It’s been awhile since i have posted a blog for #TechniqueTuesday, and I found this one very important to touch base on. This past weekend, I sat through roughly 400 dances, give or take a few. Of course, the competition spanned many styles – even some clogging and Irish step dance, which was refreshing to see between the ‘regular’ studio styles. As always, there was a ton of lyrical and contemporary and lots of ballet. The one thing that I am always aghast at is the lack of attention to true balletic technique in these styles, especially ballet.
You would think that if you are competing ballet, that there would be attention to the use of true turn out, not faking it from the ankle. I don’t know how many times I cringed at the sight of pique arabesques on a completely parallel foot, out fouettés a la seconde that, when dropping into the plié, I saw the knee cap pointing straight to the audience, or the developpé a la seconde that was neither parallel or turned out, but turned in. Yes…turned in, towards to center line of the body.
Growing up, the use of turn out was drilled into my brain. It is second nature. So much so that I started to walk in a turned out position. When I was a student, and even now as an adult and educator, when I sleep, I make sure my pelvis is neutral and I turn my legs out when I sleep. (I sleep on my stomach in a side attitude, basically.) I was constantly thinking about the rotation of my hips. We spent hours warming up those joints to get them nice and mobile. If our supporting legs weren’t turned out, we were reprimanded. If our hips opened up to cheat an arabesque, we were reprimanded. There was zero tolerance of such discrepancies and disrespect to the art of ballet technique, even in a lot of our jazz pieces.
As I left the auditorium Sunday night, I busted out my trusty ballet dictionary and went to see what it said about the use of turn out. My good friend Gail Grant defines turn out as “the ability of a dancer to turn his or her legs and feet to a 90-degree position. This turn our, or en-dehors, is one of the essential of the classical dance, giving the dancer freedom of movement in every direction.”
After reading that, I got even more upset at the amount of lack of turn out in these dancers. I asked myself, “Why, as a teacher, would someone not correct this issue and ultimately limit their dancers?” The Holy Grail of ballet spells it out loud and clear. Turn out improves the range of motion and movement in EVERY direction. One of the aspects of choreography that I pride myself on is giving the dancer or dancers I am working with an adequate skill set while still challenging them within the choreography set on them. I do not give them anything that isn’t as technically sound as possible for their level. Every dance does not need fouettés. Not every dancers is flexible. Not every dancers has beautiful feet. Why do we feel the need to give these lofty skills to dancers that we know are not at that level to execute these skills properly?
I constantly tell my dancers to dance with what they have today, while still striving for improvement. If you only have 35 degrees of external rotation, or turn out, I want you to use it every single last degree of that turn out. Consistency in using the turn out will build up the strength and improve your turn out. Of course, very few people will ever reach a true perfect turn out of 180 degrees. That’s not what I am asking for in a dancer. I want you to use what the good Lord gave you and use it to the best of your ability.
Teachers, I am implore you to start correcting this massive technical deficit in your dancers. Get your dancers at the barre, stand in a parallel first position, then rise to a quarter relevé, engage the tailbone and glutes and use the inner thigh to press the heels forward before lowering into their turned out first position. In their battement tendu, get them to rotate to a parallel position and back to the turned out tendu. Make sure they don’t sink into the hips. Focus on building the strength of the muscles that serve as rotators around the hip joint and in the legs. If you aren’t sure, educate yourself so you can educate your dancers. Attention to detail is imperative.
Dance is not easy. We know that. Dancers must be multitaskers. We have to think about every aspect of our body while looking graceful all at the same time. We need to know out choreography so well that our body has memorized it through muscle memory. We spend hours and hours rehearsing to perfect a three minute dance. We spend hours working on the basics, stretching and wamring up before we even dance! There is so much we have to be mindful of. It is easy to forget but you have to make a clear choice to point your feet and straighten your legs to make it a habit. Start to focus on the amount of turn out you are using.
To quote the dance movie classic, Center Stage, “Use what you have and turn out!”
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