Ballet Notes

Barre

• Feet fully on demi pointe
• Stand up tall without compromising your balance (tighten your center)
• During tendu/degage/ronde jambe exercises, keep your hips facing forward, not turned out to the side.
• Relax your shoulders.
• Tendu/degage: extend all the way to the front and back (pointe your toes, girl!). Also, your side degage/tendu is more in front than to the side.
• Devellope: when extending out, your foot goes to wear you would tendu to!
• When in fourth position, your front foot’s toe should be level with your back foot’s heel, your center evenly distributed, and don’t lean back when you plié.

Center Floor

• Chaine turns
• Relax the shoulders (especially your right)
• Hold your center
• Relax your shoulders

•  Pique turns
• Higher on demi point
• Keep your working leg straight
• Pull up on your posse
• RELAX YOUR SHOULDERS

• Grand Jete
• Keep your legs straight
• Arms in first position for in between leaps.
• Lower your arm in third arabesque when leaping so as not to cover your face
• Look up higher so your leaps have more height

Vocabulary

• Frappé
• Frappé means to "strike". Hitting the floor or an ankle with a moving foot, flexed.
• Coupe’
• The working foot is placed on the part of the leg between the base of the calf and the beginning of the ankle.
• Retiré
• A position in which the thigh is raised to the second position en l'air with the knee bent so that the pointed toe rests in front of, behind or to the side of the supporting knee.
• Devant
• In front. This term may refer to a step, movement or the placing of a limb in front of the body. In reference to a particular step the addition of the word "devant" implies that the working foot is closed in the front.
• Pas de chat
• Cat's-step. The step owes its name to the likeness of the movement to a cat's leap.
• En croix
• Meaning "in the shape of a cross" or "the cross." This term is usually used when doing barre exercises such as battement tendu and battement frappé. The required movement is done to the front, then the side, then back and then again to the side (a cross shape) closing in either first or fifth position.

~La vie est belle, Bri~