Today’s class is very similar to last one, in which we again practiced tendu and plié in great detail.

Some key takeaways:

Extending your calf:

In today’s class, our teacher asked us to try extending our calves and plant our feet deeply into the ground, shifting our weight to the ball of our feet as much as possible. While maintaining our turnout. This posture should be maintained no matter what you do as long as your legs are straightened - tendu, standing, etc.

Tendu:

Thus, while doing tendu with extending your calf, you need to think about firing up your inner thigh all the time. Push your leg out, and then use your inner thigh to do most of the work pulling your leg back, while still extending your calf. Your foot should also be pushing into the floor the whole time while pulling your leg back.

Grand Plié:

While you are doing grand plié, especially if you are putting your weight forward to the balls of your feet, it is especially easy to push your butt backwards in a squat position. An imagery I find helpful is imagine your pelvis as a bowl full of water. When you plié down, shifting your upper body downward, you need to imagine that water in the bowl should not spill to the outside. It is as if you are holding a bowl filled with water with your hands, and you are shifting that bowl up and down. Although this time the two joints connecting your legs and pelvis are holding that bowl, and is shifting that bowl up and down without spilling water. And voila, there you go, a perfect grand plié!

Port de bras:

While you are doing port de bras and bending your back backwards and arm raised, it is notable that the arm should actually be more backward than what is natural for you. It is normally placed around your ear, because your need to show your face while doing the movement.

Basically, the flow of movements should be as followed:

First position - raise your arms to rib cage level while tilting your head to the left while eyes looking at the right hand - transform into second position by expanding the two arms like pushing a door, stop when the arms reached the corners of the square of space that you occupies - keep moving arms to the side, eyes looking at right arm - allongé while looking at your pinkie finger - move your arms down (notice that there is a delay movement starting from shoulder -upper arm - lower arm). You freeze your higher upper arm first while still moving your mid upper arm lower, and then freeze your mid upper arm, keep moving your lower arm lower, and so on. Normally, you would lose the grip on all arm and let it relax and swing inward, and then adjust back to the first/zero position where you keep a space between your armpit and your upper arm. That natural swing is wrong - you need to lift your arm all the time, not even when you transition from allongé to first position!

Yes, ballet is hard!