Tips from the pirouette mini-workshop!

Hello beautiful dancers!

I'm so impressed with the group of dancers who attended the mini-workshop I held on Zoom this past weekend. Practicing pirouettes at home is not easy and these students were all-in. If you missed it, here are a few takeaways that you can try to apply on your own.

1. In every workshop I teach, I always try to give students a new way of approaching pirouettes en dehors. The fact is, every dancer responds to different images, concepts, and techniques. If the one I give you in a class doesn't click for you, maybe a different one will. That's why I tell students to never give up on turns. Saying, "I can't turn!" is not real. It's something you tell yourself or in some cases, something someone else might have told you.

I was told by a teacher I would never do more than a double turn. That stuck in my head for years!

The concept I introduced on Saturday was using the knee to guide the turn: an image of drawing a circle in the air with your knee, kind of like a compass (does anyone use compasses to draw perfect circles anymore?). This will prevent you from losing your rotation as you turn and also keeps you level. Once you are up in your releve, you let the head snap you around and let the knee guide you.

Compass drawing

2. The second thing I try to do in each workshop is to emphasize the rhythm of a turn, from preparation to landing. Every turn, inside or outside, attitude or arabesque, etc. has a rhythm to it. You need to keep that rhythm in your head - in your muscle memory - so you always do the same thing. But what is in your head is not necessarily in someone else's head.

On Saturday, I gave my dancers the rhythm of --

Reach

Reach the arms out

 

Look

Look at something

 

Land

Land the turn

If you can keep in your head a rhythm of Reach/Look/Land, you will have a rhythm for every single turn. My dancers reached their arms in front of them, saw what they were going to spot, and then landed the turn. Reach/Look/Land. Reach/Look/Land.

Honestly, it doesn't even matter what those three words are. They could be --

Prep/Spot/Land  

or Bend/Stretch/Bend  

or Start/Rise/End 

or Arms/Head/Knees

I prefer single syllable words because they pack a punch and are easy to recall. You just want to have a word in your brain that means - for you - what the start of the turn is, what word reminds you to focus on during the turn itself and a word that reminds you about finishing the turn.

Hope these 2 tips help you the next time you take a class or spend some time working on pirouettes. Especially now while you are home without a mirror, it's important to develop proper muscle memory. When you do get back to the studio, you will find turning even easier!

Happy dancing~