Some ballet competitions are also held every four years like the famous USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. Many principal dancers were born from it like Nina Ananiashvili, Rolando Sarabia, Johan Kobborg, and more recent principals like Daniil Simkin, Jurgita Dronina, Isaac Hernandez, and Fumi Kaneko. Even if you don’t win a medal, there are many competitors that became principals of major companies all around the world.

As a profession, ballet is not a competition. But competitions are a big part of younger up-and-coming ballet stars.

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Typically, no matter your age or level, people do ballet to be good at it. And to take that to the next level is to pursue a professional career in which you hope to climb to the top of a principal ranking. In order to achieve that, you must train and build a mindset that can withstand the pressure and work that is required to be good and get noticed.

Olympians and dancers have 3 things in common

There’s a lot of overlap between ballet dancers and Olympians. And if you can master these qualities that define many Olympians, there’s a good chance you’re on the right track to a successful career in ballet:

1. Training and Cross-training

   As part of their training, Olympians train in what they compete like sprinting, pole vaulting, and gymnastics. If they will compete as gymnasts, they will rigorously practice gymnastics. Similarly, ballet dancers do ballet every day to get better. Also, the Olympians train outside of their specific sport such as when they participate in strength training sessions. As dancers, most of us know that we need to participate in cross-training to strengthen our ballet technique.

   If you’re interested in my suggestions for the types of non-ballet cross training that can increase power and decrease injuries, my biggest suggestion for ballet dancers is to train in Pilates so that you can strengthen your abs and core, and apply it correctly to your ballet technique.

2. Mindset

   In a recent interview, Roger Federer shared some advice that’s going viral.

   He explains that in his career, he played 1,526 singles matches and won almost 80% of those matches. However (and maybe most importantly), he only won 54% of points in those matches. He goes on to explain, "In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play…When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot. You teach yourself to think, 'It's only a point.'“ He continues that when you accept that you’ll lost points over and over, it frees you to fully commit to what comes next.

   There’s been studies done on the top five of professional tennis players, and a big finding is the difference in the way they think (just like Federer mentions). The top players were able to think positively when they failed or their opponent scored. They had more of a mentality of “okay, let’s focus on next time.” The other nearly twenty-five tennis players responded to failure with negative emotions such as anger.

   During a ballet performance, if something doesn’t go right, the best of the best are usually able to accept it as part of the performance. They know their overall show will still be great, whereas other dancers might take “a mistake” negatively as a point of failure.

   It’s clear that positive mindset, especially under pressure during a performance, is key to success.

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3. Grit

   This idea is all about showing up day after day. How you approach your training will define how you will eventually perform onstage. Practicing is the part that makes you better. If you go into your training or rehearsals with a negative mindset (either with grumpiness, indifference, or lack of motivation), the energy you bring will be reflected in the actual quality of your work.

   So if you want to better, find ways to improve the quality of your training. Remember that showing up every day with a good energy and attitude is something that is not to be underestimated.

   There was a point for every Olympian when they had to make a choice to show up every day, stay long hours, and try to get better and better. You’re not born great, even if you’re a natural. You still have to make a choice and show some grit when you show up, especially on the days where it seems better to just settle for average or quit. The same goes for professional dancers.
   
   While you can make a conscious decision to have grit, I might also argue that the greatest dancers among us are born with it.

How to deal with high-pressure performances

Let’s talk about performing. It’s always going to feel high pressure, even if you’re not going to get a physical score at the end of your performance (although I’m sure sometimes we wish we did get something more tangible after the curtain goes down). And yes, the more you go onstage, the more you might get used to dealing with that pressure.

Let’s talk about what many ballet dancers hear before they go onstage to perform. Many times (even professionals), a coach or teacher or director will say, “just have fun, just be free out there.” While I cannot assume that Olympians don’t hear that, I’m pretty sure that that kind of statement is not going to help defeat your opponent (the opponent in ballet is getting through a hard ballet). For example, when you’re performing in a full length Swan Lake, the advice to “just have fun” isn’t going to cut it.

While there is value to having fun and enjoying yourself during a performance, what you need most is focus.

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How to focus your focus

How do you focus for a high-stake, high-pressure performance? This might sound weird but you shouldn’t try to be focused for three hours in a full-length ballet. However, there needs to be moments where you have to turn on your focus (whether it’s before a lift, before the pas de deux, or the finish of your variation). These moments of critical focus will only happen if you work on specific ideas during the rehearsals leading up to that performance. And I’m also not saying the quality of focus has to be as deep as the performance in those rehearsals. But you have to understand the points that will require the most of you during the rehearsal process so that when you add adrenaline into your performance, your focus will be focused.

During a ballet performance, you also need to learn how to relax. This can only happen if you have a game plan going into it. You should never wing it in a ballet performance in the same way that no Olympian is going to wing their gymnastic routine or try a new tennis serve on the spot.

In any long or short performance, you’ll have moments you’re more focused, and you should have moments that you are reacting in real time (more going with the flow). There’s execution of your plan and there’s moments of responding to the live music, live dancers, and live audience.

And this is a perfect moment to point out how dancers are very much not like Olympians.

This is not to diminish Olympians and the fun and success they do experience while excelling at their sport (it’s true that watching Roger Federer play tennis can feel like you’re watching an artist). But dancers are doing something slightly different onstage than Olympians in the arena, even if it’s still to get a score or gold medal in a ballet competition…

What separates dancers from Olympians?

Let’s go back to Roger Federer. When he is in a tennis match, he is the main character, he is the story. However, as dancers, we (as our personal self) are not the main character. We play a character. Our competitions are judged based on our technique, cleanliness, accuracy of tricks…and portrayal of a character. While a gymnast does include some “artistic” dancing elements in their routine, they will never be judged on whether they beautifully portray a dead girl who was betrayed by her lover (I’m taking about Giselle here).

The art of ballet is something that Olympians don’t have to master. They don’t have to understand story, characters, and how to incorporate all of that into a physical presentation to the audience. If you want to really dive more into the artistry of ballet, you’ll enjoy this article here. In ballet, the artistic part of a high-stake ballet performance is directly tied to your physical technique. The presentation of your character and your story has to be directly tied to what you’re physically doing onstage and your ability to tell that story (your “stage presence”). If you have good “stage presence,” chances are that you’ll be a soloist or principal dancer. If you don’t, you simply will not be given chances to lead a story onstage. You’ll be told you just don’t have that quality.

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Why aren’t dancers doing this?

So while you watch the Olympics, think about how much work you’re putting into ballet as well as you’re understanding of the work. Ask yourself, do I really want to be a ballet dancer? And if the answer is yes, then don’t just rely only on yourself. Here’s the thing about most Olympians—they have coaches. Does any Olympian show up without a coach and tell the world they are self-made (this seems to be very normalized in ballet, especially the superstar dancers)? Relying on coaches is something Olympians take advantage of that dancers do not. You want to work with someone who can build a game plan with you during class, during rehearsals, and training outside of the studio. I’m referring to a 1:1 relationship (like taking private lessons from a personal coach), and not simply a rehearsal director who yells corrections at you.

Find a smart and positive teacher that pushes you beyond who you were yesterday and who you are today. This is the key to taking yourself to the next level.

Even if you’re already at the top.

I’m here for you if you need a high-quality coach to take your strengths to the next level. I am always willing to work with those who want to get to the very top.

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So why do we do it in this order?

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Plie is important because we are checking/warming up by bending all of our joints, and using appropriate muscles to do that.

Tendu in first is important for turn out, because we can work the outside of our hamstrings and isolate them from the inner hamstrings.

Tendu in fifth is when we introduce the tiniest movements to front and back, which is important because everything we do should have the direction of front, side, and back to be dynamic. It is very important to know how to do tendu to the front, side, and back accurately with appropriate muscles to set up the rest of the class right.

Degage is when we start adding speed to the movement.

Then we have rond de jambe. Rond de jambe is unique because it basically connects the front, side, and back tendus without going through fifth position. This lets you practice the movement of your thighs going around in circular motion while keeping the turnout. And this is a very important element at this part of the barre because the combinations that come after rond de jambe must be an extension of it.

So what should you be thinking while you do rond de jamb?

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Rond de jambe is the foundation for fondu, frappe, developpe…and more

Imagine doing a fondu to the front. But I want you to imagine what your thigh is actually doing rather than where your toes are:

We start from cou-de-pied. At this point, our thigh is actually in a le seconde. Let that sink in for a moment: Your foot may be physically at your ankle, but your thigh bone is in the position of being to the side in a la seconde. Then we carry our leg to the front, and that means we need to bring our thigh from a la seconde to the front. So in fondu to the front, you must actually do a rond de jambe to the front with your thigh.

And here is the important part that you cannot forget:

When you come back from front to cou-de-pied, you must again do a rond de jambe back to a la seconde with your thigh. Often I see that students are leaving their thighs to the front and bringing only the toes back to their ankle, making the transition completely turned in. When you come back to cou-de-pied the correct way, you are setting up fondu to the side correctly.

When we do fondu to the back, our thigh must do rond de jambe from the side to the back. The mistake I often see is that the thigh is unable to move behind the body, leaving the whole leg completely off center when finishing fondu back (a typical correction you might hear in this situation is “cross your leg to the back!”). And of course if you’re not crossing your leg to the back in tendu or rond de jambe, then this will be a problem for the rest of the ballet class.

The solution?

It is important to understand how to use hamstrings to carry your leg to the back. Often, many dancers use their gluteus, which makes the hip joints stiff, and end up in an un-crossed position. Or they may resort to twisting their lower back to make the leg appear to be crossed. When you first go into fifth position before you start a combination, you should already engage your hamstrings. You can even think of crossing your hamstrings to create fifth position (rather than turning out one foot and then the other). In this way, you can continuously practice using hamstrings during tendu combinations, or even before that in plies.

When you come out of back fondu, you must bring your thigh around to a la seconde as if you are doing a rond de jambe. I trust you are getting my point now, and you might be able to guess what I’m about to say about frappes…

Doing this might be a new movement pattern for you, which means you probably need to slow down a lot to practice this new coordination (and new thought process). Your thigh does rond de jambe, and if you think about your knee and lower leg, it has to bend and extend at the same time as your thigh going around. So fondu is rond de jambe with bending knees. Stop and read that line as many times as you need to before you continue.

Moving onto frappes and developpe: You guessed it, you must do rond de jambe with your thigh. And the important part is to never forget to make sure that your thigh is doing rond de jambe when you come out of front or back extension. Otherwise your working leg will be turned in, and that is not correct in any technique.

Circles in ballet are more important than you think

Remember, rond de jambe means “to round the leg.” The keyword here is round, and I want you to imagine the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci.

The picture itself isn’t telling us much. The notes below the image tell us some ideal proportions of a man. But what’s vivid is that the body parts—especially the legs and arms—are moving in a circle, and that is very important to understand for ballet dancers.

Ballet requires us to move our thighs, and those thighs must move in a circular motion. Once we can get that in our heads, we can effectively apply that to tendus, fondus, developpes, and grand battements. Even port de bras!

Too often we focus heavily on our feet, and we think that everything is linear movement. But this mistake leads dancers to try to make their lines “longer” (read why you may never want to do that), and they start to compensate in other parts of their body such as hips and lower back. They try to extend their feet as far as possible to make themselves feel like their legs are longer. In reality, that will lead to misalignment, which will often lead to injury. And actually, the farther you put your feet away from you, the shorter you will become.

So when we do tendus, our working leg thigh is moving in circles (and it is physically higher than the standing leg thigh). Then, when the tendu comes back into first or fifth position, it must essentially circle back down to the position.

Then the working leg thigh will be even higher in a degage exercise.

And anything above 90 degrees (like adagio and grand battement) will require the working leg to actually get closer to your torso, and not further away or “longer.”

How to create circles in fondu, frappe, and more

So now that you know your legs move in a circular motion, you have to think how fondu, frappe, and all the other steps can literally follow a circular path. Fondu, frappe, and other steps may look like they must follow a straight line. But using the circle idea will make much more sense for your body and ballet technique. Thinking about circular motion in your arms and legs follows your body’s more natural movement pattern. And in turn, you can create more power when you access your body’s natural motion (plus, less injuries!).

Circles in fondu: The goal for fondu is to finish both legs at the same time. That means both legs have a finishing point. Often the working leg goes through an under-curve to go out; however, fondu is an over-curve step, so there is a destination for the working leg. From cou-de-pied, you will lift your thigh up while in plie, then extend your working leg in a rainbow arc to go up and down to finish. Typically fondu is to do it at 45 degree height.

Circles in frappe: Frappe is a step that strikes the floor, so your leg will have to go through an under-curve aiming for the floor to strike. Then, because you strike the floor, the ending of your frappe will be off the floor. When you return to cou-de-pied, you must continue the circle going through an over-curve back to the standing leg. Often, frappe is taught to be just a straight and sharp out-and-in motion where the knee stays in place and the bottom half of the leg swings back and forth. It sure looks that way, doesn’t it? But that’s not what you should be thinking as you actually do it.

The ballet rule for thinking in circles and lines

Although almost everything follows a circular motion with ballet technique, sometimes you have to think in linear motion. So I have a good rule of thumb to know when to think in circles and when to think in lines. The rule is…if a movement appears to be linear (such as tendus and frappes), then think circles. But if the movement appears to be around (like rond de jambe or pirouettes), then think linear.

That’s the illusion of ballet: We create the visual of lines by allowing our body to move through a circular path. Or by creating beautiful circles when we think of lines.

In ballet, you need circles to create lines. And you need lines to create circles.

And like the Vitruvian Man, those shapes are beautiful.

Those shapes can create art.

I am always willing to work with people to clarify anything that is confusing, so there are many ways to contact me personally. You can comment, hit reply, or message me directly here. Also you can find me on Instagram.

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The question is, if it’s not about the shaping of your legs and feet, then what should you think about?

Let’s get your priorities straight right now: You must understand that your abs and core are the base of everything. So if you aren’t able to engage your abs, then that is where you must start. Your abs must be strong enough to allow the movements of your legs to freely move in their ball and socket joints without moving your spine or hip bones.

Three things to do with tendus (every time):

1. Hamstring engagement

2. Thigh movement

3. Accuracy of your tendu

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Hamstring engagement is the first thing to think about. It’s important to go from tendus in first position because in first position you can work on warming up the outside part of the hamstring (biceps femoris). This muscle is THE muscle for turnout. It attaches to the outside of your knee joints and to the sit bones (sometimes we slouch on the chair so much that we don’t know where our sit bones are located. You can find your sit bones by actually sitting without slouching. They are located at the bottom of the buttocks, aka the pointy bones.) When this part of the hamstring contracts, it rotates our legs. You might be wondering, hamstring for turn out? Hear me out…

Please be cautious! I’ve been seeing a lot of content out on social media from people and dancers who claim to be “knowledgeable,” telling you that your gluteus and/or hip rotators are the muscles for turnout. Take that advice with a grain of salt. The gluteus and rotator muscles are known to limit and seize up the hip joints. If they are using gluteus or rotators to turn out, they are dealing with some kinds of injuries too.

During ballet, there is one group of joints that is most active and has to move in an unrestricted way—your hip joints. So if dancers or coaches are telling you to engage your hip rotators to turn out or to move your legs, they are setting you up for having seized-up and limited movements in your hip joints that will injure you and weaken overall dancing. Yes, your gluteus and rotators will engage passively (and they are great supporting muscles for dancers), but your prime muscle for turnout must be your hamstrings. Make sure not to relax your hamstrings when you are in first position. It should actually be the most engaged in first position. Then when you cross your legs from first position to fifth position, you can think of crossing your hamstrings.

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Thigh movements is naturally the next focus. Often the mistake during tendu is that you may focus too much on turn out using your gluteus. This will cause your thighs to not move in the ball and socket joints. And to compensate for the lack of thigh bone movements, you may move your hip bones as well as your lower back to move your legs. This compensation is a root of many injuries. OUCH.

But if you are engaging your hamstrings, your legs can move more freely. And once you have freed up hip joints, you can move your thigh bone going out to tendu and coming back in to position without twisting your hip or arching your lower back.

How to tendu to the front:

Tips: Keep your hip still as your thigh goes forward. Then, bring the thigh back by shortening your hamstring.

What not to do: When doing tendu forward with the right leg, be careful to not let your right hip go back. And when the right leg comes back in from tendu, don’t let your hip be the one to pull it back.

How to tendu to the side:

Tips: You can think about pulling your hamstring closer to your sit bone as your leg goes out. Engage your abs first so you can contract the hamstring to turn out the standing leg as well as your working leg. Doing this will also help keep your weight forward.

What not to do: When doing tendu to the side, be careful to not fall back or lean back. And be aware of not twisting your hip to bring the leg to side rather than your thigh swinging to the side. Most people will try to correct this by telling you to keep your standing side shoulder back. But truly, it is because you are twisting the hip when you send your leg to tendu. Your legs should move beneath you. You don’t move with your legs.

How to tendu to the back:

Tips: Imagine a broom. Think of your feet as the bottom of the broom. And think of your leg (literal femur bone) as the broom handle. When the bottom of the broom sweeps the ground (that is your feet going to tendu), you’re noticing the result of what we do at the top of the broom. We swing the top of the broom which swings the whole thing. And we swing the top back up so we can swing it again. And that is what you can do to the top of your thigh (and that is where your hamstrings can help a lot). Your hips should be very still, and your thigh bone should move within the ball and socket.

What not to do: When doing tendu to the back with your right leg, be careful of not twisting your right hip back to open. Many dancers think they have to turn out their hip before moving their leg. If you do this, your gluteus will engage way before your hamstring. Consequently, it would be impossible to engage your hamstring at this point.

Accuracy of the direction of tendu refers to being able to do tendu to the front, side, and back on the center line. This means that if your leg is not on the center line, it is either over-crossed or not crossed enough. That “accuracy of tendu” is the result of being able to do what I’ve mentioned above. Once you understand that your thigh movements are articulated by your hamstrings, you are going to be able to achieve a tendu that is crossed, creates a nice line, and doesn’t hurt.

Articulation of your feet is important, but it does not come before the articulation of your thigh movements. Do not focus on your feet, and don’t use the placement of your feet or toes as indication of accuracy.

Keep your focus on your thigh movements, and place the middle of your thigh on the center line to the front, side, and back. It’s easy to think of where you are putting your foot in tendu. But that’s not going to be accurate.

Side note: This idea of focusing on thighs rather than feet must be slightly modified if you have hyperextended legs or bowed legs. When you cross your thighs, often your shin crosses more than your thighs, so you must keep your thighs crossed, and your shin not crossed (this will actually feel like you are not crossed, but that’s only a feeling!).

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Feel free when you dance…isn’t that the point?

The way you do tendu sets up the muscles you must engage for the rest of the class. So if you can engage your hamstring during tendu, then you will have much more freedom in your leg movements, which will make your whole body feel more free once you get to the center.

Alternatively, you could squeeze your buttocks, tense up your legs, and feel like you have to force your body to move when you’re at barre and when you get to center.

The choice is yours.

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I have three rules that are based on very simple logic, but get missed 99% of the time. So if you want to be ahead of your classmates, coworkers, or just be better than you were yesterday, here are three rules of ballet that you need to know.

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#1. Your core must be a part of your movement

Ah yes, good friend. The core is everything. You cannot ignore your core, and it must always be the source of your power. Go back to my older newsletters and read about body mechanics. You will find the word core without fail in almost everything I write and teach.

Think about when and how to engage your abs when dancing. You have to think about it even before turning out your legs. You need to think about it as you begin to breathe. Although it is great to have strong abs, you can’t just tense abs to engage them. There is a specific and correct way to engage your abs.

First, you need to know how to engage your abs (specifically lower abs) about an inch or two below your belly button. If you know how, great. If you don’t, great—that’s why I’m here writing to tell you to go read this newsletter and get familiar with the instructions.

Second, you need to know that the engagement of your core is the base of every movement. This means that if you are moving your legs forward, the first thing that comes before your leg movement is your core engagement. If you are leaping, then your core must engage before the take off and before the landing. If you are doing plie, then you have to engage your core before you go down, and engage it again before you come up. Simple but not easy. It can be especially tricky if you’re not used to engaging your abs before any and every movement. Coordination is crucial. I was lucky enough to learn this from someone who understood Pilates, ballet, and math principles. That’s why I want you to keep reading. It was not well-known knowledge when I was a professional, and yet, it is the most important knowledge for you to have as a dancer.

I had to re-learn everything from standing, getting into turned-out positions, to grand allegro. The crazy thing is that I’m still finding so many places that I’m not incorporating my abs. And usually if you’re in pain, feel a weakness in your technique, or feel like you’re not improving, it’s because you have to go back to your abs.

Your abs must be your source of strength and focus. You’ve got to master this concept first.

#2. Pushing rather than pulling

This is something I didn’t fully get as a professional. But recently, I was able to walk this natural way by pushing the ground back and moving my body forward. And most of you will be like, “umm yes. How else do you walk?” But what’s crazy is that many dancers don’t do that in ballet. The mistake here is that dancers are using pulling mechanics when dancing and weakening themselves over time. This is as if you would be walking by pulling yourself forward by the front leg instead of pushing yourself forward by the back leg. You can dance very well by pulling mechanics, I did this for long time, and won some competitions, but I can tell you from my experience that it will lead you to injuries and your lines will be compensated. You will look weaker than if you learned to push.

Here are some examples of what it would look like in ballet:

Let’s say we are doing chasse forward. If you put down the front leg, putting your weight on it, and pulling yourself forward, this would be “pulling.” Pushing would be if you plie down on the back leg keeping your weight on the back leg, then pushing from the back leg to transfer your weight forward onto the front leg.

It is an easy mistake to make at the barre as well. Right before every combination whether from first position or fifth position, we tend to put down the front leg (straight leg) then pull ourselves into the position. By doing so we are already preparing ourselves to practice the pulling mechanism, and that is not good. So when you get into any starting position, push off from your back leg to step onto the front leg, rather than pulling towards the front leg. Or set the standing leg first then drop the working leg into preparation. One little tip is to keep both legs slightly soft as you go into any position as you engage your core. Do not lock into “straightened” legs and engage the quads to “straighten” your knees. This is especially important if you have hyperextension. The moment you lock into anything, you are not using your core.

This rule is connected to the concept of your center of gravity. Read this newsletter about how everything you do in ballet should be anchored to this area of power.

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#3. Never lengthen what cannot be lengthened

This is probably one of the corrections that has been passed down from who knows when, and this correction itself has destroyed many talents in ballet. Ever heard corrections like your arms need to be long, have long legs, or worst one yet, make your spine long like it’s being pulled at both ends? Do you know what’s wrong with these corrections?

Your arms will never be longer.

Your neck will never get longer.

Your spine should never be long.

These corrections are actually very dangerous. Typically, when dancers try to make their arms longer, they hyperextend their arms, hold them way too far back, or they over-extend their shoulder blades out making their shoulder joints vulnerable to dislocation.

Same for legs. Limbs don’t just get long, and if you are somehow making them long, then you must be compensating somewhere else. It could be your hips, or even worse, your spine.

I beg you to never lengthen your spine. Its most healthy posture is its natural curve. And that posture is the most powerful place to create force, the safest place to take the impact, and the most beautiful to look at.

Here’s a revolutionary correction: Think about having short arms, legs, and spine. No more “lengthening” your body (that also includes pulling up from your head). If you want to be taller, you must put down the outside of your feet and shove them down to the ground to get taller. When you hear the correction “pull up!” You can pull your hamstrings up to your sit bones and pull up your whole hip bones. But you can only do this if you engage your core and make yourself “short and compact.”

If you want your arms to be longer, then keep them short.

If you want your legs to be longer, then keep them in their ball and sockets.

And if you want your spine to get longer, then learn to keep it strong in a neutral position (no tucking or lengthening).

It’s an illusion to look longer. And no dancer should try to be literally longer.

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You want to move gracefully and effortlessly

Often dancers are described as graceful and effortless, and we are told that we should actually move without any effort. I think that idea can be misunderstood. It does not mean to be lazy or not to put any effort into dance. It’s quite the opposite. You must put more effort into the thing which will make you dance effortlessly. These three rules that I mentioned directly contribute to achieving that effortless and graceful dancing. I think it’s more accurate to say that there’s a lot of effort into making something look effortless. But “effortless” is not necessarily the goal.

The bottom line: Start from your core engagement, then think about pushing the core around to move, and finally move your spine, arms, and legs closely around your core.

Think how you can achieve this in your next class from the first combination, or maybe when you are working on a solo variation. Go back to the beginning and break everything down based on these three ideas.

And use the help of a teacher if you can (hey, maybe that’s me).

I say this to you because I want you to know it’s possible to get back in strong ballet shape. And you don’t have to accept that you’re too old or too weak to start over. If I can do it, I know others can do it too.

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Here is a clip from my recent Swan Lake performance (the end of my fouettes in the third act coda):

When I stopped dancing nine years ago…

I really stopped dancing. I didn’t take class. I didn’t teach ballet. I just closed the door.

After my final professional ballet performance, I absolutely neglected all physical activity. I lost almost all my muscle strength, and ironically, it also took a toll on my mental health. Once I decided to do some physical activity, I started to feel better overall. But it was only one hour of boxing classes three times a week. It was challenging because I was not in high-performing physical condition, but now that I’m coming back to ballet, it is much more challenging than boxing classes. Compared to just three hours, I am roughly taking 1.5 hour ballet classes three times a week. And because I’m guesting, I have three more hours of rehearsal time per week. So a total of 7.5 hours per week of exercise.

Now that might be a lot for someone like me, and might be very little for someone who is dancing professionally or in school. Let’s be clear, that’s nothing at the level of my professional dancing days that were over 40 hours a week during performance time. But recently, with that much increase in physical demand, you have to have some strategy, otherwise you might get injured or discouraged and stop completely.

I was able to get in shape in four months to do the full Swan Lake with my strategy, no injuries and going strong for my next gig coming up.

Here are my best tips for getting in shape and staying in shape.

The 5 golden rules to follow to get in ballet shape:

1. Abs! Not turnout.

Your first goal when getting back into shape is to be able to do abs exercises for three minutes straight without a break. Any Pilates abs exercise, which has your back on the ground is a good standard. This is definitely the hardest thing ever, and being able to do abs for three minutes straight means you have very strong abs. Or at least, a good start.

Your abs must be stronger than your legs or your back. For example, let’s say you are doing the bicycle abs exercise. Your abs must be able to ground your whole torso heavier than your legs, especially keeping your lower back and hip area on the ground while your legs move. If your spine is moving with your legs, then you’re doing it wrong. And not only that, you are training your spine to be unstable while your legs move, which is a huge cause of injuries. (Typically, when legs lower, that’s when the spine tends to arch, so make your abs and torso heavier as your legs lower.)

2. Take three classes per week.

It's hard at first but you can do it. It’s almost a motivational issue, so finding that one open class that you enjoy pushes you a little, and you’ll feel comfortable working at your own pace. If you cannot take three classes per week, then you must substitute with your abs exercises. Every night.

3. Don't force anything.

That includes turning out, pointing feet, straightening legs, and pulling up your body. Rather, focus on stabilizing your spine (with abs), and free movement in your joints like hip and shoulder ball and sockets, knees, and elbow hinges. Remember you don't have muscles that are strong enough to turn out or reach high extensions. You must build the muscle to do it or you will get hurt if you go for maximum extension and turnout. If you want to look good at first, you’ll pay the consequences of injuries faster than you think.

Do less at first! Less will get you more turnout and extension. But only if you truly want that nice line, strong technique, and no injuries.

4. You will go through many phases while you are getting back in shape.

If you are in shape (not like me), then this process will be much faster like days instead of months.

• First month is to just move your body.

• For the next two months, focus on abs and correct mechanics in class. Core engagement, free movements in major joints, alignment, and breathing, and things like that which help you stay healthy and injury free.

• Pay attention to what hurts because if something hurts then you are doing something wrong. Do not push through the pain, but always go back to your core exercises, which can release joints that are restricted by other muscles. For example, if your lower back hurts, then your abs need to disengage the back muscles. If your knees hurt, then your abs needs to carry the weight of your body. If your hips hurt, then your abs need to move your legs.

• For another two months, you can start pushing your limits. You must start building muscle strength, but always be sure that your abs are stronger than other muscles.

• You might feel the tightness in your Achilles tendons. Make sure to do calf raises, and that you are not rolling on the inside of your feet. That's important.

5. Take good care of your body.

Stretch and roll your muscles often.

Take magnesium baths.

Maybe go get a massage.

Or my favorite, go to a chiropractor who is specialized in Advance Muscle Integration Technique Method. Highly recommend.

Reformer Pilates is also a good choice. Also highly recommend.

Warning: Results vary depending on the amount of work YOU put in, and your understanding of mechanics (over shapes).

Whether you’ve been away from dancing for nine years or just a week, this process will serve you well. These rules are meant to limit you so that you can gain more freedom as you progress.

You might end up being in better shape than before.

I was going to write about this topic only for absolute ballet beginners, but I think this advice is still applicable to those who have danced for a while, young kids training for pre-professional divisions, and dancers close to becoming professionals. Heck, maybe this is for the professionals too!

Basically, it’s this question: How do I become a better dancer? This should be asked daily. They say go back to your roots to remember who you are or how far you’ve come (my kids are really into Lion King lately, and this lesson is a good one, okay). Now is the time to build roots and a good foundation for your future. I’d like to bring to your focus a legit question: What are the actions you should take to become a better dancer?

Ballet is an artform of dance telling a story by movements with music. Let’s break down each part to see how it can strengthen your technique and approach.

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Story

To tell a story you need characters, the understanding of plot development, setting, and atmosphere. Whether you are doing a solo, grand pas de deux, or whole story ballet, you must understand these elements every time you dance.

It is probably best to think big picture, which is the setting and atmosphere. Where or when is the ballet set? For example: Spain (Don Quixote), India (La Bayadere), French Revolution (Flames of Paris), era of pirates and slaves (Le Corsaire). You can make a good guess on how dancers in these ballets would move based on their culture—how passionate or internal they are.

Then naturally you want to think about your character. What is their personality and temperament, and how would that shape how they approach movement? How young or old are they?

Then maybe most importantly, the plot development. What life experiences have they had up until this point? What is their motivation? What do they desire? What change are they going through? What is the conflict, and what leads to resolution?

And ultimately how can YOU become that character with YOUR background?

For example, when I performed the Melancholic role by Balanchine (from “The Four Temperaments”), I understood what being melancholic would be like because I often was melancholic in my own life. The challenge was how to dance the emotion of melancholic. Often dancers think that if you feel melancholic and really show it with your face, that gets the job done. But your performance won’t translate well to the audience if you’re the only one feeling it. You have to approach the choreography so that the steps carry meaning. In Melancholic, there were many steps that went from rising to falling all the way to the ground. I used this part of the choreography to dance like I was breathing out heavily. And I danced whole sections by focusing on the back of my head so that I was constantly being pulled from the back, as if dwelling in my past. This approach helped me with the ballet technique involved in that specific choreography.

You must approach choreography with actionable meaning so that you can give power to your dancing. In that way the audience sees something more than the steps, which is the art.

Random side note: This was the role that took me from being the explosive trickster dancer to being seen as a dancer capable of more principal roles. It was a professional and personal turning point. So the takeaway is that you can journey with your character. And you can grow throughout your career with the roles you perform.

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Movements

Consider two important elements every time you dance: Your body and awareness of your body in space.

This is where technique comes into play. We have rules like turnout, location of our limbs, and the way we present our body with epaulement. And dig even deeper—how do we do chasse or glissade before the jumps that can lead us to have the power to move and look better during those jumps? How much muscle do we need to bend our knees into retire or passe during pirouettes? Or how do we do rond de jambe a terre that relates to fondues and frappes? And how can we apply all of that to choreography?

To really be able to apply these ideas, you need to have strong proprioception. Simply explained, proprioception is your body’s awareness.

Can you tell where your arms are in space when you close your eyes?

Can you accurately tell the direction you are facing?

Can you tell how fast you are bending your knees?

There is a very simple test you can do to see if you have good or bad proprioception. Close your eyes and march in the same spot facing the same direction for 30 seconds. If you have bad proprioception, you will immediately and unintentionally start turning, while people with good proprioception will simply continue facing the same way.

It is important to have good proprioception because then you can get good feedback from your whole body. If you can’t tell where your legs are in space, it will be much harder to do even a simple tendu combination.

Good news: You can train your proprioception by standing on something unstable, or performing movements by closing your eyes.

So try closing your eyes during a barre combination. Can you feel your legs in the correct directions? Can you change the direction you face accurately?

There are other important things like how to understand your core in movements, or how to do port de bras. Can you maximize your visual feedback? For example, this question addresses how to turn onstage when the stage lighting is blinding.

Notice in this topic of sensing and understanding your body’s movement and orientation in space that it has nothing to do with your eyes. Ever had perfect rehearsals and then gone onstage and messed up badly? My guess is that your eyes are doing too much work and you haven’t done enough training on your proprioception. It’s interesting how ballet teachers can place so much emphasis on where you are looking, the shapes you make in the mirror, and how spotting is all about focusing on your eyesight.

Important question: What do you do onstage when there is no mirror, blinding lights on every side, a black abyss in front of you, and an intensely bright spotlight above you? You cannot use your eyes for balance. Period. That’s why I mention how training your proprioception is important for your balance on stage. It is often better to relax your eyes and shift the focus of your eyes to peripheral vision. You’ll still get feedback from your vision, but you are not relying on your eyes for balance or knowing where you are in space.

(Side note: Spotting with your head should be used more for the rhythm of the turn.)

Music

Music is a huge part of ballet. I believe it was Balanchine who once famously said something like, if you don’t like the ballet you’re watching, at least you can always close your eyes and enjoy the music.

Let me get this out first: You must train your ears to be able to hear the rhythm, melody, harmony, form, and expression of the music. And the way to train your ears for ballet is to listen to many pieces of classical music. There is no other way around it. I used to listen to classical music in the car, on my commute, and I would listen to it when it was time to sleep (no joke). When I wasn’t listening to classical music, I was watching ballet, so the ballet music was always playing in my head. So are you listening to classical music and trying to understand it?

When you understand music, you will notice that music is very much like a writing. The music plays in sentences often repeating them exactly or in a similar way, and over time, these similar melodies develop into something more dramatic as if music has some story to tell. Classical music is especially dramatic. Are you able to hear the story throughout a piece of music?

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Technically speaking, most music has rhythmic measurement of eight counts, and it is helpful if you can count it in the music when you are learning or making choreography. And if you are a teacher, it helps tremendously during the ballet technique classes to count out the music. Can you count different kinds of classical music?

That being said, you don’t want to focus too much on the counting and all the technical things when dancing to the music because you can’t forget the melody and beats. Melody should be recognizable and you should be able to memorize it (if you can hum a song, you’re good to go). And the beats can tell you how fast the music is (usually, the way your head bobs to music will let you know the beat). It should be like your favorite song: If you know how it sounds and the lyrics, then you can sing along, no problem. Classical music is the same. You should be able to hum along (although it is very hard to hum Stravinsky…but it can be done). Most ballets can be done without counting.

Side note: If you are dancing Balanchine, you will often dance to music composed by Stravinsky. So with his ballets, often you need to count the music to know exactly when the strong accent is on the melody, entrance to the stage, or when is the cue for the steps during the pas de deux. Counting is a huge part of choreography. For example, when I danced Balanchine’s Rubies, the counting could be complicated, but once you rehearsed enough, you could hear it right away. The counting and the music become one. When you can count it, you can hear the music better (and not necessarily the other way around).

Being able to recognize the melody and memorize (or at least familiarizing yourself to it) the music is a big part of ballet.

Finally, an important part about music: Just like a conductor leads the orchestra, you also want to lead the music. You want to stay ahead of music and not behind. When you lead the music, your movements will be lighter and create a dynamic musicality. This will make your dancing more satisfying and enjoyable.

You can choose to finish behind the music. This makes the effect that you make the music longer. But again, it must be intentional by listening to the music and specifically doing something with the music. You can only do this when you understand music. It’s like playing and breaking the rules only after you understand them.

Do not treat music like it’s just a background music—make it dance with you. And that can only be accomplished if you know the music by heart.

The artform of dance

So now you know that if you’re working on a variation or a new ballet or just working to get better in class, there are three main ideas that should be in your head: who you are, where you are, and when to move.

Simple. Not easy.

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I was capable of some amazing tricks, but they were not always accurate. And understandably, a professional company wanted to put on a show that was as flawless as possible. Tricks could be risky. And so I was told to aim for two pirouettes instead of multiple, or to make my jumps smaller so I could really hit the positions. This advice clearly did not make me feel confident. It actually did the opposite.

It made me feel like I was less than what I could be. When I went onstage, I ended up making more mistakes—like falling out of two pirouettes, or getting my legs tangled in my jumps. Worst of all, I started not enjoying going onstage. I focused so much on playing it safe, and not making mistakes. It felt like a Catch-22 situation where I didn’t want to risk tricks (or disappointment), but doing less was overall disappointing and not making me a better dancer. I felt terrible and didn’t know what to do.

A turning point in my professional career…

In my second season with the company, I got the opportunity to work with one of the rehearsal masters from Paris Opera Ballet. He gave us the morning technique class where he clearly saw my ability to dance. Then he was to coach me for the role of the Jester from Swan Lake. Typically, this role is given to a dancer who can showcase their great ability to do big jumps, fast steps, exciting turns, and act in a comedic character. For this role, I was again instructed to do less by my company ballet masters, and was struggling to get it right before the performance.

The Paris Opera Ballet coach arrived to my rehearsal and asked me to show him my variation. Naturally, I showed him the extremely toned-down version of my Jester. It must have been pretty horrible because he stopped the rehearsal and gave me a talk. The advice he gave shaped me into the kind of professional ballet dancer I ended up becoming. And I want you to read it very carefully:

“Why aren’t you doing what you can do? Be yourself. Do what you are good at.”

I thought I was supposed to be professional by making sure I didn’t mess up the show. But instead he allowed me (pretty much commanded me) to take risks and not limit myself. I suddenly felt free. After those rehearsals with him, I had the best Jester shows where I was getting tons of applause and engagement from the audience. From that day on I never held anything back onstage. Of course I made mistakes still, but mistakes mean so little when the audience can sense the art of your dancing in the performance.

The only time “doing less” is a good thing

This topic has been on my mind since one of my former students came and told me that she was not allowed to use her full beautiful flexibility and extension, and was only allowed to do less. Her teacher wanted her to look like everyone else in class who did not have high and gorgeous extensions.

Let me say this…it is NOT OK to say do less when the dancer can do a beautiful job. When a dancer can do more, do not ask them to do less. Doing less when you want to break down steps is good. It’s good because the goal is actually to push your limits and be an even stronger and amazing dancer. It’s to tap into the full potential of your talent. This is different from doing less simply because the teacher is uncomfortable and wants you to play it safe and not stand out.

Powerful takeaways from my experience

Your hard work is not in vain. Always be at your limit pushing more and doing better.

There are different kinds of hard work. When I competed, my focus was to nail all the tricks and do more impressive tricks. In my later career, I focused on understanding mechanics so my ballet technique was cleaner and more efficient. Pursuing correct mechanics also helped me in preventing injuries. As some of you who follow my Instagram know, I am now getting back in shape to dance again, and my focus is more on applying the technique that I teach to my own students.

Understand that mistakes aren’t the end.

Take risks in the studio, by yourself, and also onstage. Learn to go for it. When you commit to taking risks, you’ll discover the key to doing well onstage. This is where breaking down steps, studying them, and working with someone intelligent comes in handy. Then it’s up to you to commit!

Sometimes, you have to prove yourself.

Proving yourself is not just to blindly and obediently do what people ask of you to show you’re listening. This is about you. Bring your own ideas, bring your own interpretation to the steps. That’s how you make it authentic. It goes back to you. And ironically, that’s what ballet masters and directors are looking for. That’s what having “principal dancer quality” is all about. Even if you’re playing a character, if it’s not grounded in an honest personal experience, many times the emotion falls flat. And that will affect the overall quality of the performance.

Let’s be real, there are also other realities that happen when you take risks. Truth be told, sometimes you will take a risk and it will pay off, and you will get punished. You will be shamed for not listening to your director or ballet master, and they will want to put you down. This is more rare, but it does happen (this goes for ballet and life in general).

I could have chosen to not go for it in the Jester performances after the Paris Opera Ballet coach came. But I wanted to prove that I could do it. And I did. And this was a defining moment for me as a professional dancer because it allowed me to know that I could do great things. Afterwards, I was never told to tone it down by anyone; sometimes I got nasty comments when I was a little more reckless. But I was cast into dancing more soloist and even principal roles after that. So it paid off.

Bottom line: Play it safe, and you might never see what you’re truly capable of (that goes for ballet and for life in general).

Finally, enjoy this clip from the show right after this amazing rehearsal of Jester with the Paris Opera Ballet coach:

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The music starts. The curtain opens. Swan Lake begins with grand and epic Tchaikovsky music—that overture lets you know you’re about to see something big. The nerves hit me at this moment on Saturday night. Yes, I do get nervous before my shows (even after countless times of being on stage). But it hit me so suddenly in that moment that it startled me. I did my own breathing technique (maybe it could help you too) to calm myself down. That cleared my thoughts.

The show was starting. I’m here. I’m ready.

Well, I’m as ready as I could be…

I had four months to get in shape. If you ask anyone who’s not been dancing for years, and you tell them that they’ll be dancing the full four acts of Swan Lake as the principal guy (or lady), and they only have four months to get ready, that’s unheard of. Most people would laugh it off. I did…at first.

The dress rehearsal before the show did not go as well as I wanted it to go. But you know what they say: a bad rehearsal means a good performance. But here’s the thing—when things don’t go well, especially the day before, or even just before the curtain opens, you have to understand that it’s going to be different. There’s going to be adrenaline that’s just not there in the studio or the dress rehearsal on stage.

Good news, I did the show. And it went great. It reminded me that I have some useful pre-show tips to get any dancer ready for their show. They got me through a professional career. And they got me through Saturday night.

Use these tips next time you’re getting ready for a show.

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5 tips to help you crush your next performance

1. 20% effort is your goal

Before your actual show, go through the steps with 20% effort. Do not try to nail your turns or go through your solo full out. Instead, make it your goal to think about how you’d initiate choreography, or simply start the steps of the pas de deux with your partner. And then you just leave it. When you go on stage, that 20% is what is going to take you up to 100%. It’s a process that you have to trust as a dancer.

2. Be present in your character

You have to be in the present moment. This means you don’t dwell on the past (bad rehearsal), and don’t even try to predict the future (hope for a “perfect” show). Stay in that moment. It’s surprisingly easy to do this when you’re doing a big multiple act story ballet because you get to be the character, and the ballet moves with you as you tell the story. Your story develops over time. So focus on the story you’re telling in that solo, or that pas de deux, or that group scene…and that will make it feel less intense.

3. Be ok with your nerves

In the third act, my partner (the talented dancer who played Odile, the Black Swan) told me that she was nervous. The truth is that it’s natural to be nervous before a show, especially backstage…especially before your entrance. Being too nervous is deadly. But not being nervous at all is a recipe for disaster too. Actually, be more concerned if you’re not nervous because either you don’t care enough about the show or maybe you’re completely disconnected. Your nerves mean you are aware that you’re about to put your whole heart into it. And caring is energy that translates onto stage. When you want to do good, you will naturally feel nerves (that goes for anything in life). I’m not talking about the kind of nerves that rile you up, and make you feel out of control with panic.

Shakiness is good (read this article about a Japanese phrase musha burui). The fact is that looking into the unknown will give you a sense of fear. And it takes courage to go onstage.

4. Trust

Back to my Odile partner. Knowing that I used to be a professional (once a professional, always a professional), I told her to trust our partnership. This goes both ways. I trust her, and I hope she trusts me. I said that to my other partner (the talented dancer who performed Odette, the White Swan) as well, because it’s important. Trust is a big part of ballet. You must also trust yourself. It’s about accepting that whatever happens onstage will happen, and you are present for each of those moments. Again, it’s easier for a story ballet because you can be the character with each step in the story. You can’t think ahead—that part of the story hasn’t happened yet. If you study Shakespeare, you learn that the players studied their lines from “cue scripts” meaning they only got the two or three lines before their line, and not the whole script. In that way, they had to really interact with everyone and be present onstage to make the story more authentic. They had to listen, and let other people cue them. Ballet should be like that too. And ballet might make that easier because music cues us when to move.

5. Don’t accept injuries as the status quo

I’ve been applying what I teach in these Ballet Wizard articles to my dancing. And while I was applying these mechanics to my technique, I realized its power. This is why I was able to get back in shape in such a short time and be ready to perform. I was able to perform Swan Lake with no injuries. Within four months. I’m not joking. That is an accomplishment, and something I believe my own students can claim for themselves. When I started applying these mechanics nine years ago when I performed my first Swan Lake performances, I was also not injured at that point. It seems like these objective truths still hold nine years later. This is what I want other dancers to be able to grasp: you can do it too. It’s a matter of learning correct mechanics, and undoing old muscle memory and corrections that are not serving you. You can’t just do it by telling yourself to be better. You’ve got to work with a good teacher who teaches correct mechanics. So I’m glad you’re here.

It might be controversial to claim that you don’t have to be injured if you want to be a serious ballet dancer. You don’t have to say, well that’s the way it is.

It doesn’t have to be that way. My motto is always,“No pain, more gain.”

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The curtain closed, and then…

When the curtain closed, I didn’t have any thoughts because the story ended. I was finished. I enjoyed that moment of silence in my heart and mind knowing that the story was done. It was a void, an emptiness. A sense of peace. And I think that’s how a story ballet should feel after the curtain drops at the end.

You’re done being your character. You lived the story with them. And you also got to the other side with them.

As for my story, this is the reset button that I really needed to come back to ballet. Now I can give more with my dancing and my teaching, both ways.

So the curtain hasn’t closed yet for me. I guess.

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Quite a few people are against competitions because they potentially diminish the artistry of ballet. I’ve been in both worlds. I’ve competed in major ballet competitions like YAGP and International Ballet Competitions throughout the world. When I danced professionally, I really focused on how to play a character that translates to the audience. I understand people who feel like competitions aren’t a true art form, but I also competed with people who went on to be great artists.

In competitions we are only doing solos or a pas de deux. We tend to focus on how well we can do the steps, and we don’t prioritize the character. When we do a complete story ballet, there is a lot more focus on character. Even if it’s a short ballet (like some Balanchine ballets), we still focus on character. That said, we still must focus on the steps. And if you can do the step better, then you can focus on the character more. For that reason I see many principal dancers nowadays competing and earning medals in major ballet competitions. They understand the importance of both worlds here.

My point is that winners of these prestigious competitions are the current principals of the ballet world.

And I do recommend doing competitions because they can give you the tools to become a better dancer.

Here are three keys to being artistic (and winning some competitions along the way):

1. Technique

2. Musicality

3. Personality

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Know your rules about technique before you play

The first and probably most important element when it comes to ballet is the technique. I’m talking about being able to stand, walk, run, and jump like a ballet dancer. And things you do like plie, tendu, and fondu in ballet classes are there to help you practice the details of those bigger movements. We don’t do those combinations just to look pretty. Those combinations need to translate to active ballet movements.

Having strong technique means to have a strong understanding of movement. And this translates to being able to turn with more stability, jump with more efficiency, and connect movements more fluently in the choreography.

This is why training for competitions is beneficial for ballet dancers. In order to do many turns in pirouettes, pull off difficult jumps, and give character to choreography, it takes a certain amount of correct body movement mechanics. And training for competitions gives dancers a goal, motivation, and reason to be dancing in the studio more.

Even if you are not doing competitions, it is still important to practice variations. It is important to build and practice good technique through ballet class. But you really want to understand and implement how technique can advance to actual dancing and performing. So spend a lot of time just dancing variations, and work on what you can do better in ballet class to strengthen your dance.

Musicality is the blood of ballet

First and foremost, ballet is dance. To dance is to move with the rhythm of the sound. Only 3% of people have amusia (tone deaf), so unless you are in that rare 3%, you can train your ear to hear music better. I grew up listening to classical music, I was even in an orchestra for a few years playing the trumpet. I was able to hear different instruments in a symphony, and to remember the melody. Once you can hum music, you know the music. Once you know the music, you can hear different nuances of the musical piece.

The more notes you can hear, the more places you can put your steps of choreography in the music. I always thought of putting steps in music like word play. How can I say the same thing in a different way? How many ways can I put the same steps in different parts of the music?

Not surprisingly, dancers who do competitions are listening to ballet music all the time. And those pieces of music are very classical, often composed by famous classical composers. And if you are like me, I memorized many ballet variations just for fun.

Music is the way to carry the steps. In a way, music tells the story.

Once you really pay attention to music, you can play with it. Understanding music makes learning to dance easier. Make this a goal every time you are in class or learning new choreography.

Personality shows on stage

"When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are." ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

Stage is a place where it enhances your personality. This is the most vulnerable place on earth for dancers. Whether you are playing your role as a happy character or a villain, who you are shows on stage no matter what. What I mean is that the way you live and experience your life is very important for stage presence.

I think there are a few personality traits that most principals have: diligence, carefulness, and boldness. But in my opinion there is more to it. There are dancers that are extremely amazing to watch. I’ve seen only a few dancers that have this quality. There isn’t a clear answer to this, but I know in fact that all those dancers are kind, humble, and confident on and off the stage. So maybe there is something to being a good person.

So if you’re going for that wow-factor onstage, it’s worth reflecting what kind of person you are. I know this seems like strange advice, but know that there’s a connection between who you are offstage and who you play onstage. I’ll say it kindly when I explain that I have met horrible and selfish dancers who are technically very good, but somehow, their dancing doesn’t shine onstage. Take what you will from that.

Art will reveal who you really are.

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Let’s break down how it really works.

A disturbing ballet trend…

There seems to be a recent trend that focuses on the use of your gluteus. Some suggest to use it for turnout, others suggest to use it for arabesque and attitude or anything where the legs are behind the body. Unfortunately, from what I have learned through injury recovery and resistance training, the way that this trend tends to engage the gluteus is not only wrong, but also contributes to a lot of injuries. At best, this excessive use of the glutes prevents many dancers from getting better.

Now I know this is quite a shocking statement for some. But other dancers who actually have a high arabesque and great turnout will probably agree with me. They do not use gluteus for turnout nor arabesque. The times you want to use your gluteus is when you do petit allegro or lifting in partnering. I also don’t want to sound arrogant, so from the most sincere place of my heart, I beg you to understand: There is better way to go about ballet technique than telling dancers to engage their gluteus.

So this should leave you with these questions: What is the correct way then? How can you gain a correct and high arabesque without activating your glutes?

Let’s break down arabesque to the source of magic:

• What muscles to use

• How to access it

• How to train it

Three muscles for one arabesque

There are three muscles that you must focus on to get the best arabesque. And these three muscles are…

1. Hamstrings: used for bringing your working leg to the back.

   

2. Internal obliques: used for keeping your upper body back.

   

3. Hip flexors: used to move your standing leg forward.

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One muscle that binds it all

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you can probably guess this one crucial muscle. The answer is…your abs. Simply put, the abs stabilize the lower back and hip bones. All the muscles that I’ve mentioned above are connected to the lower back and hip bones, and even more important is that the internal obliques are literally connected to the abs themselves! So having strong abs is the first step to accessing all the correct muscles and activation.

Put it together

My friend with the incredible arabesque explained how she does it:

1. Raise her back leg with hamstring. This makes sense because anything in the back should be done by engaging the hamstring muscles. The big mistake here is that a lot of people tend to use gluteus to even start moving the leg backwards. In my opinion this is the hardest hurdle to get over. You must relax your gluteus, and let your hamstring start the movement.

2. Use her obliques (internal ones) to keep the body up. This one could be confusing because you often think that obliques are meant for bending sideways or twisting the upper body. But if…IF! you engage your abs, you can actually use them to bend your upper body in arabesque (or even attitude to the back). Ironically, you don’t use back muscles to keep the body up in arabesque.

3. Use her hip flexor to move the standing leg forward. Think about it: You are actually moving your standing leg forward to bend your standing hip, so naturally your hip flexor will engage. However, you don’t have to purposely engage or tense it. Just think about moving your leg front, and that will engage the right muscle.

Exercises to get these muscles to engage

Arabesque is all about the correct sequence of muscles. But if your muscles are weak or being overpowered by other muscles, then you have to start from building up the strength.

Strengthen these muscles:

1. Hamstring exercise

   The number one exercise for hamstring engagement is “the bridge.” Make sure to move your sit bones closer to the calf when your hips go up. You can do this exercise a lot, but stop when you start feeling your thighs working. That means you are tired.

   

2. Oblique exercise

   Two exercises here: You can’t really isolate it.

   1. Side bend: Just pick up some weights off the ground.

      

   2. Cable twist: You will at least need a TheraBand or some kind of band to pull away.

   

3. Hip flexor exercise

   I actually do not recommend exercising the hip flexor. It is often being overused and overdeveloped for many, and that it is not necessary to strengthen it. Instead, do an extra ab exercise that involves moving your legs to support the functionality of the hip flexor—this will help rather than hurt you.

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Maybe the fastest way to get the best arabesque?

You might even get better at ballet in general if you do this. The one big thing I have in common with my friend who has an incredible arabesque is that we train our body on a Pilates reformer. I used the reformer to learn how to use my body after my professional career, and I even taught Pilates reformer classes for a time. My friend happens to own one and uses it every morning, and she is the strongest and most flexible dancer I know.

The Pilates reformer is a great tool for ballet dancers because the exercises you do on the reformer translates to ballet so well. Abs and core stabilization, free movement of legs and arms, turn-in and turn-out legs, and strengthening while gaining flexibility. There is just so much direct cross-over to ballet.

If you are wondering what ballet dancers should do for cross training, my answer is always going to be resistance training on the Pilates reformer.

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So how do you jump higher? It comes down to few things:

1. Activate elastic-like muscle effect.

2. Use coordination before take off.

3. Implement your core.

4. Land correctly.

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Become a bouncy ball

You must understand the difference between slow plies and rhythmic plies. They are both important and should be practiced both ways.

When you relax a muscle and change the length, you are actually stretching the muscle. But when you pre-load (tense) your muscle and stretch it, it causes your muscle to act like an elastic. This action can be used to spring it back and fire muscles explosively. Not only is this energy-efficient, but this is one way to jump higher.

When you watch people with good jumps, their time spent in plie before take off seems very short. But really, they are accessing this muscle behavior to use it fully for jumps.

In the clip below is international Principal ballerina and my friend, Evelina Godunova. Her jump is magnificent. You can see the elastic effect of her muscles when she starts to jump higher and higher. She truly is an amazing dancer—go follow her on Instagram @evelinagodunova.

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Learn how to coordinate your arms

You need to master how your arms swing as you take off into your jump. This coordination comes naturally for some, but with practice you can get this right.

Here is what you do:

Imagine your favorite grand allegro. You are about to jump. Your arms will swing down when you go down (plie) on the take off leg. Below is a great demonstration of how arms swing down before they take off.

You actually want your arms to help you. What tends to happen is that arms go down too slowly, and then there’s not enough speed. Watch the timing of the arms from the guys in the video again.

When you go down on take off, you want your arms to swing down and gather you into the air. The arms swinging into a downward motion before takeoff should help get you into the air.

Your core is a black hole…

Of course I have to talk about the core because it’s the source of magic at this school of Ballet Wizards.

Activating your core before taking off will protect you from potential injuries. And more importantly, you will be able to access your core to throw yourself in the air with incredible power. The way the core works is that all power moves through the core. So if your core is soft and not correctly engaged, then your potential power will escape to other places of your body. You won’t be able to translate the force to action no matter how much you try to push it (or no matter how much you focus on your plie). And that power that escapes could result in potential injuries.

Typically for any jumps, big or small, you must engage and reengage at three checkpoints:

1. Before take off.

2. In the air before striking some position.

3. Before the landing.

Once again, imagine your favorite grand allegro. Imagine it very slowly, taking it moment by moment, almost like meditating on it.

When do you take off?

What do you do in the air?

How do you land?

Then think about how, before each moment, you can engage your core (abs) like a blackhole sucking your whole body inwards. Now slowly speed up to the real speed, and those “black hole” moments will happen very quickly.

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Whether you are just going up and down in first position, or splitting your legs in the air, you want to re-engage your abs (core) before each of these checkpoints.

Before landing, always do this

Taking off correctly is important, but injuries happen when landing most of the time. So it is in your best interest to protect yourself from the impact of landing. It seems obvious by this point that engaging your core will protect you, but here’s an even more important point: Using your core before landing is what can help you nail a position after every jump. I used to mess up at the end of my variations, meaning that I would do my last jump or pirouette…and crumble to the ground. Many times, I touched the ground in my last pose (a huge no-no in the ballet world), and in the worst case, I fell on my butt. That last moment always felt like a gamble.

When you use the core before hitting the floor, it’s like magic. You don’t have to think much about nailing the landing. It just happens with or without you thinking about it. The reason why you can nail it is, like I said earlier, because all force goes through your core. So if you have a stable and strong core, all the impact from landing is already in control even before impact. It is always a pleasant surprise when you finish a combination solidly as if it happens out of nowhere. But it is nothing but an accident. It is your core.

So if landing a jump hurts, or if landing makes you even more unstable as you finish a variation, go back to how you got into your jump.

There’s a good chance, you’re not engaging your core at the beginning to get it all going.

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Remember these jumping truths:

• You need strong muscles in the right places—especially your core and the back of your thighs (hamstrings).

• It takes practice day in and day out to get the coordination. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

• Start extra slow. Practice moment by moment. It would help tremendously if you have friends who can give you with feedback on the timing of your arms.

• If you’re alone, record yourself! Just don’t judge yourself while watching it. When you film yourself, you are only noticing where to give yourself feedback on what can be improved, and not to criticize the dancing.

• Don’t let preconceived ideas about your jumping abilities hold you back. Anyone can learn to jump. And training for bigger jumps is a great way to increase your overall body strength and coordination.

While some things are actually genetic (like the strength and the tightness of ligament and tendons), which contributes to how you approach jumps, training with correct principles in mind can push you to levels you didn’t know you could accomplish. Don’t hold back. Maybe one day, you’ll also be called a gazelle by random people who sat in the audience during your performance (story for another day).

Big bonus tip: Take a look at all the dancers who are great jumpers. For example, Natalia Osipova, Evelina Godunova, Tetsuya Kumakawa, Ivan Vasiliev…etc.

When they take off, they don’t take off with extremely turned-out legs. If anything, their take off legs are considered “turned-in” for ballet. From a physics point of view, their take off legs being more “parallel” give them more force to jump resulting in higher jumps. From an anatomical point of view, their legs are aligned to the direction they are jumping towards, which is healthy for their joints.

So to turnout? Or not to turnout. That is the question…

Go watch one of your favorite jumpers.

If they’re a friend or classmate or coworker, ask them how much they think of turn out before their jumps.

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I had no idea at the time that it would be my last performance as a professional. This ballet taught me so much about technique, storytelling, and artistry. There’s a reason it’s considered the hardest ballet, and the peak of any dancer’s career. Either you will define your character well and end with goosebumps, or you will deal with the sheer endurance of pain and stamina needed to get through a three hour, four act ballet. I was able to perform it uninjured, which is an accomplishment that’s made possible by understanding story and mechanics. I was a talented dancer, sure, but I was nowhere near what we call legend. Take it from me, someone who was only considered the jumping and trick dancer—I’ve learned how to be an artistic dancer. It takes day and night thinking about it, but it’s worth it. I want other dancers to use what I learned.

You can be an incredible artist.

Let’s go for a swim in the lake, shall we?

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The Swan Lake summary you didn’t know you needed

All stories have some main building blocks: Characters, problem/conflict, events that drive the story forward, and resolution.

Characters are most important. If you deeply understand the character that you are playing, you have a very solid starting point. In the case of Swan Lake, most often the focus of the ballet goes to the White Swan (Odette) and Black Swan (Odile). But the true main character is the Prince Siegfried. Sorry, not sorry, ladies. It’s the story of Siegfried becoming an adult, rebelling against his mother, falling in love with a mysterious woman (or a bird?) at the lake, promising to save her by his love, getting fooled by villains, making the biggest mistake, which finally leads him to a devastating ending (usually the end of Swan Lake contains some version of death, or in the Stowell version, a permanent separation).

Now I’m not saying that other characters don’t matter. There are very important characters that drive the story in most exciting ways, and sometimes it can be even harder to understand these characters compared to the main character. The White Swan is a human that was cursed to be a swan except under the moonlight. She unexpectedly meets a random man, Siegfried, at the lake, while she is thinking no one would ever understand who she really is again. She gets pursued by Siegfried and convinced he can save her with his love. But the Prince gets wickedly tricked by the villains (which include the Black Swan who is a human that is good at pretending to act like a graceful swan). Then Odette is cursed forever because of Siegfried’s foolishness, and gets a punishment for trusting such a foolish prince (either by death, or staying a swan forever).

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How to make ballet into art

The story develops through a series of events. Let’s look at the act two pas de deux, which is an event where Prince Siegfried takes the White Swan by her arms and makes her fall in love with him by showing what it would be like to be free in a life together. Then at the end of act two is where they proclaim their love for each other.

The White Swan pas de deux from the second act is technically not the hardest. But definitely the most difficult. It’s crucial for both dancers to understand that the dynamic of the whole ballet changes because of this second act pas de deux. If it’s not done right, the art of this entire ballet is lost.

We’re not talking about pantomime here. Neither are we talking about super sad and emotional facial expressions. This is about the internal understanding of the character in this moment of the ballet. The choreography itself (that develops over ten minutes) will transform the two principal characters completely.

And your understanding of how to approach each of the individual steps sets you apart as either an “artist” or a “show stopper.” That’s where ballet technique comes in to play.

How to approach pas de deux

Ballet steps can be done beautifully. Pas de deux choreography can look impressive. Some dancers are more gifted than others in that sense, but I’m the Ballet Wizard that has the knowledge to show you that artistry can be explained, and with the right mindset, it can be learned. But first things first, I need to make it clear that many ballet teachings, in my opinion, are not taught well.

Let’s start with the whole concept of a pas de deux.

Typically, during a pas de deux, the female is taught that she must be able to do every step on her own. Turn, balance, get onto one leg, lean out, and jump all without help… In fact, in order to tell a story like Swan Lake (or any other ballet), the opposite must be true. The female shouldn’t be able to do anything without the male, even if it’s just walking. For example, if the White Swan is hesitant to trust the Prince, would she actually walk by herself allowing him to follow next to her wherever she goes? Let along hold hand and other hand on her waist! No, she will have to allow him to take her wherever he wants her to go, so that he can show her that he can be trusted. Otherwise she might just run and fly away, and a runaway swan wouldn’t make a good story.

The first thing you must learn when it comes to pas de deux is that the male has to lead and the female has to follow. It is easier said than done. The female has to loosen the control she wants when she dances, and the male has to really take the responsibility to manage every single step that she must take. And if one of them is lacking in these qualities, then it just turns into steps that get stacked on top of each other to show how pretty the choreography looks, while constantly managing to not fall off legs. Unfortunately, stories cannot be told with just one character talking and the other trying to keep up.

So for example, let’s look at something as simple as walking onstage together. Walking has to be lead by the male, and the female must follow at his initiation. That means the male must initiate the walk by pushing her forward, and the female must not move until the male pushes forward. Walking has a purpose wherever it occurs in the ballet, so there’s a story already built in to the two characters’ relationship.

Once you can figure out how it feels with walking, you can apply it to other steps. It’s a great place to practice leading and being led. And once you understand the dynamics that exist in that one action, you can start applying that concept to everything such as pique into arabesque, a partnered penché, or even turns from fourth. Everything.

But this is not a partnering article. This is about artistry. So here is how you can use these concepts to tell a story:

In Swan Lake, especially in the second act pas de deux, if the two principal dancers use the leading and being led concept, then each step becomes how the Prince builds trust. And the White Swan is listening to him, and paying attention to him throughout the whole pas de deux. Which leads to a beautiful moment in the end where they both believe they can be freed by love.

The ballet technique we practice daily must apply to the character you’re playing. So it’s not just one shape after another shape. Each character has different nuances, and even their port de bras must match their character’s perspective. And the way they move has to have a reason.

That is how a story needs to be told with ballet choreography. The steps become the tool for building the story.

Ballet: Sport or art?

People constantly debate whether ballet is a sport or art. Truly, it is art. And because it is art, there needs to be more than just movement to tell a story. Technique has to align with intention; it’s not just lines and execution. And those impressive tricks which require a lot of athleticism is a form of expression too.

Learning ballet technique in terms of power is the most important approach. Human emotions are power, not shape. It’s not even just feeling the feelings when you dance. When you learn power-based technique, you will naturally have nice lines and have a sense of intention rather than just showing straight legs or hitting multiple pirouettes.

Ballet is telling others what you’re saying through your movement. There’s a reason for the ballet steps. Figure that out, and you’ve got the makings of becoming a true artist.

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The muscles that you use for fifth high are very different from the rest of the arm positions. You know by now that you must use the chest muscles for the preparatory, first, and second positions. That is still important as you move your arms to the level of your shoulders. But as you advance higher than that, you must switch it up a little bit.

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Trust the process. No, really.

A cringe little back story: There was a month of my life when I thought Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) a.k.a. Pyramid Scheme was good idea, and I got myself involved a bit. During that time, people often used the sentence “trust the process.” Meaning, if you just follow what is on their list of steps, you will be successful, and you will be rich in no time…often a lie based on untrustworthy reasoning behind their processes. But, our body has a process that is based on a perfect foundation of logical physics, therefore what I’m about to tell you is a trustworthy process. So trust this process.

And my wife is an actual marketing writer who tells me never to say “trust the process” because it automatically makes people not to trust the process. But I’m just the guy who has no idea how else to say it, because I trust the process every time I do fifth high, and my body automatically does the right thing for me. So…how many times have I just said process? Let’s jump in.

First, understand these muscles

You must understand what happens physically in order to move your arms high.

Whether you are going to fifth high from a preparatory or a first position, the muscles you use will be the same. If you are going around from the side of your body (from second position), initially it might be different roughly below your shoulder level, but it will be the same above the shoulder level.

There are two important components, and we’ve already touched on these two muscles in our past newsletters.

The two main muscles:

1. Trapezius: This is the muscle that will bring your arms up into fifth high.

   

2. Rhomboid: This is the key for the trapezius to fire.

In order for your arms to go beyond shoulder height, you need to use the lower trapezius. The lower trapezius attaches to the inside of your shoulder blade and rotates upward. See the illustration below on the right side.

It pulls down the inside of the shoulder blade like a lever. But, it is really hard to pinpoint and engage the lower trapezius on command. So I have a little trick to make this engagement automatic. This is the process that I’m talking about.

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Luckily, you have an easier muscle that you can engage, which is your rhomboid. It attaches to the inside of the shoulder blade, and this muscle actually does the opposite of the lower trapezius. When rhomboids engage, they rotate the shoulder blades downward (see the illustration above). But more precisely, what it actually can do is that the rhomboid will retract the shoulder blade and that engagement pre-loads the lower trapezius. That means as soon as you start to move your arms up, it is ready to react and engage. Therefore, it automatically engages the right muscle.

The right tool for the right job

The lower trapezius is the right tool for raising your arms high.

And the rhomboid is the right tool for preparing lower trapezius.

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Let’s relate it to ballet

Whether you are going from preparatory or first position, you still have to get into those positions correctly. Part of that includes the steps of retracting your shoulder blades towards the center (this is what the rhomboid’s job is).

Move arms to fifth high:

1. Get into preparatory or first position (If you haven’t read how to get into these positions, then start here.)

2. Retract your shoulder blades slightly together. Do not squeeze shoulder blades together. It is a very tiny movement, and barely visible. Feel the slight engagement from that movement.

3. Start raising your port de bras. Make sure to initiate from the elbows (never raise from the hands).

4. As arms starts to move to fifth high position, notice your lower trapezius engaging right away even without thinking about it.

That’s it. No complicated steps here.

As long as you engage your shoulder blades using rhomboids, that is all you need to do. The rest will happen automatically. The trade off is that if you haven’t done it correctly, you will feel the other muscles like your shoulder (deltoid) muscles, or even your neck (upper trapezius) muscles firing. But that is great feedback, because now you know what you must do and should feel when raising your arms.

End of port de bras series

That is all the basics for port de bras. I thought I would put port de bras in a two-part newsletter, but I figured, why rush it? Ballet Wizard will never give you the bare minimum details, when I can actually go deep and expose everything you need to know to have the best port de bras. You have a lot of information now, and even I have discovered how hard it is to wrap my mind around it. But ballet is a hard skill-based craft. Getting smart about how to use your body is not for the weak of mind. That’s why you’re still here.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I didn’t make one dollar with that MLM. But I guess that was a good thing.

I’d rather be Ballet Wizard anyway.

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I especially appreciate my paid subscribers for their generous support! I have been putting together a vision of the ultimate behind-the-scenes videos and articles that I want to offer for paid support. Know that that is in the works, and you will have exclusive access to so much more information in the future (hopefully sooner rather than later!).

I started this newsletter right after my youngest son was born, and now he is already walking and trying to jump. Ballet Wizard is also walking and trying to jump.

So thank you for supporting Ballet Wizard, and please…please send me any suggestions or questions that you have by just hitting the reply button to this email. You can also follow me on Instagram and send me a message there.

In this newsletter, I want to rank the top 5 most important newsletters that you must read…and re-read. So let’s go back into the past and start at number 5!

#5

I talk about one of the most important elements of how you should understand the “core” through your center of gravity. Once you understand this concept, you can start to understand the basics of movement and mobility. This isn’t talked about much—if at all—in the ballet community. So if you read this one, you are ahead of the game.

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#4

This is the first part of my port de bra series of newsletters. This newsletter is a recent one, and it gives you pointers about how to get into a low fifth preparation with your arms. How you start is the most important part of ballet, so yes. This one is important.

#3

This topic is not discussed enough. Oh, how dancers love wearing shoes that fit…and how unaware you may be that your own shoes might be too tight, hurting you indirectly. Your shoes could be contributing to the aches and pains all over your body. So read it to know how to assess your shoe situation, and how to release tension if they are too tight. Oh, and a little update on the selection of the shoes. I’ve recently started using Angelo Luzio brand. The shape of this brand is probably the best one I’ve seen, and they have left and right!

#2

This newsletter is not for you if you are looking for a simple fix for gaining perfect turnout from the first combination of class. Plie is the foundation of ballet, and you can really set yourself up for either long-term success or injuries just from how you approach it. So if you have the mindset of building a strong foundation, this one is a must read.

#1

This was the first newsletter on Ballet Wizard, and still the most important one. This will give you one exercise you can and should do to find and engage your deep core. This core foundation will eventually have some follow-up articles because you could never talk enough about “the core.” So I will be going back to it so you can continue to strengthen such an important tool in ballet.

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There you have it! Of course I think all of my newsletters are equally important, and in a way, they are! But these 5 newsletters are a great place to start. Take your time understanding these concepts. A new newsletter comes out every week, building on what you’ve already learned.

These newsletters will always be here for you, but may not always be free at some point in the future! So come back to my archive and explore now!

Again, thank you for helping me to build Ballet Wizard! I learned all of these details, exercises, and ideas as a professional ballet dancer, and I hope they take your dancing as far as they took mine.

My last request

Eventually, I want to make Ballet Wizard bigger and something more than just a newsletter. Right now, I am scraping time that I barely have between being a stay-at-home dad of three during the day, teaching at the academy at night, and getting in shape to guest in Swan Lake this spring! I want to maximize value to dancers that are currently dancing, and that is why Ballet Wizard is a weekly newsletter and not a monthly newsletter. If you feel moved by generosity to pay for a subscription to my newsletter, this will open up a brighter future for what Ballet Wizard can offer to students on all paths of life. That little subscription makes a difference for me. And in turn, I vow to continue to build and share knowledge so that dance has a real chance to thrive in the future.

Here’s one last story: As a professional dancer, we were always treated as expendable pieces of a machine. Even the best of us barely got a paycheck to help us survive, all while being told that we should be grateful for our opportunities. If donations came in, if extra performances were added, dancers never saw a penny of it (though you can be sure somebody was lining their paycheck). It’s interesting that companies can’t run without their dancers, and yet, we were always told to be quiet and accept our working conditions. My point is that I understand the value of supporting dancers. Dancers keep the art alive. Any financial donation will go toward resources and time that I can spend developing the most effective ways to get them the knowledge they need. Dancers are the future. Period. Help me to help the future of art.

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Michelangelo is going to teach you something about allongé.

Allongé translates as elongated, meaning to draw out to a greater length. This is an arm position in ballet in which the dancer is typically in a first or high fifth position and stretches the arm(s) out before closing into another position.

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Back to Michelangelo.

When one of the most renowned artists, Michelangelo, drew the ultimate infinite being, God, outstretching his arm to impart the spark of life from His own finger into that of Adam, He did not reach with His arm fully extended. Yet, the space in between them seems to grow infinitely the more you stare at it.

Our human body is not physically capable of growing our arms longer, but we can take Michelangelo’s painting as a great example to see how our finite physical body can seem to grow infinitely on stage. If Michelangelo can paint what seems to be infinite on a two-dimensional ceiling, then we, as three-dimensional artists, should have the advantage.

And on that note…

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Allongé into arabesque

In this port de bras series, you have learned how to correctly get into fifth low preparatory position and first position of the arms. Before we learn about fifth high position, we are going to explore allongé, and learn how to actually create an allongé that is long, beautiful, and of course, powerful.

After all, if we’re going to stretch our arms to evoke the infinite, we’re not going to go about it by trying to achieve just a pretty shape.

We will now explore going from first position to arabesque using allongé. After learning this sequence of steps and fundamental principles, your arabesque will be incomparably different. A beautiful line will only be one benefit of learning exactly how to do it.

To start, you must be able to get your arms into first position correctly. You can read it step by step right here.

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A step-by-step breakdown

The starting point of stretching your arm to arabesque is first position. The height of the arabesque arms can vary. The arms can be low, in front of the chest, or way up high.

The most basic placement to practice will be an arabesque arm that is parallel to the ground, so you will start there.

Go from first position to arabesque:

1. You have arrived into first position.

2. Pick which one of your arms goes front. Typically only one arm is in front for arabesque (unless you are doing some cool ballet like Red Angels by Ulysses Dove, which involves two arms directly in front of you).

3. Keep your shoulder blades engaged towards the spine, so that your shoulders stay where they are (they will remain still while your arms are moving). The engagement of your rhomboids (the muscles that rotate your shoulder blades) will also keep your shoulder blades stable.

   1. Be careful not to squeeze your trapezius (the muscle that connects from your neck to the top of the shoulder and upper spine and even clavicle) because it disengages your chest. I hope by this point with your new knowledge of port de bras that if your chest is disengaged when you move your arms, you will not only be weak, you will also be engaging in incorrect and painful movement habits.

4. Keep the rotation of your upper arm extending to arabesque, keeping the pointy part of your elbows up—do not point them to the ground.

   
   As we are going into arabesque, I have to separate the upper arm and lower arm here to explain, but these next two steps should be done at the same time.
   

5. Upper arm into arabesque: Focus on the path of your elbow here. Imagine that your elbow is a ball, the size of a golf ball floating in the air.

   1. From first position, your elbow will make an arch up and in towards the center of your body without any rotation of the bone.

6. Lower arm into arabesque: There are two things that happen at the same time.

   1. Extension of the elbow joints.

   2. Pronation (palm down) rotation.

7. Combine steps 5 and 6 together. While your elbow goes inwards, your forearm goes outward, and your wrist turns palm down. Now you have arrived to the arabesque position.

There’s a lot of details here, I know. Expect a video coming your way soon.

Now the art of it

What makes arabesque arms look long? The easiest answer is that you may literally have long arms, but we’re not all born this way. What can we, people of regular proportions, do to look as long as possible?

If you stretch and lock out every joint that connects one finger to the opposite finger while feeling long, then would you look long? You might feel the longest (maybe physically it could be long), but can that actually translate as allongé, the artform of length?

Let’s get back to Michelangelo’s painting.

When you look closely, the reaching arms of both figures are rather relaxed and not “straight.” Yet it is clear in the line and energy that there is a sense of reaching and stretching out. Even though their arms are not fully stretched out, Michelangelo was able to evoke energy that seems to grow infinitely.

The God figure, from my perspective, is more powerful and stronger than Adam. That strong energy seems to be drawn by keeping God’s arms in front, and almost like He is sending His arm from the center of His chest— the heart. In contrast, Adam’s arms are kept behind his body, his elbow is resting passively on his knee, and his arm seems disconnected from his heart. Which makes sense because this painting represents the moment before God gives life to Adam.

And this is exactly how to extend your arms to allongé in a way that looks long, energetic, and has purpose.

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The 4 rules to get long arms

1. You must connect arms to your heart, and move your arms from your heart.

2. You must keep arms in front of your body.

3. You must keep your elbows from dropping down.

4. You must never extend your joints fully nor hyper-extend.

When you extend your arms fully (hyperextended and locked out), you may feel the full stretch, and that feeling of long does feel good and real. But you may forget as a dancer, would that actually look long on stage? Feeling is important, but that’s simply not enough to transform you into a true artist onstage who is evoking length. When you rely on feelings, you might feel connected to your heart, but too often, it doesn’t translate to the audience. Think of when you would stretch out your arms fully in real life—probably when you are drowning underwater trying to reach for the edge of the pool in desperation. My point is, feelings may not translate to the people watching you.

Instead, you must keep the feeling of “long” more internal. That can be done by not extending your arms (especially your elbows) fully, keeping them more bent that you think. While God gives life to Adam from the power within Him, the power never leaves from within Him. You also must first move your heart before arms, and never leave the connection at the center of your chest—heart. In allongé, you cannot give all your power away just to feel infinite. The infinite must remain in you. And ironically, you will actually look more infinite when you dance.

If you are able to keep your arms connected to your heart, then even when you open your shoulders to make your arabesque position (a more flat and open position), your arms should always remain connected to your heart. This is also why you must keep your arms in front of you at all times so that you don’t lose connection to your heart.

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The only time to drop your elbows

The artistry of port de bras must be tied with the character you play. Whenever you are performing a character that needs to express a little bit of weakness, then your elbows can drop. Otherwise, your elbows should always be up, and not look like they need to rest on your knees for support.

Some ballet characters require very strong arms e.g. Spartacus, Kitri from Don Quixote, and Rothbart from Swan Lake. Other ballet characters require a little bit of weakness e.g. Aurora from Sleeping Beauty (young girl), Nikiya from La Bayadere (especially in relation to Gamzatti), and usually one of the sub-characters. Usually sub-characters do not point to the infinite because they are not the protagonist of the stories. They’re not meant to be stronger than the person who is telling the main story. And principal characters are the ones that point to something greater than themselves as they carry and tell the story throughout a ballet.

The question, is what does your port de bras tell you about who you are?

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Round your arms more!

Don’t let your hands droop!

Don’t drop your elbows!

Engage your back!

Chest up!

Shoulders down!

Second position is probably the most difficult position in ballet.

Not for us, the people reading this article!

If you want to have a smooth and beautiful port de bras (and what dancer doesn’t?), you must know what to do with your arms. “Feeling” with your arms will only get you so far. But if you know how to move your arms “correctly,” you have a lot more room to play with gesture, power, and even character.

After going through my port de bras newsletter series and practicing my tips, you can be confident that you will have the best port de bras. It might even be better than most professional ballet dancers.

I know, shocking.

But many professional dancers have shockingly bad port de bras, and a lot could be fixed if they had a great set up with “tips” and “rules” to follow. Once you can master this coordination, it will feel and look effortless.

That’s where Ballet Wizard comes in.

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Important: You already have information about how to get into your low fifth preparatory position, as well as getting into first position. Read them again. Those articles will set you up to engage specific muscles, release tightness, and understand the sequence of events that gets you into each position. Once you master those, only then can you move on to second position.

Quick recap

• Rotation of the humerus (the lower part of your arm) is done by pecs.

• Raising your arms is also done by pecs.

• Rotation and bending of the forearms is done by biceps.

• It is very important to be able to separate each of your body parts. What this means is that it’s crucial to separate your shoulders from humerus, forearms from humerus, and hands from forearms. The moment all these arm elements are “held” or “locked,” you will have to start over to release them one by one.

Maybe most importantly, when we move our arms, we must initiate from the elbows. It is tempting to lead the port de bras from shoulders or hands, but by using those body parts (instead of our elbows and pecs), you will already be setting up your body to compensate its natural body mechanics. This will lead to injury directly or indirectly.

Also, when we are not thoughtful about our body mechanics, we’re not going to “look” great either. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when you have good body mechanics, you will also achieve “good” classical ballet lines. They go hand in hand.

The most popular position at barre

Unless specified, a dancer’s general arm position during combinations at the barre is in second position. During longer combinations, you might feel your arms getting tired. Typically, you’ll feel tired in the shoulder muscles (deltoids). There could be more factors at play, but there is a good chance the main reason for that fatigue is because of the lack of engaged pecs.

We have discussed how to get into preparatory position, and how that is important for getting into first position. The same pecs engagement will be super important for second position. Let me tell you something I see all the time that you should stop doing it right away.

Infamous back corrections

There’s a big focus on using your back during typical arm corrections. I hear things like use your back to hold your arms, support your arms from the back, or something which indicates you need to focus more on your back. This is not always incorrect. However, you want to be careful about using your back when going to second position from first position.

You can think of muscle engagement as an on-and-off switch. Here is an easy example that shows an image of using the biceps and triceps.

As shown in the picture, when you curl your arm (by bending by your elbow), you are flexing (shortening) your biceps. In contrast, when you extend your arms, you are flexing (shortening) triceps. When you flex biceps, your triceps deactivates because biceps elongate the triceps. Vice versa, when you flex your triceps, your biceps deactivate. If the biceps are “on”, triceps are “off.”

So if using the pecs is crucial for good port de bras, what is the “off switch” muscle for pecs? It is the trapezius (traps) and rhomboids —the biggest “off switch” for pecs.

Below, you will see the muscle (the pecs) that you should be engaging with your port de bras:

It is important for dancers to know when and what movement turns their pecs off in port de bras because we want to prevent this from happening. The moment your pecs are turned off, you look weak and your dancing will be weaker.

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Back muscles are not always your friends

When opening your arms from first to second position, if you use your traps/rhomboids to pull your arms, you will turn off your pecs right away. And all your work you did to engage the pecs for port de bras is ruined.

It’s not always wrong to use back muscles to open arms. For example, if you are a swan in Swan Lake, and you bring your arms down behind your back, then you must use your rhomboids so you can best engage your latissimus dorsi (lats). In almost all other occasions, you want to use pecs to keep your arms engaged to the front of our body.

Port de bras secret: Keep your arms FORWARD

Keeping the arms in front (literally in front of your body) is important because of the effectiveness of the power and stability you can get. Plus, it is the most healthy way to move arms. Not to mention, if you use your arms from your pecs, you are going to look good doing ballet.

Why does it look good when arms are in front of you (versus to the side or even behind)? Artistically, ballet is the communication between the dancers on stage and the audience. There is an inherent “distance” between those dancing and those people who are viewing the dancers. This means your gestures have to say something to the audience who is not up on stage with you, and you can say a lot more if you are in three dimensions with your arms in front more than two dimensions with your arms flat to the side.

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Resistance training and second position

If your arms are pulled by traps/rhomboids from first position, your arms will naturally go too far back, because your back muscles dominate your arms position. When I say “too far back,” what this looks like is that your elbows will be aligned with the shoulders, or even behind them. However, if your arms are held by pecs, elbows will be in front of the shoulders, aligned with the front ribs. This is classical, correct, and more expressive onstage.

So how do you keep your arms in front? In order for you to keep their chest engaged, you have to understand how to resist the pull to move your arms behind you (you neither lock your arms in place nor do you relax and hold them wherever it feels right). This is where “control” comes in. And this is why resistance training can help you practice this sense of control in your arms.

Resistance training is a workout that trains you to work against gravity. A very important element of resistance training is to control the motion. For example, if you are curling your biceps with or without weights, you must control the movements especially when going down, meaning you don’t just drop and catch. You want to be engaged the whole exercise.

You are always working against gravity, which always pulls an object down. If you are holding a weight, then you are actually lifting it up at all times even when you lower the weight down. So when lifting the weight, you are increasing the energy up.

Be aware: When you lower the weight, you are only decreasing the energy up. You are resisting the pull of gravity less leading you to lower the weight. This results in less push upwards against the gravity making the weight lower.

We can use the same concept when opening and closing the arms between first position and second position.

You have already learned how to engage your pecs in first position from part two of this series.

Next is an exercise that will give you stronger port de bras.

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From first position to second position, you will:

1. Imagine energy going in towards your sternum (center of the chest) when you open your arms.

   1. Anatomically, pecs connect to sternum, and should be anchored from sternum.

   2. Imagine the elbows opening from the sternum.

2. Do a little up and over to the second position with the elbows.

   1. From first position, go slightly up only with your elbows to initiate opening. Elbows will make an arc arriving down to the second position. You might feel weird doing this because you might think that arms just open and there’s no circle involved. But what people see and what you do to arrive at ballet positions are completely different. This is why I always stress that you cannot teach ballet from what you see.

3. Keep the rotation of the humerus while you open.

   1. This allows you to keep your pecs engaged, and only allows you to move your arms to the front of your body.

   2. You will start to feel tightness in front of the shoulder area while going to second position. This could be a good indication to stop opening your arms more to second position rather than relaxing and letting them keep going.

Doing these three steps will give you an amazing port de bras. This sequence works great for any ballet technique you practice: Vaganova, Balanchine, French…etc.

Although, it would be hard to even start without first doing this exercise:

This push-up will help you make a beautiful second position

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be parallel to the ground for this. Your goal is to learn how to move your arms, and not to “build” muscles or “work out.” Here are the steps to think about whether you are parallel to the ground or propped against the wall or the barre:

Quick note: Setting up your posture correctly is most important. I could focus on the shape of the posture, but often that doesn't work. So focus on how to approach the posture, which will be more effective:

1. Engage your abs when you are setting yourself up. Without abs, nothing can be done right. Think about aligning and stacking your bones with gravity.

2. If you are doing it on the floor, start on your knees.

3. Keep your hands and wrists relaxed. When hands and wrists get tense, it disengages pecs.

4. Do not reach for any surface with your hands or fingers. When you reach for the floor, the tendency is to lengthen the arms, and shoulder blades will go out. That makes it almost impossible to engage your pecs. Instead, think about it this way: You get to the surface when your body gets close enough to the surface. And when your fingers get the feedback from touching the ground, you let your hands react to the pressure while keeping your hands relaxed.

5. Start with your hands at shoulder width, fingers facing forward, and the pointy part of elbows facing out. Elbows go in and out towards your center line when you bend them, rather than back and forth towards your head and feet.

6. Look to the horizon, do not look down or up. It's easy to tense your neck here. We don't want to associate the tensing of the neck with arm movements. Instead, think that your head is the extension of your upper spine, and your head is just floating, like an afterthought to the rest of your body moving.

7. Inhale as you go down, exhale as you go up. Exhale with your abs so you can bring your focus back to your abs constantly.

8. As you go down and elbows go out, you are resisting the gravity from collapsing you to the ground. So you must keep pushing towards the ground. When you go down, you keep engagement in the center of the chest. When you push the ground again, think about engaging from the armpit part of the chest.

9. As you go up and elbows go in, you are going to increase the push down to the ground. The inside of your elbows push more towards the center. It is easy to push your shoulders forward when pushing down.

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Super important reminder: You don’t want to lock out your arms every time you go up or down (or even feel like locking out your legs to do this exercise). It’s so easy to think of “straightening” your arms and “hitting positions.” Don’t do this here. Or ever again. Think of keeping your elbow joints soft at all points of this exercise. It will feel like you never quite arrive and hit that final pose. Good. Trust this new sensation. This will help direct your energy to your pecs and abs, and that is key. This is something that will translate to the rest of your ballet technique. Anybody who is watching you will see you hitting positions. That’s the difference. And that is artistry.

So next time you are opening your arms to second position, you will have a new set of thoughts, strategies, and action plans. You will be paying attention to your elbows, pecs, and abs. You will remember to keep your arms in front of you.

And someone watching you will only see a beautiful second position.

Like I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, port de bras is the carriage of arms, which is different from epaulement which means shouldering. So it is very important to separate the understanding of how you move the arms from how you move the shoulders.

If you haven’t read Part 1, learn how to start and get into your arm preparation here:

Part one

Too often our focus in ballet can turn to shaping the arms. We fixate on shaping the hands, height of the arms, and the feeling of the arms, and we never pay attention to what you actually must do to move the arms. A huge key is understanding how elbows need to initiate movement.

Think about it this way: You cannot constantly think about shaping your arms while you dance for more than a minute let alone for three hours in a full-length ballet. Not only would that be weirdly hard to coordinate, it would also be boring. You need to approach your arms with correct mechanics so that drooping hands and elbows don’t happen. Instead, your arms should naturally be supported by your pecs. Wouldn't that be nice to never have to think about holding your arms? You could think about more important things like telling the story and enjoying your variation. The secret lies in the initiation of the movement.

As a main point in last week's newsletter, rotation of the upper arms (humerus) is done by the pecs muscle. Pecs also lift the same bone up in front of our body. Additionally, I briefly mentioned the importance of separating your forearms from upper arms. Your forearms bend and rotate separately from your upper arm, and that is done by flexing your biceps. As you learn about first position and second position, both of these points are important to practice for a free and smooth port de bras.

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Quick port de bras recap from last week:

Part 1: Preparatory position, often referred as fifth low, is to have placement of arms in a dropped position. Hands facing inward are close, but not touching. Elbows are slightly rounded. And armpits are not touching.

Part 2: First position is to have arms raised in front of the body at the level of the diaphragm. Elbows are more bent than second position.

Part 3: Second position is to have arms at the side. Elbows are supported and slightly rounded, but less bent than first position. Shoulders are not drawn back or raised. Forearms are in extension of the level of elbows. Hands should not hang, but have to be held up.

Part 4: Third (or fifth high) is to have the arms raised over the head. Elbows rounded. Palms inward. Hands close, but not touching. Hands must be forward enough so that you can see them without raising your head.

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Into the first position

Remember, you have already separated your shoulders and arms going into the low fifth preparatory position. You have also rotated your humerus, which sets you up perfectly for your next move—whether you are bringing your arms to the level of your diaphragm into first position, or lifting them just barely for a little breathing of the arms in a typical preparation.

In the preparatory position, your pecs are already engaged from the rotation of your humerus. If you continuously rotate your humerus, and start to raise your elbows, you will “magically” be engaging your pecs to lift your elbow up.

I cannot stress this enough that you should never lift your arms with the shoulders. Even if you set yourself up perfectly in the preparation, if you let your shoulders go first, you will most likely not be engaging your pecs.

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Practice using your chest to move arms

Sometimes focusing too much on forearms or hands can mess with the engagement of the pecs. To prevent that, dangle your forearms completely. This means that your forearms will be hanging off the humerus via elbow. 99% of the time, the movements in the forearms happen before moving the humerus, which causes the humerus to lose connection with the pecs. Pecs disengage when they gets dominated by other muscles that pull the opposite way. In this case it would be your biceps that disengage your pecs. So when you dangle the forearms, you can be sure to keep 100% of the engagement of the pecs.

So dangle your forearms so that you can focus on your pecs to move your elbows up.

This is the correct way to move your arms, which will result in looking classical.

Move your arms from low fifth to first

Alright, let’s get into the preparatory position.

Next:

1. From this low fifth position, you must dangle your forearms.

2. Keep that rotation of the humerus as you raise your elbows while dangling your forearms. Imagine now as your arms go up that they are going to cross.

3. Bring your elbows slightly inwards toward your vertical center line (or towards your heart). You might feel the pecs engagement here. Have a sense that your pecs are anchored from the sternum, and focus on keeping the pecs engaged by the sternum.

4. Then bring your elbows out just a little, followed by turning your wrists inwards towards you so that your palms are facing you.

5. Adjust the length of your arms by bending or extending your elbow joints.

   There! You have a perfect first position.

Watch my student, Aurora, go through the steps above. Notice how as she moves her arms, her shoulders are not tensing and lifting as she moves to first position.

Once you know how to keep your pecs engaged, then you can combine all the movements and make it smooth. Be sure to remember to engage your core, so that your back spine doesn’t arch as your arms raise, and initiate your port de bras from your elbows, instead of hands, forearms, or shoulders.

Notice her arms move separately from her shoulders. Her torso is still while arms are moving smoothly.

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Can you do this bonus challenge?

With your arms in first position, can you only rotate your forearms? Also try this in second position. How far can you rotate your wrists without compensating the humerus rotation? Do you feel tightness in your biceps or perhaps in your shoulder muscles?

The reason that practicing this movement is important is that the muscle memory of the forearm movement is associated with the rotation of the humerus. Basically, if your arm tends to drop down, or your elbow points to the ground (“Don’t drop your elbows!”), it is because you have a hard time separating the forearm. Being able to do this challenge will indicate whether your biceps are tight or your shoulders are tight. If there’s tightness, you will feel restriction or a stretch while you rotate your forearms. Either the tightness doesn’t help you, or it causes your shoulders to go up.

Practice this, and if you feel the tightness in your arms, then you probably have to stretch your biceps or even your hands.

This section deserves its own article

But not yet.

Think of moving your wrists in a different way. There are two bones in your forearm that connects at your wrist, and it looks like a ball on the wrist. One is on the pinky side (head of ulna) and the other is on thumb side (end point of radius). When you are in first position, and your forearms are dangling with palms facing down, move only the pinky ball towards you to bring your palm towards you. Then move only the thumb ball towards you to bring your palm down.

You can do the same in second position. To bring your palm forward, you move the pinky side ball forward. Then move only the thumb side ball forward to face palm down.

Cool, right?

Wow, this is only a conversation about first position. I thought I would be able to talk about second position in this week’s newsletter, but you’ll have to wait.

In the meantime, enjoy your preparatory low fifth position and how you feel more freedom as you bring your arms to first position.

Like and share this post, it helps to reach other like-minded people who love ballet!

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But is port de bras an all or none situation? Is it something you have or don’t have as a dancer?

And maybe more importantly—is a beautiful port de bras something that everyone can have?

I’ve recently heard many ballet school, teachers, and dancers say that everyone can have beautiful port de bras. I agree with that statement. But how?

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Port de bras not only has to look good, it also has to be useful. There are some basics when it comes to using your arms, and if you can practice them diligently, you can uncover a beautiful port de bras that helps your dancing.

So how do we unlock the power and beauty of your arms?

Always remember what Spiderman’s uncle said,

“Great power comes with great responsibility.”

That means you have to have a strong core as your foundation before you can even think to move your arms. So if you need a refresh about how to establish a strong core, I suggest you read this first about finding your core.

Two things in the way of your port de bras

There are two big common mistakes I see in every class that restrict dancers from having strong port de bras. First, is the shoulders moving simultaneously with the arms. Second, is putting too much focus on the end part of your arms, which are your hands. Both are important to talk about, but it would be too long for an email…so I’m going to talk only about the first one.

Shoulders moving (fused) with the arms

From my experience, about 97% of people in a ballet class will have this issue. This is a big mistake, which breaks the line of the arms, and restricts the arms from being free. Plus, the force you produce while shoulders are “fused” will be inaccurate and could injure you badly, like causing a shoulder dislocation.

I remember my shoulders dislocating during partnering class. It was very painful experience. Basically, when your shoulders are fused and then you add force to it, your arms will separate from your shoulder.

Now imagine going into a preparation for a combination at the barre. Your arms always go from a relaxed state to fifth low position to get ready for the combination. When you are getting into the fifth low position, do your shoulders move forward? Or do your shoulder muscles tense up?

During a combination, your arms might go to a second position. Have you ever gotten the correction, “keep your shoulders back,” or “keep your shoulders down?” Is it your habit to notice your elbows behind your shoulders?

When you are doing a pirouette, are your shoulders rounded forward? Perhaps your elbows are dropped?

That comes from this specific mistake of shoulders being fused with arms. This means that when your arms move, your shoulders move with them. Your shoulders can move your whole arms, but there needs to be a separation between your arms and your shoulders.

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Let’s fix this

This will be separated in parts. This week our goal is to talk about part one: How to go into preparatory (fifth low) position.

To set the foundation of the arm position, we can base it off of Vaganova’s definition of arm positions. I will be paraphrasing it off the definition she wrote in her book, Basic Principles of Classical Ballet:

Part 1: Preparatory position, often referred as fifth low, is to have placement of arms dropped. Hands faced inward are closed, but not touching. Elbows are slightly rounded. And armpit is not touching.

Part 2: First position is to have arms raised in front of the body on the level with the diaphragm. Elbows are more bent than second position.

Part 3. Second position is to have arms at the side. Elbows are well held up and slightly rounded, but more straight than first position. Shoulders are not drawn back or raised. Forearms are in extension of the level of elbows. Hands should not hang, but have to be held up.

Part 4: Third (or fifth high) is to have the arms raised over the head. Elbows rounded. Palms inward. Hands closed but not touching. Hands must be forward enough so that you can see them without raising your head.

First things first: You must always rely on your core for everything. So know how to engage your abs the way I have explained in my previous newsletters. (link here)

Second, we need to make sure that muscles around your shoulder areas are not tight. Here is how to release that area. (link here)

If you want to know more about separating your arms from your shoulders. (link here)

Learning tip:

This might be very difficult—as many things in ballet are—so be patient. Do these movements slowly and start small. When you learn a new movement pattern, you want to allow your movements to communicate with your neurological system. When your body moves correctly, it starts to adapt. And if you move it incorrectly after learning the correct movement, sometimes you’ll feel aches and pains. Take it slowly and listen to your body’s feedback.

I always took the aches and pains as a sign of pinpointing some incorrect movement. When I feel the pain, I know I’m doing something wrong. That gave me a good indication of where I might need to work.

How to go from relaxed arms into preparatory (fifth low) position

The first thing you must do is always the same: Engage your abs, so that your spine doesn’t get in the way of what you are trying to achieve. Once you are ready with your foundation—a strong and engaged core—then you can move on to anchoring what needs to be stabilized…

Your shoulders.

The way you anchor your shoulder is by engaging a muscle called the rhomboid major. It is located under the big triangle muscle called the trapezius. The rhomboid rotates the bottom tip of your shoulder blades towards the upper thoracic segment of your spine.

This also feels like turning out your shoulder clavicles, but when you focus on turning out the clavicles, many people often end up arching their upper spine or their chest pulls up. We don’t want these things. So be careful of avoiding that before we move into port de bras.

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This anchoring of your shoulder blades allows you to separate the movement of the humerus. The humerus is the first bone in your arms, that moves your whole arms around. If you move your humerus up, your whole arms goes up. If you rotate your humerus, your whole arms rotates.

So with that knowledge, we can go from relaxed arms to fifth low.

In the relaxed state, elbows are slightly bent, and the inside of your elbows are facing forward. We want to rotate your humerus inward so that the inside of your elbows perfectly face each other. This rotation of the humerus should create the space in the armpit so that it is not touching. Please keep your elbows bent, otherwise you cannot create space in the armpit.

While you move your humerus, keep your forearms relaxed or dangling, so that they don’t interfere while you learn to move only the humerus.

This movement typically moves the shoulders forward. That is a mistake. Typically that’s because your rotator cuffs and teres major are tight. So you must take care of those tight muscles so you can rotate your humerus separately.

When the inside of your elbows face together, then bring your elbows in front of the body, and place it in the position where your preparation would be. Keep the inside of elbows facing together.

When you do this, you want to have your forearms dangled and relaxed still. If you rotate your forearms before moving the humerus, it puts the movement out of correct sequence and makes arm joints fused, and will also break the free movements of port de bras.

Just like you want to separate your shoulders from your humerus, you also want to separate forearms from humerus. You want freedom in your joints. Notice how I’ve never said to “hold” or “lock” anything. I only talk about direction (where elbows face, where arms rest) to create space in the right places.

You have a lot of details up until this point…but, here’s good news to make this easy. It involves the use of your pecs (aka your chest muscles):

This is pectoralis major (pecs): These are the muscles that rotate the humerus and bring the humerus forward. The upper half of your pecs will rotate and bring your humerus forward.

The pecs attach to the inside of your clavicles, and to the humerus. This means that your pecs will move your whole arm by bringing your humerus close to the center of chest.

The last thing you need to do

Rotate your forearms and bring your palms facing inward. Do this rotation of forearm by flexing your biceps. When you flex your biceps, like you are doing biceps curls, it rotates your forearms. It also rounds your elbows.

There! Now you are in low fifth, prepared and ready to go for the combination.

Notice that when you prepare correctly, your elbows can bend freely and not be held, and your elbows can move up and down, out and in freely.

Someone looking at you will see a nice and rounded and well-held arm position. And from your perspective, you will be breathing into your abs, chest engaged, shoulders free.

Arms in a nutshell

1. Engage your core.

2. Stabilize and anchor your shoulder blades.

3. Only rotate your humerus pulled by pecs (relax and dangle your forearms).

4. Keep rotating your humerus and bring it slightly in front of body so it doesn’t touch the body.

5. Rotate your forearms by flexing your biceps and bring your palms facing inward.

Preparation is the most important part of the port de bras (carriage of the arms). If you can set yourself up correctly to the beginning position, only then can you achieve a truly good and useful port de bras.

I agree with Vaganova—port de bras is arguably the most difficult part of dancing. But start with this strong foundation, follow it for every class, and you will start building the beginning of some beautiful arm movement.

No more copying other dancer’s port de bras for you.

You’ll be the one people will eventually look to.

We will build on this knowledge to learn more about port de bras. There’s so much, and I’m excited to break it down for you. Send me your questions. And like and share Ballet Wizard if you got value from it. It helps to reach more dancers so that they can know what I know.

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This is a pas de deux from Balanchine’s Rubies. My wife and I danced this together in 2014. I feel like I’ve heard many people say that Balanchine ballets don’t have stories, but I argue that if it is a dance of two people, then there is a relationship between the two. And that means there’s inherently a story.

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The principal couple in this ballet is generally coached to be happy and flirty. You’re having fun with each other! But here’s what I learned from actually performing it: We don’t tell the story by showing big smiles with flappy hands saying, “we happily do this step together because we are flirting!” Nor do we make sexy faces at each other. No, we play the role as individual personas. Once you understand who you are, you are then able to understand how to interact with your partner and the other dancers.

For example in this ballet as the principal man, I played a kind of the character who is a little self-centered, and who might say things like, “Look at me! Here I go again!” And my partner (the principal woman) is also quite self-centered who thinks she is a little better than him. She would say things like, “Oh it’s you again. It is my stage, you know?”

And of course we as two characters paired together enjoy this back and forth of “it’s me,” “no, it’s me,” kind of relationship, so naturally, the audience might interpret that as flirting.

Anyway, enough talk. It just so happens to be Balanchine’s birthday today, so I hope you enjoy one of his timeless creations. Go ahead, I dare you to tell me that there’s no story here…

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Stay tuned for more ballet content next week. I’m planning to break down how you move your arms, and you guessed it. It’s not about how to make the best shapes with them. I’m going to break down how your arms can give you more power. And consequently, how correct arm mechanics will naturally create beautiful lines.

Until then, hoping everyone stays healthy!

I’m going to share with you how to punch. Especially a hook punch.

This technique connects to your pirouettes!

No, but really. Get ready to uncover a totally new way to get power for your pirouettes.

When doing pirouettes, oftentimes we tend to focus on our feet and try to get the energy or speed from how our feet connect to the floor. When I was growing up, I was using 100% of my feet to get more turns in.

As I got older I was getting injured because I started to include the twist of my upper body to gain more power for my pirouettes.

Actually, this way of doing pirouettes is pretty common.

Imagine twisting your shoulders as far as you can twist them, and having your hip all twisted to the opposite side. And then adding force to that fully twisted spine from the bottom of your body.

No wonder I had back pain all the time.

Nowadays you hear dancers trying to teach pirouettes by using buzz words like “counter rotation,” and I firmly believe those ideas will set you up for inconsistency and injuries. I found and used a smarter way.

I didn’t know better then, but I did re-learn how to do my pirouettes later in my career. What I learned was based on the logic of physics, and didn’t rely on me having to twist my whole body to get power. With this new way, I was doing multiple pirouettes more consistently in performances. And without the chronic back pain.

Now I can share with you how to create power for pirouettes. And the way I’m about to tell you has equal if not more power.

The secret is in boxing

Not a jab or straight punch, but a hook is what you need to know.

We are going to connect doing a hook punch to the side arms for a pirouette.

Of course, the technique for the hook depends on the individual so I cannot point to one general correct way to do a hook, and who am I kidding, I’m not the boxer. Don’t take my advice for your future boxing classes.

A hook punch goes like this:

• Elbow is soft and bent

• Elbow comes up as you prepare for the swing

• Elbow is higher than the hand

• Palm of your hand turns towards you like giving a thumbs up

• Your punch leads from your knuckles, not palm or thumb (very important connection to pirouette)

• When you hit the target you feel the “hit” as feedback

• Bonus: Shoulder ball and socket joint is relaxed (free to move)

I see the same thing for pirouettes, and it should be the same. We are aiming to get power. Boxers seek power to knock out, dancers seek power to turn.

Here is the primary power source for pirouettes

Most of the time we focus on our legs or feet, and how to feel the ground to get the power for pirouettes from the ground. Or even what kind of position our feet need to be in before, during, and after the turn. We also work on our arms for coordination and how to look properly during turns. While that’s all correct, our arms can and should be the primary power source for the turns.

Why use arms as a primary power source for turns?

The main benefit is that once you understand and get used to using your arms, it will give you more power with less effort. And more importantly, when you use your arms for power (must do it correctly), it will put your upper body into the correct position, and you will have better control of it. Relying too much on legs can be hit or miss depending on the floor. Imagine a slippery floor.

So here is how to do it. First practice this with a quarter turn:

• In your preparation, one arm is in front of the center of the body, the other arm is on the side (elbow of the side arm must be in front of the shoulder).

• You must keep your elbows soft, and bend them slightly on purpose at all times (even in allonge)! This part seems to get a lot of resistance from dancers, but this is probably the most important tip for port de bras.

• The pointy part of your elbows shall never point to the ground.

• Move your arm that is in the second (side) position slightly before the front arm.

• When that side arm comes in, if your palms are facing down, you turn your palm towards you like giving a thumbs up

• And side arm comes in with your knuckle first not palm or thumbs (which is the most important tip)

• Your front arm will come into position with your elbow first. Going directly in a straight line (not around) behind the shoulder. Which means you have to bend your elbow to begin the movement otherwise your arm will go around and not in a straight line.

• Similar to feeling the “hit” of a punch, you must feel the “hit” of the position.

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Most important tip

As your side arm comes in to first position, lead your arm from the knuckle of your hand. Like a boxer will punch from the knuckle, you want to go knuckle-first into position. This means that you must be able to move the joints in your fingers, wrist, elbow, and shoulder in that order to come to first position. Only once you can do this will you be able to do the next step—which is to get power for the turn.

You don’t want to go from your palm (like a slap) because it will create too much swing, which will throw you off of your center line. You also don’t want to go from your thumb (slash) for it will often times lead to dropping of the elbow during the turn. Both of these also don’t give you any power for the turn. Boxers don’t slap or slash because it’s not effective for a knock out.

Fun fact: They only do that to disrespect the opponent to provoke and anger.

So how do you get power to turn?

When a boxer hits the target there is a definite feedback for power. If you hit the target light, the feedback is light. If you hit it hard, the feedback is heavy. If you have never felt this feedback, please carefully throw a hook punch lightly into a pillow or something that will not hurt you or other people.

That feedback of the hit is the feedback you are aiming for when your side arm hits the position. “Hit the position” suddenly has different meaning than just shaping to hit the correct position. That hit of the position turns into power for your pirouette.

The front arm is a little difficult to teach. You start the movement slightly after the side arm. Your arm should not open to the side…I know, whaaaaat? It should start by going allonge forward, and as you move the front arm, your elbow leads the movement. Your forearms shall not open and swing to the side. Meaning you want to hit the target directly behind your shoulder with the elbow. So from your preparation, your elbow goes directly back as if you are elbowing someone right behind you. But because you are turning, it will “hit” the first position.

It’s not about going around then hit, but in a straight line back to hit. You should get the feeling of the “hit the position” with your elbow.

Now I understand that this may be a huge block based on your training and whether or not you think it’s correct to open your front arm to a la second for a pirouette. What I’m describing may appear to be a “Balanchine-style” pirouette. But I’m not saying which technique is better or worse. I’m just talking from the physics point of view that this way of moving arms makes more sense on a flat floor. Raked (slanted) floor is different, and you actually want to open your front arm on a raked floor.

Avoid this common mistake

When I teach this, I often encounter one very common misuse of shoulders in connection with arms. When you think about the pointy part of your elbow never pointing to the ground, you must rotate your humerus bone inwards. And when rotating inwards, the mistake I see is that people rotate it by rotating the whole shoulder rather than only the humerus. First, that’s not correct technique for ballet. Second, your shoulder is going to hurt. Third, you cannot generate power that way.

Fixing this shoulder mistake is tricky, and that’s what’s coming next, so make sure to check it out.

We dancers don’t need to knock people out, but our arms can be more than just pretty shapes. Port de bras and epaulement can and should have power.

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