Dear Miss Haley

I get email questions from you guys all the time! I love it! Today I'm featuring Vanessa's question.

Could you assist me in a term I seem to have forgotten?  The step consists of a grand battement to the front, lifting the supporting heel and pivoting to an arabesque.  Please let me know your thoughts and if I have just had a silly moment.

Many thanks!

Vanessa described perfectly the Foutée Arabesque. Also she is not silly. When I returned to ballet after a 2-year break, there was practically a list of movements I had to take to my teacher and ask about the names. If you don’t use it, you lose it!

There are a couple different kinds of fouteés, and a couple different kinds of foutée arabesques. I’m going to tell you about them.

When we think of foutée, most of us think of the pirouette. The word foutée means whipped. So the foutée pirouette works because you are whipping your leg.

There are three types of foutée arabesques:

The Pique Foutée: Demi plié, step up onto a straight leg and battement to the front, foutée to the back.

The Chasse Relevé foutée:  to-be articulating leg through first, then fourth, battement front, and foutée around to back.

The Saute foutée: begins like a chasse foutée but saute up off the standing leg as you foutée into arabesque.

My advice biggest piece of advice to you about foutée arabesque is to focus most on the rotation of the standing leg. If you're standing on something fully rotated, everything else will fall into place!