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.

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~

Pirouette technique tip: Don't settle!

We should never "settle" for anything, whether it's a bad seat at the theater, a lukewarm cup of coffee, or a partner who lets us down (oh wow, way to lift our spirits, Leigh!).

When it comes to turning, we especially shouldn't settle:
- don't sit in your demi-plie
- don't sit back on your heels
- don't sink in your hips
- don't let your arms relax

If you settle yourself into your demi-plie, you lose the springiness, a feeling that should be like a coiled Slinky or one of those snake-in-a-can practical jokes.





If you sit back on your heels, you have a tremendous amount of weight to shift from two feet to one. Instead, feel as if you have just lowered yourself down from a releve, rolling through your demi-pointe - toe-ball-barely-heel - of each foot.

If you sink in your hips, especially into the back hip, you are throwing yourself off-balance before you have even begun the turn. Try to feel your ribcage lifting out of your pelvis, and be sure the torso is more over the front foot than the back foot.

 

If you let your arms relax and "settle" into a third position without any energy, they become decorative parts of your body rather than active participants in the turn. Always feel the energy flowing from the back through the arms into the hands and be sure to initiate the turn from the center of your back/shoulders.

By not settling into a position and instead being active in the demi-plie, you will feel lighter and you also won't have a moment of, "OhmygodnowImgoingtoturn!"

Anxiety, as we know, is a momentum killer.

Happy dancing~

Pirouette tip: use that upper back torque!

Hello beautiful dancers!

Recently I've been watching my dancers do their pirouettes en dehors and have been noticing a common issue among those whose turns are not as successful as they would like, or those who can't complete multiple turns cleanly:

They don't articulate their upper backs.

Let me clarify the difference between "winding up" for a turn and "upper back articulation."

When a teacher tells you not to wind up before you turn, usually what that means is you are twisting your entire torso and arms at the waist before flinging them around. This completely throws off your center, doesn't engage your back muscles, and causes you to spin around rather than lift up.

On the other hand, upper back articulation is when you have a slight twist in the shoulders and top third of your torso, just around your scapulae. By pulling back at the scapula and allowing a torque under the shoulders, you are engaging the back muscles and also creating a spiral effect, much like the threads on a screw.

Dancer has slight torque in upper back - note scapula of left (closing) arm. Dance Australia photo credit

A dancer who isn't using their back is probably turning as a single unit, with no energy in their arms or force in their body. Remember, you need impetus to get you moving and momentum to keep you turning. All the releves and balance in the world won't result in multiple turns if you don't initiate from somewhere in your body.

No upper back torque: this is a single unit. Mom Ballet by Megan, cc license

Next time you are practicing your en dehors turns, try this:
--from your fourth position (or fifth or second), reach the gesture arm directly in front of you and the closing arm directly out to the side.
--pull back the scapula of the closing arm and feel the gesture arm stretch even farther away from your body. You should feel the shoulders twist toward that closing arm - but nothing else! Don't allow your torso or waist to twist. This is only in the upper back.
--when you release those arms for a turn, pull back from the scapula of the gesture arm and you should feel more force propel you as you pull the arms in. As long as you are pushing UP from the floor to a very high releve, you will achieve a pirouette rather than a spin.

Try it! And good luck! Happy dancing~

Don't turn with your butt!

How's that for a headline? Grabs your attention, eh?

Today's Pirouette Tip comes courtesy of a number of my students of all skill levels. I noticed a tendency among them to initiate their en dehors pirouettes with their derrieres which results in:

--a sinking in the center of the body like a fallen souffle
--drooped arms and a collapsing of the pirouette's integrity
--a lowered heel so the turn becomes more like a spin
--"kneeing" the turn so the knee is in front of the body during the rotation instead of turned out to the side

There are 2 main reasons for this occurrence:

1. Pirouette anxiety which prevents you from taking the "leap of faith" required to fully stack your head, shoulders, torso, hips, etc. all the way over your leg.
2. Lack of strength in your glutes and core to hold the external rotation and press the floor up and away from you rather than in a circular motion.

Are you doing this? How do you know if you are?

Q. Are you falling out of your turn?
Q. Are you unable to complete more than one turn?
Q. Does your support knee bend during the turn?
Q. Is your passe knee in front of you instead of the side?
Q. Do you sink instead of float?

Honestly, a well-aligned pirouette is the best feeling in the world! You float, you're lifted, you feel...well, you just feel right. That's not very technical but for anyone who has completed even a single pirouette correctly, you know you have done it right.

So how do we stop doing this? A few tips:

1. Strengthen your core and glutes so they will keep you lifted during the entire turn. Exercises are found all over the web but they can include planks, sit-ups and push-ups, squats, etc.
2. Push the floor away with your entire foot when you start the turn.
3. Use the external rotation at the tops of your thighs in your 4th position to work like a screw going straight up.
4. DO NOT initiate the turn with your butt.
5. Leave the passe knee behind as you turn; feel it rotate as you press it back in opposition to the opposing shoulder, e.g. right knee & left shoulder.
6. RELAX...don't hold your breath before you start the turn. Exhale instead. Create a rhythm in your pirouette from plie to releve to plie.

Technique talk! Three tips...plus one more!

Hello beautiful dancers!

I say a LOT of things in class, especially when I'm searching for just the right image to help a student grasp a concept that is elusive or otherwise challenging. Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes not. One visual image might help one student while it does nothing for another.

Here are a few that I think could be helpful to students but each didn't warrant an entire blog post.

1. Grab the floor with the pads of your toes
The image here is to help you with balance en releve. We think so much about pulling up in our quads and hamstrings, engaging our core muscles, and lifting our backs when we go up on demi-pointe, but we often neglect the toes themselves. You should be aiming to touch all ten of them on the floor (even if the baby toes don't make it all the way) and gripping the floor with the little pads under them. This will help keep you connected to the floor all the way through your feet in one long line.

2. Think of your 5th position like a pair of scissors
We sometimes forget the fifth position (or any position) begins not in our feet but at the tops of our legs. If you think of your legs like scissors, the sharpest point is not at the ends but where the blades connect near the handle, right? Right! That's what you're cutting with: the tops of your legs. Each time you recover from a demi-plie or perform a step like glissade, imagine that the inner thighs - the sharpest blades- are slicing the air.

3. Point your foot beyond your toes
How many times have you heard your teacher say, "Point your toes!" I can't believe how many times I have yelled it out, at no one in particular, "Point!" But really, what happens when someone screams that at you? Your toes probably curl up in your shoes or you sickle your foot. Instead, if you think about pointing beyond your foot, into the space past your foot, you will actually be stretching the entire leg/calf/ankle/arch/foot/toes, not just pointing your toes.

4.  Spot with your fingertips on pirouettes
This applies to pirouettes en dehors or en dedans that are performed with arms held in first position, either crossed or rounded. So many times we start a turn with our arms held properly but as we begin to move, we leave them behind or they crumple into a weak position at our waist or open up, etc. While I instruct students to "bring your arms with you" as they turn, I think another helpful approach is to imagine your fingertips are spotting as well. This will naturally bring the closed first position around as you turn.

Hope these tips help you! Try them and let me know! Happy dancing~

Retire v. Passe

What are you talking about, Leigh?

When a dancer pulls the foot of her gesture leg up to the knee of her support leg, this can alternately be called retire or passe. The two look exactly the same but are, in fact, quite different.

Huh? What's the difference?

Think of retire as a position while passe is an action. Retire means to withdraw or "draw up." Passe means passing, as if you are passing through something.

Still doesn't mean anything to me. Why do I need to know this?

It's important to understand the difference so you know when to apply each to what you're doing. For instance, in an adagio, you might think of the gesture leg moving through passe as you develop it en avant. In this case, it is an active part of the movement, rather than a static pose. However, if you were performing a pique turn, you would bring the leg up to the position of retire and think of holding it in that position as you pirouette.

Speaking of pirouette...which am I using?

Both. Kind of. Simultaneously. First, regardless of your preparation for your pirouette en dehors, you take a demi-plie and spring up to your releve on the support leg. The gesture leg draws up to retire and you think of this as the shape in which you will be rotating. BUT! During the turn, you need to keep that gesture leg active so while it is in the retire position, it is actually passe in that the knee is continuing to press back (as you "open the door") and maintaining turnout at the top of the thigh. It does indeed "pass through" just before you finish the turn and roll down to your final pose.

 Anything else you want to say on this topic?

Yes! No matter which you word you use, be sure to keep the hip down, avoid sickling the foot of the gesture leg, and pull up the quads/kneecaps/hamstrings of the support leg. And one more thing...

...happy dancing~

Friday Favorites: Pirouette tips!

As many of you know, I love studying pirouettes and I'm fascinated by the science of turns.

The basics: Alignment, momentum, controlled landing.

The finer details: Spotting and arms.

The necessities: Strong ankles, strong core, strong back.

I was watching a group of my students turning this week and was surprised by the number of them that were hopping on their landing.

(NB: this is different from hopping during a turn. In that case, the most likely culprit is a bent knee or lack of spotting.)

Landing a pirouette is tricky stuff. I always tell my students not to wait until the last second to think about the finish. Many students do a single or double rotation and then suddenly slam on the brakes which, like traveling in a car or plane, usually results in a bumpy landing.

courtesy Chloe Smith, Creative Commons license

There are a couple of ways to approach the end of a pirouette:

1. Anticipate the finish by rolling down at the 3/4 mark, rather than waiting until a complete turn is made.

2. Complete the turn in the "up" position; that is, finish in retire on a high releve and then roll down to your fifth or fourth position.

In either case, it's crucial that you roll down through the foot and don't simply drop the weight.

From my observations, students hop down from pirouette because they lose their turnout which is typically a result of a change in their vertical alignment (that long straight pole from top of head through spine down to center of the support leg).

You change your vertical alignment when:

A. Your core collapses. Solution: hold your abdominals up and maintain a strong connection between ribs and hips.

B. Your pelvis tilts and doesn't recover. Solution: don't let your lower back hyperextend as you reach your passe leg to the floor. Stay pulled up the front of your body.

C. Your ankles roll. Solution: maintain a high releve and roll through your entire foot. Practice ankle strengthening exercises outside of class, including springing up and rolling down from a passe releve.

D. You don't bring your arms around with you in the turn. Solution: keep the shape of the arms throughout the entire turn and only open them when you want to finish the turn.

One last thing to consider: pirouettes, especially multiple pirouettes, are not rigid shapes rotating in space. Minor adjustments must be made during a turn, whether that means pulling in or opening the arms, pulling up the abdominals or engaging the knee and heel to stay in a high releve.

Happy turning, beautiful dancers~

Technique Tip: Stack your pirouette with boxes of kittens!

When we talk about alignment for pirouettes, we often use the visual image of a long pole representing the spine. We don't want the spine to bend in the middle - that's our strong core that we need to maintain the proper shape that allows us to turn smoothly and quickly.

(A food analogy: don't be the cooked linguine noodle; be the dried one fresh out of the box. Hmm, am I hungry this morning?)

Don't be mushy!

Do be firm!

But there is another way to visualize our bodies for pirouettes: stacked boxes.

Imagine your body as 3 boxes on top of each other (head, torso and hips). You want to keep the boxes balanced evenly. If one is off the edge (e.g. your chin is pulled back or jutted far forward, your rib cage is sticking out, your pelvis is behind your heels, and so on), it will threaten to collapse when you take it en releve.

Remember: releve is a precarious place for your body to be. To be stable and steady, everything needs to be aligned properly.

Next time you work on pirouette, try to visualize your body as 3 boxes filled with kittens (why kittens? because they love boxes and because they move around a lot which makes them hard to control, much like your body!).

Kittens! In a box!

If you can keep the boxes steady - and the kittens inside them quiet and still - you will have an easier time balancing them. This visual image will help remind you to push UP to releve rather than forward because you sure don't want to toss those kittens from side to side!

During the turn, hold your arms steady (maybe you even think about wrapping your arms around your kittens!), and maintain the shape of the 3 boxes.

On the finish, roll down smoothly and evenly, and don't disrupt the kittens in the boxes. You don't want to finish abruptly and throw one of the boxes off the center. Kittens everywhere!

Happy dancing~

See, Spot, Turn - Spotting Techniques for Pirouettes

HELLO, TURN TUESDAY!

 I confess to being a pirouette-aholic. I love to study pirouettes: how to make them better and stronger. I love watching good turners and examining the minute details of their alignment, momentum, and spotting. I do this "pirouette recon" so I can share the information with the students in my workshops. I want to give them more tools to fix their turns.

We all have good turn days and bad ones but instead of throwing up our hands and saying, "Oh well, the pirouette gods are not smiling upon me today," we should be asking ourselves the specifics of "Why?"

Why are we falling forward or back?

Why are we not completing a full rotation (or 2 or 10)?

Why are we getting dizzy?

In my most recent workshop, I tackled spotting, which is the bane of many dancers' existence, especially students who come to ballet later in life. Frankly it's easier to get dizzy when you're an adult, harder to just "go for it" and throw caution to the wind. Adults think about falling and are generally uncomfortable with being dizzy. Kids, on the other hand, have far less trouble with that! (See also, amusement park rides)

The 3 L's of Spotting: Loose, Look, Linger

1. Keep a LOOSE neck - in order to spot properly, your neck needs to be relaxed and not tense. Shoulder rolls and neck rolls definitely help to remind us that our heads do not sink directly into our shoulders. Try to keep your shoulders down and allow your neck to relax so it doesn't turn the head as one unit with the upper torso.

2. Actually LOOK at something - you need to truly see an object in order to spot it. Some dancers sort of glance in a direction without actually seeing something there which makes it harder to spot cleanly. This then throws off their turns as they lose their spots. Focus on a singular object (for some, it helps to spot close to them while for others, it helps to see something farther away) and don't lose sight of it.

3. Allow your spot to LINGER - once you see something, grab onto it and don't let go. Your chin needs to remain level in order for your spot to stay on an object. If you tilt your chin up or down, it's harder to remain fixed on an object because your head does not swivel on your neck smoothly. It needs to compensate and then it often comes "unglued."

In my recent research, I read a comment from a teacher that spotting is intended to trick the body into thinking that it's not moving because when it realizes that it's moving, it wants to do other things - like stop turning! I think that's when people tend to simply drop their heels or their arms. They realize they are moving so they do the first thing that seems natural, which is to stop.

If you want smooth pirouettes, aim high: keep your gaze at releve level, see an object, hold it with your gaze, allow the body to float around, and then quickly find the object again.

And relax...happy turning~

Important info for my students

1. I've added the March workshops at Vonder Haar to my website, so you can sign up for them in advance. They are:

3/5 contemporary ballet
3/12 pique and lame duck turns
3/19 pointe/variation
3/26 pas de chat & grand assemble

All Saturday workshops are at Vonder Haar in La Canada from 11:30AM-12:30PM and are limited to 12 students with a minimum of 4. The cost is $17. You can sign up in advance for all of my workshops being offered at both Dance Arts Academy and at Vonder Haar Center at my website here.

2. As of March 1st, the price of a technique class will be $16. A 5-class card will be $75 and a 10-class card will be $140. Note: my class cards do not expire so if you'd like, you can purchase a card at the current price even if you do not need it yet.

  Happy dancing~

Turn tip Tuesday!

Okay, okay, it's not Tuesday but I didn't want to wait til next week.

When I do workshops and teach in class, I talk a lot about arms: how to engage the back muscles, avoid lifting with the shoulders, keep a shape to them, etc.

But placement is critical. If they are too low (i.e. at your waist), they drag you down and make you collapse in on yourself. If they move and if you can't maintain their placement as you turn, you lose the aerodynamics that comes from the centrifugal force of your body moving around a pivot point.

Typically, an unsuccessful turn looks like this: a dancer does a lovely demi-plie in 4th position, arms are stretched out and to the sides, and then when she goes to releve, they drop down. In other words, as she rises, the arms lower.

No. Don't do that.

Instead, bring your body up to meet your arms.

1. Find the placement of the arms opposite the center of your breastbone (usually this is the ideal position but yours may vary slightly higher or lower) and hold them in a round 1st position or slightly crossed if you are doing Balanchine style turns.

2. Take your 4th position demi-plie or long lunge (again, if you are studying Balanchine or are doing an en dedans pirouette) and stretch your arms as usual.

3. When you go en releve, you bring your leg to its position (retire, attitude, etc.) and rise up to meet your arms. Do not drop the arms as you go up.

Easy-peasy, yes? Ha! Never. Turns are never easy but this small change in your arms will make a BIG difference in your turns. You will not collapse the abdomen or hips; you will not drag down your body, weighing it down so the turn won't be completed; and you will keep a long straight spine which aids tremendously in multiple turns.

Hope this helps! Happy dancing~

Pirouette Tip! Using the Spiral

We're always looking for new ways to approach our turns and believe me, I know there are a million tips I can offer my students. Each element of a turn (alignment, momentum, and spotting) has multiple ways to be broken down.

Today I offer The Spiral as a visual image for you.

What it is: a circular, centrifugal motion that pulls you around and up, rather than simply around.

How to find it:
A) When you are in your deep demi-plie (it works best from a fourth position plie but can also be effective from a long lunge ), widen the tops of your legs as much as possible and hold the plie with the muscles below your derriere and inner thighs.
B) In the mirror, watch the space between the tops of your legs in your plie and keep it as wide and open as you can for as long as you can when you start the turn. Don't squeeze the space as you releve!

How to use it: Imagine your body spinning upward from the center, beginning with your demi-plie, all the way up to the tops of your legs, through your spine, the back of your neck and out the top of your head.

If you do this properly, you will be accessing and engaging muscles you don't think to use, namely the small muscles under your derriere and top of the inner thighs. You want to initiate the turn with these muscles, rather than with the quads and hamstrings (which you will of course engage during the turn and to sustain your balance).

Happy dancing!

Imagining yourself to multiple pirouettes

How can I do more than one turn? Tips please!

Years ago I had a friend who would dream of doing triple pirouettes and then in class the next day, she would perform them flawlessly! The trouble was, she couldn't ever control her dreams so her triples felt like they were simply good luck.

But that doesn't mean you can't create successful multiple pirouettes through imagery. In fact, that is one of the best ways.

Picture yourself in the proper alignment:
--long spine and neck
--arms in a held position
--knee in a perfect retire 
--hips lifted
--back wide

Imagine that picture turning very fluidly. Your head spots rhythmically, once, twice, or more. You're not flinging yourself around using your arms or your knee, right? Nope! Not in your perfect picture!

Then create the picture in the studio. Stand in retire and see what the image of yourself looks like. Place your hips and arms and head correctly; get over your leg on a releve.

On the turn, take that one step further: actually look for that picture in the mirror each and every time you hit en face. If you see your arms to the side (you are leaving them behind in the turn) or your leg is below the knee or turned in, then you will have a harder time doing more than one turn consistently. Stop, readjust and try it again.

NB: This is simply ONE tip for multiple turns. There are hundreds more. But the number one piece of advice I give students who want to turn more fluidly and consistently? Breathe!

Happy dancing~

Friday turn tips - embiggen yourself!

Happy Independence Day, beautiful dancers!

Here's a pirouette thought as you head into your holiday weekend (starting today! and by the way, I am teaching an Intermediate level ballet class this morning at Le Studio in Pasadena, 10-11:30AM):

MAKE YOURSELF BIGGER

As I often remind people, there are a zillion ways to approach turns and I am never going to tell you my way of turning is better than anyone else's but I will say this...I am fascinated by the mechanics of turns (and pointe work, but that's another subject) so I am always looking for tips and techniques I can pass on to my students because pirouettes can make people so anxious - I know because I am one of them.

So you may have been taught to fold your arms across your chest, a la Balanchine, or to carry them at your waist but no matter how you do it, you want to be as aerodynamic as possible.  I suggest you approach this by thinking BIG.

It feels counter-intuitive to be big, especially when you think about ballet dancers as delicate or dainty and when you want to go around many, many times. But watch an ice skater when she turns on her blades: she spins - she wants to spin - so she pulls herself in, arms tucked closely to her body, and she makes herself very small.  This is the opposite of a pirouette. A spin is not a turn.

How to be big:

--Keep your arms VERY wide, as wide and as round as you can and try to match your fingertips together at the center of your chest, at breastbone level, not waist.
--Feel your back expand, breathe through your whole ribcage.
--Open your leg in the retire position very flat and wide and press your knee back as far and as flat as it can but do not let it turn in or get tucked close to your standing leg.
--Keep your shoulders down but not rounded; think of them pressing back in opposition to your knees and hips.
--Imagine yourself taking up more space in the room, not less.

This is one of those times I can absolutely promise you that your turns will improve. I promise!  Get those arms up and round and think big and open, not tight and closed, and your pirouettes will much cleaner and more controllable.

Happy Fourth and happy dancing~

Friday turn tips: en dedans pirouettes

Most often, when students ask for help with their pirouettes, they are asking about en dehors or "outside" turns. But there are so many other types of turns to work on!  Like one of my favorites, the pirouette en dedans or "inside" turn.

An en dedans pirouette refers to a turn in which the movement of the body is toward the standing leg, rather than away from it, as in an outside turn. As always, there are different schools of thought when it comes to turn preparation. Some instructors teach an inside turn with a fondu a la seconde before the snap to retire. Others, like me, teach a straight snap up to retire from the fourth position.

Here are my general guidelines when teaching en dedans pirouettes:

1. Start in a long lunged fourth position.  Most of the weight is on the front leg which is bent into a deep demi-plie. The back leg is very straight and the heel is pressed into the floor.

2. The arm preparation is "same arm same leg." In other words, if the left leg is in front in fondu, then the left arm is curled into 3rd position. The right arm is held to second position.

3. Some teachers ask students to open their front arm, to lead with it, but I prefer that you keep the arm curled in front of you and then snap the second-position arm in to meet it at the moment that you snap the leg into retire.

4. Take an extra deep demi on the front leg as you push off the floor with the back foot. Try to avoid hiking the hip in an effort to bring the leg under you. Remember: the deeper the demi, the more time you have to bring the back foot up to your knee.

5. Simultaneously snap the open arm in to the closed arm as you bring the back foot to the front of the knee of the standing leg and push up into releve. Toes at the front of the knee always. Always. It is very rare that you will bring the toe to the back of the knee, although it may be choreographed that way.

6. Most often your pirouette en dedans will be a 1.5 turn. In other words, you will likely be turning from one croise position to another croise rather than en face or efface. Keeping this in mind, be sure to spot 1.5 turns from where you start, not just one.

7. Try to keep the toe at the front of the knee and slide it down through sousous before finishing in 5th position. Very rarely you will finish in a 4th position although that is possible (see below).

Happy dancing and turning!

Post 100! Pirouettes!

Let's discuss pirouettes. Everyone's favorite thing to do, right? When little kids come to class for the very first time, they always want to spin around and around because it's so much fun. As adults, we associate multiple turns with superior dancing skills. Both kids and adults are right: turns are fun and they do mark a dancer as skilled.

Unlike most other aspects of ballet, good pirouettes are a product of physics, not philosophy. The emotional core of a dance, the connection of dancer to audience, can be conveyed through expressive gestures and facial movements. Turns, however, are strictly virtuosic. When a ballerina does 32 fouettes, we applaud the technique not the passion, although certainly her passion for dance forced her to practice those pirouettes!

There are so many ways to teach turns, so many hints different people give that I don't proclaim to have the absolute best way to turn. Honestly, each person requires different critique and usually in person. That being said, there are certain things that are necessary in order to turn properly:

1. A sharp head spot.
Practice for beginners: stand in front of your bathroom mirror, hold your own gaze, then begin to twist your shoulders to the right and continue walking around yourself, snap your head back to the mirror as quickly as you can and then go in the opposite direction. Try not to lift your head in a circle but keep it level as your shoulders and body twist.

Practice for intermediates: perform a series of increasingly fast chainee turns across the floor, keeping your arms in tight and your feet in fifth position. This will help get your head around fast and isolate it from your shoulders.

2. A fast passe.
Practice for beginners: stand at the barre or a chair that is balanced with weight so you can press down on it. Holding the barre with two hands, stand in fourth position with your right foot in back, do a deep demi plie, then very sharply, bring the right leg up to passe (a retire position) with the toes under the front of the left knee. Hold for two counts and then put it back down to the back. Do this several times and then repeat with the left. When you feel stable during those 2 counts, try the same exercise but release the arms from the barre and pull them to first position. Always try to hold for as long as you can without tipping over.

Practice for intermediates: in the center, do half turns from fourth position. Stand in fourth, take a very deep demi-plie, then lift the leg to passe, balance and land facing the back of the room with the leg behind you, and gently lower it to the floor in demi plie. Then do the same from the back to the front. By doing only 1/2 turns you will be forced to concentrate on the leg pulling up very quickly so you can balance and not on the turn itself.

3. A strong port de bras.
Practice for beginners: pushups. I'm serious! Beginner students have a tendency to let their arms hang by their sides or curl their shoulders in as they turn. They need to feel the energy from their back muscles through their arms to their fingers. This suggestion comes from a teacher I admire, Melissa Waters, who does the same with her young students. Face the barre, about 2 feet away, feet in parallel. Place your hands on the barre as if they were in second position, then do very slow pushups. This will strengthen your back muscles and your biceps, but also will isolate those back muscles so you feel where your arms need to be controlled.

Practice for intermediates: keeping your arms in a wide second position, perform chainee turns across the floor and slowly bring your arms in to first position as your turns speed up. You will feel the muscles in your back bringing your arms in, instead of your shoulders. This is the feeling you want to have as you pirouette - that your arms are being controlled by your back.

This is just the tip of the turn iceberg! There are many, many other things to keep in mind during turns. I will probably revisit this subject again and again. Questions?

Happy turning~