A couple of years ago, I reentered ballet after nearly a year of recuperation from ankle injuries. With this studio, I was involved in all of the performances and classes necessary for my level, believing that a physically demanding ballet class almost every day would be a brief respite from intellectually demanding academics. Every step in class was grunting and bearing the physical labor, nothing more than hard work. Yes, I could memorize ballets and combinations, do them with some degree of proficiency, but my progress was slow. I had a good understanding of what to do, yet much less the how.
By January of this year, I had transferred to a new ballet school, with more intensive and higher quality training. It is not only the better training that has allowed me to really grow as a dancer, but also the development of an artist mentality- how specifically I will do steps and how I could better portray movement more cleanly. I have learned again and again under training of the artistic director that ballet is intensely cerebral, requiring real thought and careful consideration to connect with my audience.
For our spring performance, I was given the opportunity to showcase my learning and growth in various repertoire, including excerpts from the ballet Paquita. In the first few rehearsals I had with the artistic director, she said one word at most to me. And the quality of my performance remained the same- stagnant. There was one conversation I had with her on a Saturday afternoon after ballet class. She had wanted me to simply think through my entrance onto the stage. How I unfold my arms to the audience, and go through a centralized first position to shift into any port de bras (carriage of the arms). One must always work through a central position, be it first or fifth position of the feet, or first or second position of the arms- there is always a central place to where the arms return. Being consciously aware of this center and passing through it allows the dancer to be in constant control and balance, creating clean lines and transitions.
The mechanics of ballet are driven by the anatomy of the muscles surrounding the joints as well as the knowledge of how to activate them. In another ballet class more recently, the artistic director gave a lecture about passe (meaning “passed”) and what muscles to feel when reaching into an extension in derriere (to the back) attitude. Rather than allowing the knee to drop or thinking of reaching around and
overcrossing the leg, one must lift the knee up in the passe and feel a very slight pelvic tilt allowing the hips to dip forward and create space for the leg to be higher in the back. This lesson can also be applied to pirouette turns as well- the feeling of lifting up versus spinning around like a top. Lifting up allows the dancer to keep their body on a singular axis of rotation.
Additionally, for even a single pirouette turn, the principles of physics apply. One guest teacher gave a lecture about the very subject, explaining the delicate balance of forces culminating in multiple successful rotations with one preparation. There is this whole coordination of the plie in fourth position, and movement of the arms to generate the momentum for the turn. What leads to the torque is the opposition of forces is the push off of the feet from the floor in opposite directions. That distance between the two feet on the floor, rotating away from each other generates those Newtonian equal and opposite forces which are then carried toward the supporting leg in the turn, on one point- one axis- of rotation. The larger the distance (up to a human amount) between the feet, the more torque would be generated versus from a closed fifth position.
Moving simultaneously, the arms that generate momentum should be held rigidly and at an appropriate distance from the dancer’s torso. The farther away the center of mass (influenced by the arms) is from the axis of rotation, the slower the dancer would turn. In contrast, the closer the arms are held to the body, the conservation of angular momentum applies and the dancer would rotate much faster. It is the comprehension and conscious acknowledgement of these principles that allows dancers like myself to more quickly and efficiently bring our body weight onto that axis of rotation and churn out successful pirouettes.
As a result of truly studying and analyzing the mechanics and movements of ballet, I am learning how to refine my dancing while improving my technical and artistic abilities.
