This article starts with the integration of young professional dancers who have just been recruited into a Mongolian dance ensemble in contemporary Mongolia. By analysing rehearsal as a learning opportunity for both young recruits and experienced dancers, the author sees it as a heuristic situation to understand how the collective practice of an academic ‘presentational’ dance and the dancers’ belonging to a community of practice are articulated. The article especially focuses on the role of the ballet master (répétiteur), a central character in the rehearsal, as an intermediary between the choreographer and the dancers, but also as an external eye foreshadowing the eye of the audience, to whom the dance is addressed. According to the hypothesis defended, what is learned in the rehearsal of such choreographies, intended for the stage or stadium, is less a technique of the body than an ability to dance together under the eye of the other.