2 3 Terrific Tuesday Retiré | Ballet Webb

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Terrific Tuesday Retiré




Terrific Tuesday Retiré

Retiré is such an important position. Without it, pirouettes, fouettés, parts of every développé and lots of other steps would be compromised. Scary.

One of the biggest problems with this position is the tendency to lift the working hip. While this certainly gets the retiré foot to the proper place at the knee, the resulting slanted angle of the pelvis is not useful for much of anything. Plus, it looks bad. Yet raising the hips seems to be the natural reaction of the body. Therefore it must be overridden by the following thought:

To keep the pelvis level, and still get the retiré foot to the knee, simply bend the working knee a bit more.  Simple!  Bending the knee is so effective that the foot in retiré could actually go halfway up the supporting thigh, so just getting to the knee is easy.

From the Big Blue Book of Ballet Secrets:

Secret #21f:  
To achieve a higher retiré, simply bend the working knee.

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Quote of the Day:

“Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”
-          Victor Hugo




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