First of all, the most important, that is to learn everything good that has survived from other times, and carefully to watch the bad - and throw it out.
All the children in the school should learn the steps of everything, before they learn the thing, then they know which step they're doing better, because your voice is in certain steps and has to do most of the things that have been composed in those steps.
Also, if you have an accident, you can't start to dance again at the top, you're too weak; you start with the easy things - the way you did them when you were young, and come up up up, the way you did then.
God gave us all exactly the same fingers, arms, legs, and feet, but in our different countries we divided them all a little differently as we feel it, do you understand?
Oh yes, technique has definitely advanced. But you never advance without losing something en passant, and you lose it because you're paying so much attention to the new thing.
The best way to study is to go to the Cecchetti method for about a year and draw onto all the highest points and then put that into the general method.
