What You Can Do To Improve Tendu (and why it is crucial)

It seems like such a small thing, really, that little second-place movement done at barre or in center. But, no matter what type of concert dance technique you are studying (ballet, jazz, modern/contemporary), battement tendu — that’s the full name — is sure to make an appearance and with good reason!

A World Without Tendu

It is through tendu that dancers become conscious of directing and eventually expelling energy through a stretched (or pointed) foot. It is also where strength is developed in the foot for taking off and landing with cushion in jumps. Without tendu (and its partner tendu jeté or dégagé) there would be no no assemblé or grand jeté or entrechat quatre. Movements would lack the finish of a pointed foot and jumps would land awfully hard. But that’s not all that would be missing from classical or contemporary dance technique without tendu.

Though it may seem the working leg is the most important part of practicing tendu, you might be surprised to learn that the standing leg is equally critical. Tendu is a dancer’s first experience standing on one leg (at least in a technical and conscientious way). It may not be instantly recognizable, but this is where preparation begins for poses like arabesque. Jazz and modern dancers practice tendu with both turned out and parallel rotation because they balance (or center themselves over a leg) in both turned out and parallel positions.

Tendu means stretched. The leg stretches to a point and then closes (that is the battement, or beating portion of the movement). In ballet and other dance forms, this stretched action (and the way the body reacts to it) is important preparation for just about everything, including rising to pointe, lifting, throwing, or balancing on a leg.

Who knew tendu was so important?

Your teachers. Maybe they haven’t always explained it this way but all those reasons above (and more) are why this little movement shows up in plenty of your barre and center exercises. So now that you are aware of its significance, let’s talk about…

What you can do to improve tendu.

Weight Shift – Standing Leg

Do This: As the working leg leaves its home base (1st or 5th position) there is a subtle, nearly undetectable shift of weight to one leg. During this shift…

1. Maintain the turnout of your leg. If you feel strain and the need to decrease turnout in the standing leg as you shift your weight, reevaluate your turnout while standing on both legs, you may be over-rotating or forcing turnout.
2. Balance your weight equally over the three points of the foot.
3. Keep all 5 toes on the floor and be careful not to pronate or roll-in.
4. When closing the tendu (especially when repeating), be aware of your weight. If you are lingering or leaning over the standing leg, you may be lifting your working hip and/or not properly creating resistance between the foot and floor in your tendu (more on that in a moment).

Imagine This: Imagine pouring your weight like sand into the standing leg, rather than dumping it all at once. Imagine your standing leg as a barbershop pole with stripes moving upward and wrapping outward to keep the rotation in your leg.  And I like this one, courtesy Eric Franklin’s Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance — Imagine having a third “ghost leg” that remains in its standing position even while your working leg moves away.

Weight Shift – Disengaging the Working Leg

Do This: Create resistance between the foot and the floor. This is less forceful than a press but does require some directed energy through the leg and foot. Articulate (or “work through”) the foot – peeling off the heel, ball, and finally stretching through the toes (also articulating in the reverse). Keep the toes long, there is no weight on the toe and you should be able to lift the leg from here without further shifting onto the standing leg.

Imagine This: Imagine the relatively light/easy press and bend of a paint brush that allows the painter to evenly distribute paint but still glide the brush smoothly. Imagine a layer of velvet or velour beneath your foot and enjoy the feeling of your foot moving through the plush carpet, leaving a trail in the fibers as the foot moves outward and returns. Imagine light or streaming air radiating from the hip and out through the toe, as well as upward and out through the top of the head.

The Hip Joint

Do This: Maintain rotation in both legs and keep the hips level and “quiet” with no extraneous movement.

Imagine This: Imagine a horizontal line between the sitz bones that stays level, as well as lines dangling from the sitz bones straight into the floor. Imagine that your flesh and muscles have disappeared and your skeleton is doing a tendu — picture the femur moving easily forward, back, or side in the acetabulum (socket). Imagine the ball joint of a pen holder – the holder portion (the leg) has freedom to move all over but the socket (the hip) is still.

For additional thoughts, check out Dianne’s blow-by-blow of battement tendu at Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

In concert dance technique (ballet, jazz, modern) some of the most important movements are found at the start of the class or ballet barre. They help to warm up the body, yes, but these are also the base upon which all other movements are built. Tendu and plié are two movements we often take for granted as we learn them so early in our dancing life. The above suggestions are certainly not ALL of the things to be considered in battement tendu but they are more than enough to think about right now.

What corrections do you typically receive from your teacher during battement tendu?

Can you share any images or advice that have helped you master this important movement?

All In The Family: Battement

This post was originally published in May 2008.

I’m sure that students reading this blog have used or heard the term battement before. If grand battement immediately comes to mind, I’m not surprised, as the word battement is commonly dropped from the name of other familiar terms.

A mother, father, brothers, grandparents, uncles, all share a family name. In a similar way battement is a family of movements.

From the Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet: Battement [bat-MAHN] — Beating. A beating action of the extended or bent leg. There are two types of battements, grands battements and petits battements. The petis battements are: Battements tendus, dégagés, frappés and tendus relevés: stretched, disengaged, struck and stretched-and-lifted. In this must-have reference Gail Grant devotes no less than 7 pages to the battement family which also includes members such as fondu developpé, balançoire, retiré or raccourci, soutenu, battu/serré, and more.

Why We Practice Them

Battements, as they are practiced at the barre and in centre, are the foundation of many other movements in ballet (jumps and travelling steps such as assemblé, tour jeté, grand jeté, and so many more) and in other dance forms. It is necessary to have a solid grasp on the simplest forms in order to perform the others correctly. Often battement are separated into two categories: petite and grand. However, one might also divide battements according to whether or not they interact with the floor.

Articulation

Tendus, dégagés, frappés, grand battements (balançoire, en cloche, fouetté, etc), soutenu, and retiré, are all battement that brush or press away from the floor. In each of these movements, it is important to remember the role of the feet. I have encountered many beginning dancers that neglect “working through” the foot as the working/gesture leg is disengaged from it’s standing position. Think of the foot as a paintbrush creating a brush stroke on the floor, using the intrinsic muscles of the arch and finally, the toes. This small action will strengthen the foot for jumping and relevé, and helps to “ground” the movement, providing stability, particularly in centre. Stability can also be increased by imagining the standing leg rooted deep into the earth as the working leg moves outward and/or skyward from the midline. The foot also articulates in battements that lift the knee upward, as in retiré/raccourci. Think of this as a one-legged jump, requiring the same roll-thru of the feet. This is great strengthening practice for jumps to come. Similarly in grand battements, I like to remind my students that power and height of the working leg is achieved through sending force into the floor. Much like a rocket ship which propels itself into space by sending heat and energy downward, a dancer must send energy into the floor through the leg and foot to create “lift-off” in grand battements.

This video by Lisa Howell is a useful and clearly explained demonstration of the articulation necessary in tendu.

Isolation and Sustaining the Leg

Battements that do not interact with the floor are a much smaller branch of the family. Still they are an illustrious group. Petites battement sur-le-cou-de-pied and battu reflect the more literal “beating” action of battements. In barre work these movements introduce agility and speed. They require that the knee be lifted away from the body for a sustained period (a preparation for things to come) while also isolating the rapidly moving lower leg from the upper leg. This isolation is important later for all jumps with beats because it encourages stillness or “quiet” in the pelvis and stability in the core while all that fast action is going on below.

A Word on Turnout

In all battement, maintaining turn-out is crucial. Many students struggle with this and it can take years to develop the strength to utilize and maintain turn-out with consistency. One way to “find” or create awareness of turnout in battements is to place the fingertips on the greater trochanter. This is the portion of bone at the outside of the hip joint that you’ll probably feel pressing into the floor when lying on your side. With the fingertips on this protrusion, execute a battement tendu. When properly utilizing your turn-out you will feel the trochanter slip backward but not dip lower or lift higher as you disengage the leg. This exercise may be used as an alternative or supplement to the more commonly taught concept of allowing the heal to lead in tendu.

Each movement within the battement family deserves its own post. Writer Dianne Buxton has added her breakdown of the basics at the Ballet and Pointe Shoes blog:

• Battement tendu
• Grand battement
• Battement frappe
• Battement degage
• Battement fondu

Don’t forget to pick up a good ballet dictionary. It will prove helpful in your study of ballet (and other dance forms) to understand and utilize proper ballet terminology. Once again, I highly recommend the Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet.

What are some images that have helped you (or your students) in executing movements in the battement family?

Are there other ways you might categorize or breakdown the various types of battements?

Are there additional resources you’d recommend?

En Dehors, Out the Door

Frequently misspelled and endlessly confused, let’s go over these important dance directions!

There are typically two situations for which en dehors and en dedans are used in ballet and throughout most theatrical dance training.

1. When indicating the direction of rotation in a pirouette, or turn.
2. When describing the circular pathway of the leg in movements such as rond de jambe à terre or en l’air.

A bird’s eye view helps to illustrate the sometimes puzzling concepts:

En dehors

In dance, this term means outward. When turning, as the figure on the right above is showing, this outward rotation is relative to the supporting (sometimes called standing) leg. The dancer is thought of as moving “outward” toward whichever leg is lifted in the turn or, in other words, “away” from the supporting leg. Either way, the concept can be confusing for a new dancer. Sometimes thinking too hard about the explanation can confuse things further.

Wrapping one’s head around the idea of pathway is somehow easier. In rond de jambe à terre (on the ground), for instance, you would consider the pathway of the toe as it creates a semi-circle on the floor which, in en dehors, would trace from the front of the body to the back. When “working” or gesturing with the right leg, the action moves clockwise. With the left, counterclockwise.

Going back to pirouettes, it helps to apply this concept of pathway to the lifted knee. For pirouette en dehors, when “working” or gesturing with the right leg, the knee traces a clockwise pattern. When the left leg is lifted, the rotation is counterclockwise.

En dedans

As in right versus left, if it isn’t en dehors then it must be en dedans. Simply reversing the concept above will explain en dedans, which means inward in ballet. The toe in rond de jambe would begin to the back (or behind the body) and travel in a circular pathway toward the front. This time, when the right leg is working the toe orbits counterclockwise. The left moves clockwise from 6 o’clock to 12. Similarly, pirouettes with the right leg lifted rotate counterclockwise and visa versa when the left leg is up.

A few things to keep in mind:

It may help you to think of the knee drawing a circle around the axis of your body in your pirouette en dedans. However, be careful! In a classical turn, do not think of the knee as leading the body around. The leg must remain fully turned-out regardless of the direction you are turning.

Yes, this same terminology applies to fouetté turns, piqué turns (the most common of which are en dedans – read more on piqué turns here), turns à la seconde, grand rond de jambe, and rond de jambe en l’air. I won’t go into their explanations this time. If the concepts of en dehors and en dedans are not yet cemented in your mind, it is likely you aren’t ready to try all of these more advanced movements anyway!

The title of the post is an oft-used memory device reminding the dancer that en dehors means outward. Have you or your teachers used other tactics to remember the difference between en dehors and en dedans? Share them in the comments below the post!

---

Plié

I’ve heard somewhere that the beginning is a very good place to start. Therefore, since I’m just beginning our exploration of dance vocabulary, I figured it was best to start with the alpha and omega of all dance movements – the plié. Here is the definition according to the ABT (American Ballet Theatre) ballet dictionary. Even young dancers can tell you that plié means ‘to bend’ and that one must begin and end a jump with this action. However, it seems the longer one studies dance, the more he/she comes to realize that plié is one of the most sophisticated and nuanced movements in dance. It’s applications are endless, not only appearing before and after jumps, but in glides, hops, turns, running, walking, leaps, and more. All while moving forward, backward, upward, sideways, or downward. No plié is exactly alike, but without it we appear awkward, stiff, uncontrolled, or shaky. Like dance itself, plié is a never-ending story. There is always more to learn and developping a strong understanding of plié will help dancers build a strong foundation for other movements.

I read an article in this month’s Dance Magazine that I wish I could link you to. Pick up a copy if you can. In it, Risa Steinberg, a Limon teacher at Julliard, states that **”a good plié is an action, not a position. A plié is a ‘Whaaaaaah.’ It is not an ‘Eh.’ ” I love this description. Try vocalizing ‘Whaaaaaah’ while you plié and see what happens! This simple action serves as a reminder that plié is a smooth, continuous, and widening motion. It also implies that control is needed to create and direct the action, in contrast to an “Eh,” which suggests little effort or control. Fluidity, width, and control in plié is required whether executing an explosive jump or a shift of weight.

Some things to remember when executing plié:

1. Weight should be equally distributed between both feet. Try not to lean toward one foot more than the other or rest in the heels.
2. Lift the arches of the foot – avoiding pronation, or rolling in.
3. Maintain turnout (rotation at the hip joint), keeping the knees over the second and third toes.
4. Maintain alignment in the torso, partiularly the pelvis – tailbone points downward. NOT
5. Use opposition in the movement – resist as the body lowers and as it goes goes upward.

Consider the study of plié a lifelong pursuit! Plié are only boring if you stop discovering new things about them.

**The cited article is by Rachel Straus a freelance writer based in NYC and appears in the April 2008 issue of Dance Magazine.