Why do we do grand plies? PLUS: Why Leigh gives super fast degages at the barre

You can always count on people who love ballet, dancers or teachers or simply avid balletomanes, to argue about the art form. Is that a tour jete or a grand jete en tournant? A pas de chat or saut de chat? Do you point or flex the foot in a frappe en releve?

Lately I have heard the argument against doing grand plie at the barre.
"They are too hard on your knees!"
"They are not used in the center!"
"They are really hard to do correctly and I don't feel like doing (or teaching) them!"

Those are all valid arguments. As a teacher of many levels of dancers, I can say unequivocally that grand plie is not easy to teach, to learn or to re-learn, which many of us do if we weren't taught correctly or if we skim through them without actually using the correct muscles. And let's face it, plies at the barre are often an exercise people do by rote. If it's the first or second exercise at the barre, you may not even be thinking about them! You're thinking about where you parked your car, what you might have left at the office, and if you need to stop at Trader Joe's on the way home. So plies are an afterthought.

However, I would argue there are two very valid reasons to do grand plie:
1. Jumps
2. Stability

The first is obvious: when we do deep knee bends, we are building our quads and our hamstrings, both of which we really need if we want to jump off the ground. Of course, we move through our demi-plie at the beginning and end of each jump, but the power has to come from somewhere!

The second is less-obvious: when we are in the center performing an adagio, we need to stabilize our center so we don't wobble and our knees don't buckle. When we talk about holding our core muscles (front, back and sides of our torso) we really want to engage the very deep muscles in our abdomen called the rectus abdominis, which are two long muscles running down the center front of your body, side by side, and the transverse abdominis, which are under our obliques and connect on the sides of the pelvis. These muscles are critical to holding us steady away from the barre. And what's a great way to engage them? Grand plie! How, you ask? When you perform a demi-plie at the barre, it's easy to correct the pelvic tilt but when you go just a bit deeper into a grand plie, it's that much more challenging to keep your pelvis aligned properly. To do it correctly requires that you engage the muscles very deep in your center.

Source: Wikipedia, CC lic

NB: correct pelvic posture is important to fully engage the deep abdominal muscles and strengthen them for center stabilization so be sure to either ask your teacher for guidance or take a quick peek at your profile in the mirror to see what's happening in your pelvic region. If you're tilting (i.e. spilling your cup of water!), engage the muscles and align them properly.

Source: Wikipedia, CC lic (NB, the darkest shade of red is the Transversus Abdominis)

Now, do you really need to do a super deep grand plie all the way to the floor? Absolutely not. And it's very difficult for many dancers to do that and maintain the turnout in their hips without forcing it. You should take your grand just to the point before you begin to turn in. You need to be able to lower yourself to this position and then recover from it without turning the knees in and allowing the hips to swing back behind the heels. Again, this may require a bit of guidance from your teacher, especially if you're not exactly sure what it should feel like. That's what we're here for! We want you properly aligned and building strength!

It's up to you and your knees (and your teacher!) as to whether you do a grand plie and there may be lots of good reasons for you personally to not attempt them but if there isn't and you find that you're wobbly in the center or you can't get off the ground in big jumps, consider working on your grand plie.

BONUS!

QUESTION from the class: "Leigh, why do you give such fast degage combinations at the barre? They're hard and confusing!"

Good question! No matter what level class you take with me, I will give you a fast degage combo at the barre. You might have trouble with it because of the speed but I want you to try it anyway. Why?

1. Step out of your comfort zone! We all have a tempo at which we like to perform certain steps (for instance, I like slow grand battements so I can get my leg high which takes time) so if you push yourself a little bit, it will be that much easier the next time you try it. This goes for anything! Try for the triple turn when you want a double, etc.

2. Focus on speed for allegro. Fast small steps in the center require quick feet and fast reflexes. If we do a fast combo at the barre and constantly shift our weight from side to side, that's going to have a direct impact on our movements in the center later. We will be more likely to be able to shift our weight and our muscles will fire up faster.

3. Engage the inner thighs. Slow degages tend to use the quads more than the inner thighs, especially if the accent is on the degage extension rather than the close to the position. When we do a quicker action, we are accenting the close, which requires us to use the muscles that close the thighs together. Again, this has a direct application to our allegro combinations in the center.

Do I expect you to perform a super fast combination perfectly? It would be nice, sure, but it takes time to feel comfortable or at least allow yourself to not be perfect. You will flub it and feel like your feet and toes are made of concrete but the more frequently you do them, the more you will find the time to work the feet properly.

Happy dancing~

2019 is The Year of the Derriere!

Happy New Year!

So much ahead for 2019: new company members, new show, new choreography and music and theaters and classes and outreach and--

Hold onto your derrieres, people! Don't get ahead of yourself - get behind yourself!

(Ha! See what I did there?)

That's right, I want to talk about behinds, butts, derrieres. That fleshy part on your backside that is ever-important for ballet is also called your gluteus maximus. Above it and off to the side is your gluteus minimus and on top, closer to the spine is your gluteus medius. The maximus is the one we use most often and we casually call it (them because there are two of them) your glutes. Along with your hamstrings (those long ropy muscles at the back your thighs) and your quadriceps (the big-bellied muscles at the front of your thighs), your glutes are responsible for all kinds of things in ballet, the most important of which is stability.

Häggström, Mikael (2014). "Medical gallery of Mikael Häggström 2014". WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.008. ISSN 2002-4436. Public Domain. or By Mikael Häggström, used with permission. - Image:Gray434.png

When you engage the muscles of your glutes, hamstrings and quads, you become an incredibly stable force, whether that stability is being used for adagio balances, multiple turns, or general pointe/releve work.

In the average everyday world, we use our quads a lot: when we walk down the street, climb the stairs, drive a car. We are most often engaging those muscles, which makes a lot of sense. They're big and they're in front. They take control. But when we do that, we don't develop our hamstrings as well as they could be developed so in exercises that require equal engagement, we find ourselves weak in the back of the thighs. That weakness translates into poor stability.

Are you weak in the hamstrings? Try this:
Stand on two feet in parallel.
Lift one foot off the ground.
Can you balance?

Want to challenge yourself further? Try this:
Stand on a pillow on two feet in parallel.
Lift one foot off the pillow.
Can you balance?

Now let's look further back, into our glutes. Those muscles are big but they might not be as strong as they could be because you are engaging your hip flexors too much (those are the muscles at the front of the hip that crease our legs at the hip joint). We use those a lot when we walk and when we drive and frankly, when we sit at our computers for hours at a time. The muscles underneath don't get used as much so when we need them to engage and be strong, they are weak and wobbly.

Are you weak in the glutes? Try this:
Stand in first position turned out.
Bring one leg up to retire and hold it.
Are you wobbling? How long can you hold that position without wobbling?

Want to challenge yourself further? Try this:
Stand in fifth position.
Releve to passe and close the leg to the back; repeat and bring it to the front.
How many times can you do this without collapsing?

Hey, I'm as guilty of this weakness as anyone else! I have to tell my brain to activate my glutes just about every time I go for a releve. It's a hard muscle to use consistently. But when I do, oh boy, can I balance!

There are loads of exercises for strengthening your glutes, hamstrings and quadriceps. Some of you may choose to go to the gym and use machines there. Some of you might cross train with yoga, Pilates or Gyrotonics. If you don't want to do anything like that, just be mindful of those muscles when you are at the barre. You can engage them as soon as you hit your warmup stretch and plies.

Whatever you do, just be sure to incorporate some exercises for those muscles or they won't be there when you need them.

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~