How To Do Ballet Exercises

We're going to learn how to do ballet exercises today. The first exercise we're going to do is demi plie, from the French, meaning half a bend. So, you'll notice that Sarah bends her knees sideways, and stretches up.

That's the demi plie, and the first thing that dancers do at the bar. Now, we're going to show you a battement tendu, so, facing the bar, we're going to show how we stretch the foot to the side using the foot beautifully, and close, and with the other foot, stretch, and close. We can also take this to the front, and to the back.

Moving on, you've often seen a dancer throw her leg up gracefully. Now, we're going to show you grand battement, meaning a big throw of the leg to the front, to the side, and to the back. If you're taking this at home, it would be a little bit lower.

Then, moving on, we are now going to come into the centre, and we're going to show port-de-bras, which means carriage of the arms. So, we're going to take her arms through to first position, through to second position, demi second, and bras. Moving on, we're going to do the nice turn that dancers use, pirouettes.

So, moving backwards a little bit, Sarah's going to show us how we're going to pirouette, so this would be difficult for you to do at home, so a very simple exercise for pirouette, is to place your hands on your shoulders, and spot focus around, twiddle, and stop. This will get you ready to do your pirouettes later on. And finally, we have jumps, allegro, so placing your feet into a little 10 to 2 position of your feet on the floor, first position we call it, you're going to bend your knees, and like a bouncing ball, jump up, spring into the air, and land back into a demi plie and stretch.

And once more, bend, and jump. And that concludes our ballet lesson for today. .