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!~

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~