I’ve had days, sometimes weeks, when it seems my personal pirouette pixie has gone on vacation. May Day! May Day! Every single turn crashes and burns. Maybe you’ve experienced this too. Or maybe you feel your own little sprite hasn’t shown up for a single day’s work, ever. Either way, here are some tips to get you through that don’t involve magic fairy dust.
Technique
Help With Second Position Of The Arms
What to do and think for an improved second position de bras (of the arms), and the importance of proper alignment for creating the pictures we make with our bodies in dance.
How Much Dance Should My Child Be Taking? – The Equation
If your child is asking, investigate the reasons she wants to take a new or additional dance class. Costume style, choreography, musical accompaniment, or maintaining friendships may be no less valid or less important to her than the desire to enhance her skills. Dance should be fun, too! Do not devalue or brush away these motivations, they are part of the equation.
See Spot Turn
The action of the head is important but do not forget the role of the eyes in spotting. It helps to spot something like a photograph, painting, or word and really SEE the SPOT on each TURN. If you are using your head properly but still getting dizzy, it is probably because your eyes are not focusing. You need to get the head around with enough zing (see above) to have time for this, though.
Lightbulb Moments: Pas De Chat
Every jump in ballet is preceded by a counter-movement, namely, a plie, and this is exceedingly effective in getting more height out of a jump (try jumping from straight legs and see what happens), not to mention protecting the achilles tendon from injury. In fact, people have studied jump height and found that maximum vertical height in a jump is higher using a counter movement than not (3). So it makes sense that we bend our knees before jumping.
Muscles 101: Comparing muscles to a rubber band might be stretching it….
While the image of a rubber band is useful in demonstrating the elastic nature of muscles in the stretch reflex, it’s not always as simple as the stretch/recoil and stretch-farther/less-recoil that we gain from thinking of muscles simply as rubber bands.
