Oh boy. A ballet recital will not be easy to photograph. If it was me I'd turn the ISO up to about 800 and then go as steady as possible with the flash off. If you're more than about 15 feet away the flash won't do you a darn bit of good, so it needs to be off anyway. The higher the ISO, the quicker the pictures will snap (so less blur), but ISO also equals graininess. It's a trade-off! You really need about a $2,000 lens to get any sort of great shots. May be better off just video taping and then taking screen shots from the video.