2 3 Fun Friday Stretch Away | Ballet Webb

Friday, March 6, 2015

Fun Friday Stretch Away




Fun Friday Stretch Away

Ahhhhhh.  Those lovely développés! They are the heart and soul of ballet. Those beautiful, lyrical movements where the human body defies all expectation – at least that’s what we hope to accomplish.

Développés also assist in developing (pun intended) our turn-out and extension and as such are extremely useful as well as beautiful. But to fully extend this usefulness (pun intended again), we need to think about how we perform our développés.

The best way to think about a développé is that it is a slow, even, unfolding of the leg. No snapping, jerking or slamming is permitted. The energy continues outward, even when the leg has reached its full height – no dropping of the leg is allowed, and the leg is brought back to earth using the same slow-motion movement used when it went up. As we all know, there is no crashing in ballet.

To help with this unfolding of the leg, feel as though the thighs are stretching, or pulling away from each other. This prevents focusing only on the working leg and allows the supporting leg to do its job of, well, supporting the dancer.

From the Big Blue Book of Ballet Secrets:

Secret #11d:  
In any développé, feel the thighs stretching away from each other.

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