3 Technique Tips to make your Ballet Better!

Happy Friday, beautiful dancers!

It's been a while since I've posted some handy-dandy technique tips so to make up for that, here are 3 that I think will help you:

1. When stacking your boxes, watch that middle one! It could sink!

When we talk about aligning the body for balance, we often use the imagery of stacking your head on your torso on your hips, don't we? Well, that's not exactly accurate. That picture assumes all 3 boxes are the same size and shape, right? But in truth, a more realistic image is that your middle box - your torso - is solid while the lower one - your hips - is open. If you're not careful, the center box could sink right into it.

What does it look like when your torso drops into your hips? If you are en releve, you will feel your heels drop closer to the floor, your knees might buckle, and your elbows will collapse (if they are over your head, you will see the circle flatten and if they are in first position in front of you, the elbows will be lower than the wrists). If you are flat, you might notice it's hard to shift your leg out to a tendu without pulling your hips back behind your heels, and you might feel your ribcage soften and your shoulders roll forward.

How do we fix this? Engage the core! (I imagine Captain Picard from the Starship Enterprise) 

Engage the core! Make it so! (Getty Images)

If you activate the muscles of the torso - back, sides, and abdominals - you will keep yourself pulled up and feel a lift out of your hips. Your middle box will be balanced over the lower box and you will find it much easier to hold a releve longer and to do things like chaine turns and so on.

2. Use your small muscles to find your turnout and your big ones to hold it!

Do you ever feel a soreness deep in your hips after class, like your hip sockets are inflamed and sensitive? More likely than not, you are overusing your deep external rotators (the Deep 6 muscles are: piriformis, obturator internus, obturator externus, gemellus inferior, gemellus superior, and the quadratus femoris). These muscles are used to move the hip joint by externally rotating the femur head. Many dancers not only use these muscles to rotate the bones but then they use them to hold the turnout, especially when they are at the barre or center, balancing on one leg.

What does it look like when you're gripping your rotators to hold your turnout? Well, you might not actually see it but you will certainly feel it after class! A teacher looking closely might notice that your derriere is tucked under you and your hips are tilted when you are doing an extension; they might also see that you are sinking into the support leg and your torso might be collapsed slightly. Or they might see nothing at all!

External rotators (Courtesy Wikipedia)

 How do we fix this? First of all, you need to access those Deep 6 to rotate the femur but to hold the rotation, use your big muscles: your glutes, quadriceps and hamstrings. Your gluteus maximus is the big muscle of your behind and the gluteus medius is just above at your lower back and protecting your hip bones. These muscles are the ones that will help stabilize you when you are balancing on one leg in the center during adagio and turns, while the quads and hamstrings will hold your turnout once you find it. The key is to not grip: gripping is the enemy of smooth turns and big jumps.

3. Take jazz class for isolations!

One of the things dancers, especially ballet dancers, are known for is control. We control every muscle, every ligament and bone. We tilt our head just so, and we use the pinky toe to spring off for a pirouette or jump. When we start to lose our balance, we do an internal spot-check of every. single. thing. affecting our bodies. It requires us to isolate different parts of our body, even the very smallest of them, to make micro-adjustments.

Yet, we never do isolations! Jazz class is where dancers do this, not ballet. In jazz, we spend lots of time doing series of body isolations: head, shoulders, rib cage and hips, primarily, but we also do head rolls, shoulder rolls, hip rolls, and so on. We connect hips and head in different ways than in ballet. Our arms might move en dehors over our heads when we do a balance rather than in middle third or we might swivel our hips before we do a pirouette. These small movements give jazz its sharpness, its rhythm, and its style.

Dogs doing head isolations (photo InterMountain Pet Hospital)

So why don't we do them in ballet class? You know, I don't know the answer to that other than: it has never been done like that. In most classes, a ballet warm-up might include gentle shoulder rolls and head circles to smoothly warm up the neck and back. We might also do some forced arch releves but that's the extent of it. But how valuable would it be to be able to move a shoulder back or forward during an arabesque or to shift the hip from side to side while balancing? 

My recommendation: get to a jazz class and start working on those isolations. Not only will isolation exercises help you access muscles in different ways, they will also get your head spot sharp for turns - you know we are always looking for ways to improve our turns!

Happy dancing, everyone!

Shoulders forward & the importance of incidental activity

As we close out the year (good riddance, 2020!), I want to offer a final technique tip and an observation.

First the tip:

Keep your shoulders in front of your hips during pirouettes, penchees, promenades, jumps, and generally speaking, during pointe work.

What do I mean?

Grab a mirror and observe your alignment in profile when you stand up straight. Where are your shoulders in relation to your hips: behind your hips, centered over them, or in front of them? Most likely they are centered over them. If you have a tendency to slouch, your shoulders may be behind your hips.

When we rise onto demi-pointe or pointe, we often pull our shoulders back or allow them to droop; this includes turns and pushing off the floor for jumps. 

Now, still in profile, lift your ribcage up out of your waist and gently move your torso forward. Note that your hips are still over your heels and your pelvis is in a neutral position, nothing is tucked or gripped. This is where you want to be when you prepare for a pirouette or take an arabesque into a penchee or even when you push up off the ground for a jump.

What do I not mean?

Don't roll your shoulders or hike them up to your ears. Also, try not to hyperextend your lower back and avoid splaying the ribs.

(This image was made by Loadmaster (David R. Tribble) CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Please note the dancer's shoulder placement in the arabesque to the left.

(Ron Kroon / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Please note the placement of the shoulders in this grand jete to the right.

What will this do for you?

For one thing, it helps stabilize you, balancing your natural tendency to fall back as you go up. And for another it will help you engage your back muscles and keep you lifted and not sinking.

And now...an observation about the influence of the pandemic on our bodies (as if we didn't need to know about yet another negative effect!):

When incidental activity is diminished, our baseline of movement is affected. 

What do I mean by "incidental activity?" 

That's the walking from our cars to the grocery store, the running into the bank to deposit a check, the filling up of our gas tanks, the casual jostle walking among crowds at an event or in a school or a theater or on public transportation...all these things contribute to the baseline of our movement including balance. 

Remember before the pandemic when you used to walk around with a purse or shoulder bag or backpack? You would have to balance that on your shoulder and move it with you when you moved, from side to side or up and down. That's movement. That's balance. That's activity. When you're not doing that as frequently, you have far fewer chances to practice.

In your homes, it's a quick walk to the restroom or to get some water but at the dance studio, maybe it was down the hall. That's extra movement, extra walking you did.

In our Zoom environments, we sit to talk to people because if we stand, we are at waist level with our cameras; if we move around, our microphones won't pick up our voices and our auto focus gets blurry. But these are all things we used to do when we talked to people in real life.

What is the result? And how does that affect dancing?

One thing we lose is muscle tone: all that sitting doesn't give our quads and calves and hamstrings opportunities to strengthen, nor does our core engage as frequently. When we don't walk as much, we lose our stamina and get out of breath more quickly. And when we don't have to adjust around people, we don't have chances to find our balance.

For our dancing, this means we must take extra steps in class. Even if you were taking the same number of classes as you were before, likely you are not working as hard or have the ability to do things like jumps or allegro. Our balance might not be as good because we aren't calling upon it as often. 

What can we do?

In class, we can take the time to work on balance OFF the barre when we need to engage our cores and stabilize ourselves. We can build calf and ankle strength through extra exercises. We can also do small jumps in sneakers if we don't have the correct flooring.

Outside of class, we can walk a little bit more (an extra turn around the block with the dog), maybe carry something with us so we build some upper body strength and work on balance. Hiking or carefully navigating uneven surfaces can also help us balance.

Your developpe could be better...3 tips!

Just as with pirouettes, there are so many things we can be thinking about when we do développé.

And just as with pirouettes, we can't possibly think about all of them at the same time!

So here are 3 things to focus on when you work on your développé, one for each direction. If you can make them part of your muscle memory, you can free your mind to think about other things, like choreography or performance quality:

Devant

Gamzatti Variation Classical Ballet Solo by Harclade

This means "to the front."

Think about: lower belly (that triangle-shaped area underneath your belly button).

When we talk about "lifting" the lower belly, we mean trying to keep your pelvis upright, not tilted (don't spill your cup of water!). Often when we stretch the leg to the front, we collapse our centers and the lower belly tilts backward. To compensate for this, we grab onto the barre tightly. Instead, when you are working to the front, try to imagine your lower belly flat and the cup of water you are keeping there upright. As you stretch the foot away from your center, picture the heel rotating outward to spiral out and up, not down.

A là seconde

Aurora Ballet 20120504019 by Greg Gamble

This means "to the second position" which we commonly interpret as "side."

Think about: the side of your rib cage from under the armpit to the top of the waist.

You can apply this correction when you work to the side, thinking about the "barre" side of your body. As you stretch the leg out, try to think about the opposite side of your waist lengthening and providing a strong stable complementary base to the working leg. While you do want to extend the leg as high as it can go, you also don't want to allow it to pull you off your standing leg. If you can picture yourself growing taller on both sides of your body, you can evenly extend the leg to the side without collapsing toward the barre (or in the center, you will remain upright and not fall over).

Derrière

IMG 0224 by Dubna Fantazia

This means "to the back."

Think about: working through back attitude.

I don't have eyes in the back of my head and I'm pretty sure you don't either. That's why it can be hard to stretch your leg to the back without crossing it over the heel of the standing leg or leaving it open (what we call "secabesque" when we are being silly). It's also quite easy to lose your rotation and wind up with a turned-in leg. As you develop the leg from passe, try to go through your back attitude before you completely stretch it out. This will keep your rotation and also ensure that you are not crossing it too much. It's a very 3-dimensional feeling to move through the space like this, rather than simply a straight line from the knee out.

~Happy dancing!~

The Forgotten yet Powerful Middle Back

Do you have a sagging, unengaged back?

Some signs:

You sink into your hips when you shift from two feet to one in the center (e.g. during adagio)

Your arms get left behind when you turn

Your quads and calves get tired when you jump

Your big jumps feel labored and grounded

These are just a few tell-tale signs that you're not using the middle muscles of your back. Think of the muscles in the center as the T's: Trapezius, Teres major and Teres minor. Your Traps are a pair of triangular muscles that also wrap up across the upper back but we're interested in the lower portion of the triangle. Your Teres major and minor are under and to the side of the Trapezius. You can find them if you reach under your arm pit and walk your fingers toward your spine.

By Henry Vandyke Carter, derivative work: Rafael Di Marco Barros, Public Domain

Above from Wikipedia: Posterior view of muscles connecting the upper extremity to the vertebral column. A -Trapezius, B - Teres Major, C -Teres Minor, D - Latissimus Dorsi, E - Levator Scapulae, F- Rhomboid Major

The middle muscles, like the middle child and the middle manager but not the middle of an Oreo cookie, often get neglected on pirouettes, jumps and adagio in favor of the flashier muscle groups.  We think of our quads and hamstrings on jumps, our glutes on adagio, and a whole host of things during pirouettes.

But the one thing all of those actions have in common is the mid-back. If you can engage these muscles, you will find yourself far more lifted in adagio, more suspended during turns which will allow for multiples, and lighter during jumps.

Accessing the muscles is a matter of being mindful at barre.

--When you prepare through first to a second position arm, feel the fingertips reaching out from your center and to the side.
--When you cambre forward, try not to let your shoulder roll but lengthen the spine as you tilt forward and really try to think of your middle back returning you to your neutral position.
--When you bring your arm overhead in fifth, try to initiate the movement from the middle of your back rather then your elbow or biceps.

Think of these mid-back muscles as the complement to your torso. Just as you engage your torso (your core, your center, whatever you choose to call it), you need to work the muscles on the opposite side of your body.

As you start to become more aware of those muscles (and of course, you are also incorporating the Serratus muscles we talked about in this blog post), your muscle memory will kick in when you are off the barre and moving with nothing to hold onto. These powerful muscles will provide added stability in the center.

Happy dancing~

Be bold...be big...be the bear

Beautiful dancers, if you go camping or hiking or if you live in the foothills of a mountain like my students in La Canada Flintridge, you've probably heard the advice about what to do if you are confronted by a bear.

Make yourself big.

You won't ever be bigger than a bear, unless it's a baby in which case your instinct will probably be to hug it because it will be so cute. When that adult bear rears back on its hind legs and roars at you, it will take every ounce of courage you have not to run away.

cc lic Magnus Johansson

Instead, you stand your ground, rise up on your toes and flail your arms. You rawr! back at it and show it you're not scared. (Good luck with that, btw...)

By forcing yourself to be big and tall and wide, you are defying your own anxiety about being in a frightening situation.

Which brings me to ballet. 

For many dancers, coming off the security of a barre where you might be standing behind someone who knows the combinations better than you, where you are clutching something for support, where at least one foot is on the ground all the time, is frightening.

It's scary to move and turn and jump in the center and when we feel that anxiety, we tend to make ourselves smaller. Our legs don't extend as far as they might be able to; our arms collapse over our chest and waist; our heels barely leave the floor when we jump. Our fear makes us small. The result is pirouettes that spin rather than float, terre a terre jumps, and overall weak lines in an adagio.

In a classroom, we might get away with this by telling ourselves we're just tired or we don't know the combination well enough to do it properly, or in some cases, we might say the room is too crowded and there isn't enough space to be big.

Hmmm...I call BS on that last excuse. There's always room to make yourself bigger in a crowded class: stand in the back, angle yourself in a corner, move more conscientiously of your fellow dancers.

And for the other excuses? Defy your fear. Fight your instinct.

Make yourself big.

1. When you are feeling anxious about your jumps, push yourself higher off the ground (assuming you are properly warmed-up and working through your feet). Use your center to get off the ground and propel yourself up rather than out. By jumping higher, you will give yourself more time to roll through your feet on the landing, time to straighten your knees in the air, and time to execute the steps.

2. When you are anxious about your pirouette, push to a higher releve, hold your arms higher and farther away from your body, widen your back and open your lungs. By making yourself bigger and wider and rounder in a turn, you will float more and longer and you won't spin.

3. When you fear the slow extensions of an adagio, think about starting your developpe from the top of your thigh and unfolding outward. Use your arms to lengthen your body in the space. Pull your knees up and engage your "under-buns" to stabilize yourself during a pose or promenade.

In all instances, making yourself "bigger" than you are - taller, wider, rounder, higher, longer - will help you. It will also give you more confidence when you're not feeling so secure.

cc lic State Library of Queensland

 Happy dancing~

Screws and nails - dig deep into your toolbox!

As always, I am inspired by my students to write a blog post.

Last night, I was teaching my beginners an adagio in the center, which required them to shift from two feet (fifth position) to one (a developpe en avant). What frequently happens when we do this is we allow the knee of the support leg to get soft as we move the gesture leg through developpe. It's a common problem, kind of a "sympathy" bending when one leg bends because the other is too.

I often use the imagery of a barbershop pole to imitate the spiraling action of the leg in rotation but another way to look at it is

Screw vs Nail

Reach down into your toolbox (both your literal and figurative ones) and find a nail. It's got a nice sharp end and it's super straight, which are equally good images for a long spine and alignment of torso over feet. But it's smooth, right? It has no edges, nothing to grip.

Home Depot image

Now take out your screw. It's got grooves that grip whatever it's being drilled into, yes? Whether it's a Phillips head or a flat head, it will spiral into the wood or other material and the threads of the screw will hold it into place more firmly than a smooth nail.

Home Depot image

Your legs need to be screws, not nails. They need to be threaded and grooved so they rotate down into the floor and hold very solidly. This will make your knee far more stable than just a straight nail (leg) that tends to bend or become soft during developpe or pirouette, etc.

Now add that image to your dancer's toolbox! Happy dancing~

Technique Tip: Lengthening the Waist

I always know when a blog topic is brewing when I've been talking about a thing for a couple of weeks, especially when it's a correction I've used in several different levels of my classes.

The first time I told my beginner students to think about lengthening their waists was during a fast battement degage combination. I noticed that they had a tendency to lift the side of the hip when they performed fast degages in first position. When they did this, it resulted in a shortening of the waist on one side, sort of a side crunch. I asked them to look in the mirror and do the exercise so they could see for themselves if they were lifting the leg instead of brushing it against the floor.

"Ohhh!" they all said when they saw they were indeed shortening their waists. But when they concentrated on brushing the foot against the floor and visualizing l-e-n-g-t-h-e-n-i-n-g their waists, they began performing the degages properly.

I do love those moments of revelation.

Then I realized there were many other applications for the visualization of lengthening the waist. Here are a few of them with some handy tips!

For a helpful look, I include this photo. I have no idea where it originated but I found it on a blog called Bobby Pins and Lip Gloss:

(Cropped image from website)

1. Releve - whether you are rising en pointe or in flat slippers, on two feet or one, if you think about separating the ribs when you press down into the floor, you will find your balance easier to maintain.

2. Pirouettes - with the possible exception of turns in attitude, if you focus on keeping the shoulders down but lengthening and widening your waist, you will feel more lift in turn, as well as a more "floaty" feel.

3. Grand battements - each time you execute a big kick, especially devant and a la seconde, think about that strong core and how your sides are centered and long.

4. Adagio developpes - it's hard to hold yourself steady when you are moving slowly or when you don't have a barre to hold onto. Try to visualize your waist lengthening as you shift from two feet to one and bring the leg through passe and away from you to a full developpe. This will aid in balance.

5. Pas de chat - when we bring our legs up to meet in this jump, we often do the opposite: we bring the body down to the legs instead. If we concentrate on keeping the waist long and the ribs spaced evenly, it will be easier to stay aloft and allow for room under our hips to bring the legs up to passe.

Generally speaking, for jumps and turns, engaging your torso on the front, sides, and back will aid in ballon and suspension so if we keep the shoulders down but lengthen our waists and keep space between the ribs (no, of course you're not changing the position of the ribs in relation to each other because they are bones, but you are using this as a visualization), it will a lot easier to execute them.

Now get back to class and visualize! Maybe it will make you taller too! Happy dancing~