Today I have three videos for you! More will come,  promise. I have to film them, though.

What to do: Slowly releve in a parallell position, pushing up as high as you can. When you lower, lower slowly, making sure you resist "clopping" your heels down. Try to eliminate all ankle wobbles

What to remember: When working on Relelve, make sure your arches, toes, and knees are all lined up. Push all the way up on to your arch as high as you can. Check your feet from the front, and from the side.

 

Releve combination: 8 in first, 8 with plie, 8 in sur le coups de pied on each foot, 8 in second, balance in sousus, passe coupe balance in sousus, plie and stretch.

Remember: push your heel into the ground, like there's an orange under it! No wobbles!

 

Plies with arch presses:

Demi-plie like you normally would, but press your arch up onto demi-pointe. Stretch out the muscles under the feet. Make sure when you do this, your arch is lined up with your knees and toes. This exercise stretches and enhances the arch.

Balance is so key in dance. Without it, you really can't do much of anything.  These are a few key things to keep in mind when you work on balance.

Balance is an action, not a position

Balance is something you do, not something you find. Teachers often say "Find your balance." It is true that you have to find the correct position to balance in, but once you find, it, you have to keep it: and that doesn't mean staying still! Balancing is a combination of isometric movements (engaging muscles to hold still) and extremely small isotonic adjustments (isotonic means you're engaging your muscles and actually moving somewhere). Those adjustments, when you first start learning to balance, are large, and they look like wobbles. You will feel like you're falling. But as long as you keep working it and teaching your body how to adjust the hip without loosing the turnout, or how to push harder on the floor without loosing the abdominal strength, eventually balance becomes easy and steady.

Stack Up At Your Center

Think of your body as a set of building blocks: you have to line them all up in order for the tower not to fall. If one near the top is off center, it will pull the others down with it. If one near the bottom is off center, the others will fall off of it. This is why it's important to visualize every aspect of your body while you balance: not just your feet or your hips, but the whole body. You have to line everything up.

For women, our sense of balance is mostly in the sacrum, the top part of the tailbone. Men's center of balance is a little higher, directly behind the belly button. Once you find where your center is, think of both sides of your body being proportionate around it, like those building blocks.

Energy All Directions

Remember that center we talked about? Think about a glowing ball of energy right there, in the middle of your center of balance. Now, as you're standing in whatever position you need to balance in, visualize shooting steady thick streams of that energy straight down into the floor through your standing leg, and straight up into the sky through your spine. You should grow taller from both directions, because you're pushing down from your hips, and lifting up in your back.

Now, visualize your arms shooting streams of energy outwards from your body, and your working leg shooting out the direction it's pointing. No matter what position you're balancing in, you should be able to visualize shooting energy from your center out in all directions, like you're the middle of the clock with a minute hand for every minute.

This concept evenly distributes your force and your consciousness, so you're focused on all parts of your body at the same time, and helps you find the true center of your body in that position.

And don't forget, staring at something helps too! Shoot energy out of your eyes. Pick a spot, and shoot daggers at it.

Let's talk about knees.

Shock absorbers

First of all, ballet dancers rely on their knees for more than they realize. In between the top of the Tibia (shin bone) and the bottom of the Femur (thigh bone), you have two half-moon shaped padded cushion-type-things, called Meniscus. Think of them as shock absorbers. Without them, your bones would be grinding against each other.

But dancers tend to be very hard on their Menisci. We do a lot of jumping, so they do a lot of shock absorbing. But if we don't help them along, they're going to give out.

One of the key ways you can protect your knees is to land your jumps with your knee directly over your two biggest toes, to roll through the foot as you land, and to press your heels into the floor. This distributes your weight correctly and keeps you in alignment, so you don't put extra strain on your knees.

Ligaments

There are tons of ligaments in your knees you need to take care of. The Co-lateral ligaments are two ligaments (that's the "co") on either side of your knees (that's the "lateral"). They keep your Patella (knee cap) from slipping side to side.

You also have the ACL and the PCL. ACL is Anterior Cruciate Ligament (Front, crossed ligament) and the PCL is Posterior Cruciate Ligament (back crossed ligament). They criss-cross under the Patella to keep it from moving forward and back. 

Many athletes tend to injure their ACL. But dancers are at risk of injuring their PCL, mostly because we like to hyperextend our knees, which is very very bad.

See, Ligaments don't stretch back. Once they stretch, they're stuck that way unless you do intense physical therapy or have a surgery. Hyperextension of the knees means you have a loose PCL. If the PCL is very loose, it could tear, strain, or not do it's job (thereby endangering your Patella).

If you are hyperextended, remember not to lock your knees. Your legs should look straight, but that doesn't mean they should be as engaged as they can possibly be! You have to re-train your muscles to stop pushing back, and lift up in your thighs to keep your stability.

Turnout

I will certainly address this topic more fully in another post. But just because this is extremely important, let's mention turnout.

Turnout does not come from your knees.

Turnout comes from your hips.

If you turn out from your knees, you will tear ligaments, rub and tear your Menisci, and cause serious injury to your ankles. (Again, ankles will be another post all together.)

Please, for the love of Marie Taglioni, don't turn out from your knees.

Right now I have the awesome opportunity to teach pre-pointe at a local dance studio in my area! This brings me great joy. I've got between 5 and 7 girls, all of them really excited, some of them more ready than others, but all pretty dedicated. I won't be talking about them on this blog, but I might mention "a student" and "a problem" and "tendencies." It's just for their privacy.

However, I'll be posting some tutorials about muscle strengthening, posture, alignment, Pilates, cross training, and other things that are designed to prepare girls for pointe work. You are more than welcome to check them out!

When am I ready for pointe?

This is a very complicated question to answer, because everyone's body is different, and there is not set time or age or position you have to be able to hit before you can go en pointe.
But here are the basics:

1. You should be strong enough to balance in a releve in first position for a good minute. Without the barre. Your releve should be high up on your arches, forward with your weight over your big toes (no sickling) and not wobbly.

2. Your turnout should be stable: you should be able to do a tendu or grand battement or rond de jambe combination without your standing leg slowly slipping into a parallel position.

3. You should have reasonable abdominal and back strength. If you can do 60 crunches, or an Abs Series in Pilates, you'll probably be okay.

How old is too old, or how young is too young?

You don't have to be really young. I got en pointe when I was fourteen. I knew some people who got on much older than that. I knew some who got on at six or seven. Age doesn't make much of a difference. So don't worry about how old you are. It's all about your body. Ballanchine was famous for saying (something along these lines:) that ballet training doesn't need to start seriously until the age of eight or ten, and pointe doesn't need to start until about twelve. Getting en pointe is great, but you should be able to do something once you get up there.

Will my feet keep me from dancing en pointe? My scoliosis?  My bad turnout?

1. Flat feet make pointe hard. They don't keep you from being able to dance, they just make your life more difficult. I have flat feet. But I can do things other people have a lot of trouble with, like toe hops and promenades, very easily.

2. Scoliosis makes ballet in general difficult. There are some ways you just can't move. I've known some professional dancers who had to deal with their scoliosis, and they made it work. You have to learn what you can and can't do, and then learn to work with it. It may mean sacrificing certain roles because you can't do a certain step the way a choreographer wants you to do it. But it doesn't mean you can't dance at all.

3. Turning out is a movement, not a position. Although good turnout helps, it's not the position of being turned out that helps you dance, it's the action of turning out. It's the muscular flexion and engagement that helps you keep your balance and lift your legs higher etc. I have barely 100 degree turnout. But actually using the turnout muscles is what helps you.

As far as pointe, feet that aren't extremely turned out don't look as pretty in pointe shoes as feet that are very turned out, and you will be forever competing against girls with natural turnout, but it does not mean you can't fight for it—and win.

Want more?
Foot and Arch tutorials, Why you might have to wait to go en pointe, how to know if you're ready for pointe, which pointe shoes should you get?