How To Improve Your Ballet Technique

We are going to learn today how to develop your ballet technique and one of the main things we are going to start of with, which is very important, is posture, and how we stand. Now as you'll notice Sarah standing here, you might think that your spine only ends at the bottom of your neck here, but the spine ends right in the middle of the head here, so you need to have a very long spine.

You have to make sure that the pelvis is neither tipped forwards, is neither tipped backwards, but its absolutely in the middle.

And finally we have to make sure that Sarah's eye-line is looking slightly above her own eye level.

The second thing that dancers want to improve is their turnout and that's about the ball and socket joint in the top of the hip, which turns around and just to prove this to you Sarah's sitting in frogs legs to show her turnout facility. And then she's going to stretch her legs forward, and she's going to turn her legs in and using the ball and socket joint she is going to turn her legs out, and turn her legs in, and turn her legs out, and turn her legs in.



So when we are standing at the bar with our turnout muscles, it feels rather like your legs are turning around in the top of your hip socket like squeezing water out of a sponge to keep the open position here.

When it comes to the next area, foot strength, it is really important to watch how Sarah presses through the foot to get that lovely stretched foot feeling, pushing through the metatarsal arch, stretching, and then coming back up. And one way to improve your ballet technique is to use something called a There-band and these help you with resistance training, to stretch the foot against the rubber.

Well show you how we do that.

So once again the foot is pressing through but there's more resistance now, so that really strengthens your feet ready for the ballet class.

When it comes to leg loosening, this is a really safe way to loosen your leg because she has got the support of the elbow.

She is going to press her knee into her chest and then she is going to slowly stretch her leg to get leg loosening, an extension there, and just relax the leg again. And again stretch, and down. And finally the fullest stretch that she can make and this is a supported stretch and quite safe.

Don't overstretch your legs because you are not actually benefiting by doing that. So it should just be to a comfortable level.

And also you would have seen dancers stretch at the bar at the end of their class and this is a very good way to help stretch and flex the legs, usually done after the bones and muscles are warmed up.



Elevation, jumping, is rather like an elastic band, the more you bend and stretch, the higher your jump will be. So looking at Sarah now, she is going to really bend her knees and she is going to jump into the air, and bend again, and its just like the elastic band, nice stretchy jumps.

So this concludes todays video on how to improve your ballet technique.

So, happy practising and keep enjoying the ballet lessons.








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