Fouettés, yes, Virginia, there is a right way.

I know, I know, different syllabi teach fouettés different ways, but you know me, I think I'm right and some people are wrong.

I believe ballet is about beauty. One of these blogs is about that. I believe steps should  be done in the most beautiful way possible. For fouettés, and grande pirouettes, you should present the most beautiful position to the audience. For me, that's on pointe, or relevé, leg and arms a la seconde. That's a beautiful position. Stretched. Lifted. Feet pointed.

I love Russian training and style, but the traditional Russian fouetté, taking the leg directly to second in plié, en face, just isn't pretty to me. I teach spot-plié-relevé, where as soon as your spot comes around, you start to open the leg in front of you- to the corner- you open the trailing arm into second, then you swing the leg and leading arm to second as you relevé. (I'm assuming you're doing your fouettés en face. If you do them in any other direction, the process is still the same). Then you just bring your arms into first as the leg comes into retiré. This is the prettiest, to me.

It's also the most efficient. If you're on relevé in second, your movement into the pirouette position is simpler than if you have to relevé and bring your arms into first and bring the leg into retiré. Viengsay Valdez, the brilliant Cuban ballerina, has the most perfect fouetté technique I've seen. It's clean, efficient, seemingly effortless, but also powerful, athletic and beautiful.

Sure, I tell my students that they have to find the way that works for them and, if they're doing solid fouettés different than I like, I'm not going to change them. If what they're doing isn't working, however, I'll teach them my way.

Because it's beautiful.

See you in class.

Shin Splints

I have been very lucky. The only time I had really bad shin pain was when I took a student to the finals of the YAGP in New York and walked more in the first day than I had in months (nobody walks in LA). My anterior calf muscles were so sore, I couldn't sleep on my stomach because of the pressure on my shins, and I couldn't sleep on my back because the sheets hurt. Side sleeping wasn't much better.

Most dancers have had shin splints at some time. Mostly they're caused by hard landing from jumps, but it's not just the shock of a heavy or hard landing. Shin splints are inflammation of the connective muscle tissue surrounding the tibia. The major repetitive stress for dancers is jumping, but there is a more insidious cause that is part and parcel of jumping, but can aggravate the condition, even if you stop jumping.

If you roll in on your arches, it puts great stress on the same muscle tissue that bad landings affect. If you roll just taking barre, or center without jumping, your shin pain will stick around and could even get worse. I was always very careful about my placement; I never rolled in. I know, that sounds impossible, but I didn't get shin splints dancing, and in 18 years, I never had a knee injury.

Your landings should be soft and quiet, and well placed. For example, if in your garden variety grand jetés, your front leg isn't directly in front of you, when you land, not only will your heel hit the floor hard (your foot isn't really underneath the center of your body) but you'll roll in, compounding the felony. You'll be lucky if all you get are shin splints.

At the barre, you must be extremely diligent about not rolling in, for many reasons, not the least of which is to prevent shin splints and knee injuries. When jumping, you must maintain your placement/turnout in the air, just like at the barre, so that when you land, you won't roll in. If you are like many dancers, when you relevé, you lose a little turnout, mostly because you relax your glutes. Then when you put your heels down, you re-engage your glutes, but the damage is done, and you're twisting your feet back into position. This action is a lot worse if the same thing, or more, happens when you jump. In the air, you lose your turnout, then you try to fix it when you land, when you should be concentrating on going through your feet, and boom, shin splints and/or knee injuries. They are caused by twisting, tibial torsion if you want to get technical, as much as by hard landings.

So, maintain proper placement (which could be the answer to most problems), and you will have a far better chance of avoiding shin splints and other unpleasant things.

We'll get to treatment options, next time.

See you in class.

Yes, now available as an ebook!

The Competition is now available in ebook form! http://thebp.site/73879

Ebooks

Yes, I am working on an ebook version. Shipping costs around the world are quite high!

More self promotion

My ballet novel, "The Competition", about two rival dancers about to perform the same variation from a forgotten ballet at a prestigious competition, is on sale now, at thebookpatch.com

Here is a direct link, or you can use the "buy it now" button on the blog site.

http://thebp.site/73879

Proper distance from the barre

Stand with your arms in second, lower your barre arm and your hand should rest lightly on the barre. Your elbow should be dropped, don't grip the barre, blah, blah... blah.

When you are doing your pliés, you set yourself up so that you are the proper distance from the barre. Some syllabi tell you to not move your barre foot (the one closest to the barre) when you change to second position or fourth or fifth. I understand the logic of this: You want to be solid on that foot/leg. However, if you don't move that foot when you change position, you will no longer be the proper distance from the barre. If you start in first, you'll be too far away in second, and too close in fourth and fifth. 

That simply does not make any sense to me. The way dancers hold onto the barre is a huge issue. If you grip the barre, you put your balance into your hand, not on your feet, where it should be. If you're not the proper distance, it will affect that. Your hand should be free to move on the barre as you adjust your weight during an exercise. If you're not the proper distance, well, I hope you get the picture.

I tell my students that they may move both feet when changing position in pliés. I explain why, then tell them that some teachers don't want them to do that, so in their classes, they must do what those teachers want. I was initially taught not to move my barre foot, but it almost instantly occurred to me that this didn't make sense, since I was also told to stand the proper distance from the barre. I do my best not to teach contradictory things. (See my post on syllabi that contradict themselves, and why I don't slavishly adhere to only one syllabus).

So, maintain the proper distance to the barre, and I'll see you in class.

Encouragement

The owner of a ballet school once told me that I shouldn't encourage students to pursue careers as professional dancers.

Read that sentence again.

Okay, yes, very few dancers will become professionals. Duh, really? I started ballet the week I graduated from high school (17 years old). Four years and ten months later I was dancing for the Joffrey. I was not gifted in any way, I was just determined and I worked hard. I have 10 year olds in some of my classes. They have a seven year head start on me. Why the heck would I not encourage them? Telling them they can't do it, would be insulting to them and the height of arrogance from me.

Doubt and lack of encouragement have killed more dreams than lack of talent.

Any good teacher wants their students to be their best. A sense of accomplishment is good for kids. Telling a kid they can't do it, is insane. How the heck do you know what they can and can't do in a few years, with hard work? We hear about handicapped people climbing Mount Everest, and you're telling me I shouldn't encourage a child to be a dancer?

Look at it from a purely business standpoint. You run a ballet studio. You teach ballet. You need students. If you don't get students, you go out of business. How do you get students? How do you get parents to choose your studio over others? By providing good training. How do you prove you provide good training? If you can say, "We trained dancers who are now with ABT, or Joffrey, or Lines, or we regularly send dancers to prestigious summer programs, or we sent dancers to the Royal Ballet School and the Princess Grace in Monaco, or we had a Grand Prix winner at the YAGP", there's your proof.

Successful students mean success for a school. If you don't understand that, you have no business running a ballet school, or any business for that matter.

You must encourage your students. They must dream big. That can only help your school. Will they all make it? No, but your encouragement will help them in every walk of life.

See you in class.

Nobody's Perfect.

Vaganova. Cecchetti. RAD. Balanchine. Now ABT, too.

No single syllabus has everything right.

Go ahead, yell and scream, and rant and rave, it's no use you need a shave! (Obscure Bugs Bunny reference).

I can poke holes in all of them.

If you slavishly adhere to a single syllabus, you doom ballet to stagnation. Balanchine didn't stick to Vaganova, he "invented" a whole new style. RAD supposedly chose the best of all the syllabi. ABT decided to create their own.

I started with Vaganova. I love a lot of the Russian training, but the forcing turnout thing is ridiculous. I have a theory about Russian training, whether it is ballet, gymnastics or hockey: If you can survive it, you'll be quite strong. If not, kiss your knees goodbye. I was lucky enough to have very strong quads when I started ballet- from being a hockey player, hmm...- and I never had a knee injury in all my 18 years as a dancer. So, no forcing turnout, and I prefer the Balanchine tendu placement, on the center line of the body. (I also studied at SAB).

I don't like the way Balanchine wanted tendu done, by lifting the arch, and tensing the toes. Here's where I can prove Neo-classical technique contradicts itself. Mr. B. liked his ladies to roll up and down en pointe. Doing his tendus does not translate into that. In fact, doing tendus "wrong", as far as he went, does far more to train you to roll up and down than his technique does. I also don't like the straight back leg for pirouettes. Too stylized. Just as you wouldn't dance "Four Temperaments" like a Petipa dancer, you couldn't dance "Giselle" like a Balanchine dancer; neither would look right. When Gelsey Kirkland wanted to dance the classics, she spent a year learning the proper technique.

(I also don't like Neo-classical port du bras- it can get very messy- or opening the hip for arabesque. That twists your spine and does nothing to stretch out your hip flexors.)

Simple movements must prepare you for the more complex stuff. The Neo-classical tendu doesn't prepare you for relevé, and neither does the RAD simple brisé prepare you for the more complex brisés voleé. The RAD brisé is a linear movement, a brush to the side. The RAD voleé is a rond de jamb. The simple one has no relation to the complex. You can do simple brisés till you're blue in the face, and they won't do you a bit of good as far as voleé goes. To learn that, you have to start from scratch.

The simple Russian brisé is a brush through first to the front, or back, from fifth position. The Russian voleé is also a brush through first. The only difference is you land on one leg (in coupé) instead of two. The simple helps the complex.

I started ballet when I was 17. I had to find the most efficient methods to train myself, to make the transition from ice hockey to classical ballet as fast as possible. 4 years and 10 months after I started, I was dancing for The Joffrey. I picked and chose what made sense and what worked. I think I did pretty well. I was not gifted, just analytical.

So, even if you are in a strict whatever-style school, you have to explore other syllabi. Some things may just not work for you. For example, I tried the RAD voleé and felt like a rag doll flailing about in a hurricane. The Russian simple brisé prepared me so well that the first time I tried voleé that way, it just worked.

Keep growing, keep ballet growing, and I'll see you in class.

The YAGP

One of my younger students, who is thinking about doing the YAGP next year, asked me, "Is it really like the movie, 'First Position'?" I said, yes, pretty much, except for this: The movie used the dramatic hook of making the competition very important for a dancer's career. That's only partly true. If you get a job, or a scholarship, great! If you don't, if you don't do well, or if you do horribly, no one remembers. It's a win/win situation. The only dancers people/judges remember are the ones who do well. If you're in an audition later on, and you're doing great, they're not going to say, "Yes, you look good, today, but three years ago, in the YAGP, you missed those Italian fouettés so we don't want you." Even if you don't place well, you may get something. One of my students got a partial scholarship to the Bolshoi School in New York, because they saw potential. Franco De Vita of ABT said he looks for what dancers will be, not what they are. Dmitri Kulev, in the documentary, was consoling a dancer, saying, "It's a live performance, things happen." So, if you want to do the YAGP, know that it's not the day that matters, it's the work.

See you in class.

Bad choreography and even worse music

I'm sitting here, fighting to get through a full length ballet I'm watching on Amazon Video. I'm more than a half hour into the ballet, and I have yet to hear anything resembling a theme, or a melody. The score is just a mess, a jumble of sounds, a feeble attempt at sophisticated music. Now, I'll be the first to admit that my taste in music may be a bit naive, but I know garbage when I hear it. This stuff makes Prokofiev (whose music I detest) sound like Rodgers and Hammerstein. I understand dissonance and unfinished chords and all that, but music, and choreography, has to have a point, it has to have a purpose. The music in this piece, and the choreography, have no point, no purpose. The steps, like the notes, are worthless. They have no meaning, they don't go anywhere, they tell me nothing. They don't reflect the music, they communicate nothing.

Good choreography should be obvious. You should think, of course that step goes there! No other step would work! That fits the music! Watching this, this, stuff, it's just a collection of steps. I can hear the choreographer in rehearsal saying, "Go over here, do some brisés, then a double cabriole. You do some arabesques, then bourees over there and fall down." There's no reason for any of it.

Does every step have to mean something, something specific? No, of course not. An audience would become overwhelmed by the information, and become mentally exhausted. If the steps, or the majority of them, mean nothing, however, the audience will catch on and get pissed.

The essence of any art form is communication. Whatever you're doing, even if there isn't a story, you have to communicate something to your audience. The only thing I'm getting from this is that no one said no to the choreographer or the composer. Or the costumer, for that matter.

I know the story the piece is based on, and I have no idea what's going on. Oh, there were some recognizable sections earlier, but, now... Oh, oh, now, you have the principal dancer doing some double tours, for no reason at all! Oh, here's a pas de deux for the leads. Do the steps mean anything? Do they tell me something about their relationship? No. Any halfway decent teacher could make up better stuff on the spot for a class!

Now, they're doing a parody of a famous adagio, but I'll bet the Trocadero did it much better. It's the only mildly interesting bit in the whole piece, so far, and only because it's a joke on another ballet. If you didn't know the ballet, it might be funny, but...

I can't believe it, this thing is getting worse! It's turned into some kind of, oh, I can't stand this.

I feel I have now seen the worst ballet, with the worst score, ever.

Please, please, if you are going to choreograph something, or write some music, have a purpose. Don't try and con your audience. Don't just throw steps together, don't just have your musicians see if they can play every note they've ever learned.

Communicate something.

See you in class.