirouette Clock built by physicists at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and referenced in her Methodology, of which the paper figure is a facsimile.⁵¹

§Conclusion

Jo Anna Kneeland was among the first to apply principles of kinesiology to ballet pedagogy. After some initial consternation over the changes Kneeland brought to the teaching of ballet, over time her pioneering ideas took hold, because they were based on sound principles of physics. Now, sixty years after her ideas were first published in Dance Magazine, it would be considered strange not to include kinetic principles in ballet instruction. It would be unthinkable not to consider how the body is designed to move. Kinesiology in ballet has become normalized. These ideas have their roots in the work of Jo Anna Kneeland. This edition is documentary evidence of Jo Anna Kneeland’s methodology, and recovers its place in the history of ballet pedagogy.

§Footnotes

1. In a television interview on KVBC Las Vegas Channel 3 at 6 p.m. on December 9, 1989 (on the occasion of the Ms. Senior Clark County Nevada Pageant, which Kneeland won), she mentions her book “coming out next year,” but it has not been published until now. See Video 1. ↩

2. Mary Price Boday, dance educator, was director of the dance department of Mercyhurst College (Erie, PA) during the 1990s. See Shannon Lenore Vance, “Programming and Publicity: The Relationship Illustrated by Three Ballet Companies” (master’s thesis, American University, 1970). ↩

3. The series is comprised of the March, April, May and June 1966 issues of Dance Magazine. ↩

4. Center work is that part of ballet class which is performed in the middle of the studio instead of at the barre. ↩

5. As a result of this editorial work, a print copy of the source is now stored at Brigham Young University Library. ↩

6. Britannica, “ballet,” https://www.britannica.com/art/ballet. ↩

7. Knud Arne Jürgensen, “Hans Beck,” Dance Chronicle 29 (2006): 397. ↩

8. For example: Kirsten Ralov, Bournonville Studies (1958) which includes edited studies and exercises; and Knud Arne Jürgensen, ed., The Bournonville School (1979; reprints 1990s–2000s), which contains never-before-published photos, notations, music sources, etc. ↩

9. Cyril W. Beaumont and Stanislas Idzikowski, A Manual of the Theory and Practice of Classical Theatrical Dancing (London: Beaumont, 1922; revised 1932). Cecchetti’s dedication in French was translated into English for the 2007 reprint of the 1932 revision with the new title The Cecchetti Method of Classical Ballet: Theory and Technique, published by Dover. There is also The Cecchetti Legacy: An Analysis and Description of the Cecchetti Method of Classical Ballet by Ann Hutchison Guest and Tony Bennett, which expands on the work of Beaumont and includes exercises not original to Cecchetti that are in keeping with the principles of the method. ↩

10. Projected publication by Gremese International on April 1, 2028. ↩

11. For further discussion, see Catherine E. Pawlick, Vaganova Today: The Preservation of Pedagogical Tradition (University Press of Florida, 2011). ↩

12. Suki Schorer, Suki Schorer on Balanchine Technique (Knopf, 1999; University Press of Florida, 2006). ↩

13. Royale Ballet Dance Academy, “Inside the RAD Curriculum: A Comprehensive Guide to Levels and Progressions,” https://royaleballet.com/2024/03/13/inside-the-rad-curriculum-a-comprehensive-guide-to-levels-and-progressions/. ↩

14. “‘Eileen Keegan [d. 2000] was a seminal figure in the history of ballet in South Africa—with a distinguished roster of past pupils in major companies around the world,’ says Robert Cross, former head of the Natal Performing Arts Council (now the Playhouse Company).” She was trained in London in as a certified Cecchetti examiner. Artsmart, https://www.artsmart.co.za/dance/archive/195.html. ↩

15. Elizabeth Sneddon (1907–2005) was a London-trained speech and drama teacher at Natal University, now University of KwaZulu-Natal, where the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre was named in her honor in 1981. ↩

16. A promotional trailer for this production’s 1960 run at the Strand Theatre in London can be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7NW7-Td9tQ. It features Jo Anna’s twelve-year-old student, Claudia Cravey. ↩

17. There are two excerpts from this film that show Jo Anna’s choreography. The first begins with a pas de deux danced by Claudia Cravey (using the pseudonym Claudia Corday in this film) and Caj Selling, and then involves the company of dancers in ballet, folk dance, and acrobatics. See Video 2. The second is a solo dance by Claudia, dancing as the doll Coppelia. See Video 3. ↩

18. Frank J. Hale (1900–1972) was a Vaudeville dancer turned industrialist who became an arts manager (Poinciana Playhouse in Palm Beach, FL) and philanthropist. See “Frank Hale Dies; Playhouse Owner,” New York Times, December 21, 1972. ↩

19. Lydia Joel and Jo Anna Kneeland, “The Dancer Prepares: : New Approaches to Principles of Movement as Applied to Ballet Pedagogy,” Dance Magazine, March 1966, 50. ↩

20. David Howard became a master ballet teacher, running the highly reputed David Howard Dance Center in New York City from 1977 through 1995. ↩

21. Howard spoke of his training with Kneeland in: Michael Langlois, “A Conversation with David Howard,” Ballet Review 36 no.3 (2008):10. ↩

22. Joel and Kneeland, “The Dancer Prepares,” March 1966, 50. ↩

23. Joel and Kneeland, “The Dancer Prepares,” March 1966, 50. ↩

24. Lillie F. Rosen, “Two Ballet Teachers: Finis Jhung and David Howard,” 6, https://finisjhung.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ds_article.pdf. ↩

25. Rosen, “Two Ballet Teachers,” 6. ↩

26. Joel and Kneeland, “The Dancer Prepares,” March 1966, 50. ↩

27. Thomas C. Clarie, Memories for the Future: A History of Palm Beach’s Royal Poinciana Playhouse (Portsmouth, NH: Back Channel Press, 2010), 115. ↩

28. Bill Meade, “Three Weeks in Palm Beach,” Modern Gymnast, September 1963, 6. ↩

29. Clarie, Memories for the Future, 213. ↩

30. The Academy Royale was a Frank J. Hale-funded philanthropic initiative. This was also the source of funding for the gymnastics students. ↩

31. Charlotte Loyd Hart, “Jo Anna Kneeland’s Therapeutic Barre: A Qualitative Analysis,” (master’s thesis, University of Oklahoma, 2012), 3. ↩

32. Ruth Petronovic (1930–2024) received her training directly from Jo Anna Kneeland and was the academy director for Ballet Florida before her death. See “Ruth C. Petronovic’s Teacher Training Workshop,” August 2–7, 2010, https://tampaballetcenter.org/Ruth%20Brochure.pdf. ↩

33. Langlois, “A Conversation with David Howard,” 10. ↩

34. Howard’s typed document is available from An American Ballet Story, https://anamericanballetstory.com/theraputic_barre.pdf. This series of exercises is the topic of Charlotte Hart’s 2012 thesis. ↩

35. An American Ballet Story, directed by Leslie Streit, produced by Leslie Streit and Robin McCain, featuring Rebekah West Harkness (–1982), Margo Sappington (1942–), and Helgi Tómasson (Random Media, 2023). ↩

36. Dance Magazine archives are available online through subscription to the Dance Collection of Alexander Street Press. ↩

37. Hart, “Jo Anna Kneeland’s Therapeutic Barre,” 80–85. ↩

38. Hart, “Jo Anna Kneeland’s Therapeutic Barre,” 38. ↩

39. Mary Price Boday, email message to author, September 27, 2024. ↩

40. Rory Foster, Ballet Pedagogy: The Art of Teaching (University Press of Florida, 2010), 39. ↩

41. Hart, “Jo Anna Kneeland’s Therapeutic Barre,” 171. ↩

42. Joel and Kneeland, “The Dancer Prepares,” March 1966, 49. ↩

43. Joel and Kneeland, “The Dancer Prepares,” March 1966, 49. ↩

44. Clara Cravey is Claudia Cravey’s younger sister. ↩

45. Lydia Joel and Jo Anna Kneeland, “The Dancer Prepares: New Approaches to Principles of Movement as Applied to Ballet Pedagogy,” Dance Magazine, April 1966, 58. ↩

46. Lydia Joel and Jo Anna Kneeland, “The Dancer Prepares: New Approaches to Principles of Movement as Applied to Ballet Pedagogy,” Dance Magazine, June 1966, 67. ↩

47. Cheryl Ale, The Spark: The Legacy that Changed the Dance World (New York: Morgan James, 2018), 28–29. ↩

48. See RPM Dance, https://rpm.dance/about/. ↩

49. Derva Snider (1929–2012) was on the dance faculty at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo, CA, during the 1990s. See Beverly J. Allen, “Dance Directory 1990” (Reston, VA: American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 1990), accessed July 17, 2026, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED324318.pdf. ↩

50. As mentioned previously, in a television interview on KVBC Las Vegas Channel 3 on December 9, 1989, Kneeland mentions her book “coming out next year,” but it has not been published until now. See Video 1. ↩

51. Although Boday included the “Pirouette Clock” with the Kneeland materials, she later expressed some uncertainty as to whether Kneeland authored it. However, if not this particular clock, a similar clock was definitely a part of Kneeland’s pedagogy. Because it is useful in understanding the other empty clocks included in the methodology, it was decided to retain the “Pirouette Clock.” ↩