Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Wacky Wednesday Seat



Wacky Wednesday Seat

A  couple of years ago I did a blog about the three important buttons. You can find it here: http://balletwebb.blogspot.com/search?q=seat+buttons. Today I’m talking about the two important “butt-ons” that are essential for holding and maintaining the rotation of the thighs in the hip sockets.

Teachers often say to their students: “squeeze your seat”. This is an attempt to get the pupils to feel and engage the “turnout muscles” in the derriere. Unfortunately, I have found that when students squeeze their seat, they often tilt the pelvis under. This is a case of squeezing gone too far.

The trick is to create a visible “dent” on each side of the seat by rotating the thighs and feeling a sense of lifting everything in and up. When the turnout is engaged, the dents are very visible, and should be seen without the the pelvis tilting at all.

As I said in the blog listed above, one of my students coined the term “butt-ons”, for this essential turnout manuever. Clever.

From the Big Blue Book of Ballet Secrets
Secret #7rrr:
“Don’t squeeze the seat, push the buttons.”

Link of the Day:

Quote of the Day:
“Even the simplest things had a glorious pointlessness to them. When buttons came in, about 1650, people couldn't get enough of them and arrayed them in decorative profusion on the backs and collars and sleeves of coats, where they didn't actually do anything. One relic of this is the short row of pointless buttons that are still placed on the underside of jacket sleeves near the cuff. These have been purely decorative and have never had a purpose, yet 350 years later on we continue to attach them as if they are the most earnest necessity.”
― Bill Bryson

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