Today, we are talking turn out. A ballet dancer trains (basically lives) in turned out positions. Here are some images of turned out positions of the hips, legs, ankles, and feet. When students first learn ballet technique, they learn these placements of the feet.
The dancer is in external rotation on the right and left sides of the body. If turn out is forced and not strengthened/trained over time, major injuries can occur in the ankle, knee, and hip joints.
The image below shows a dancer who is forcing turn out and a dancer who is not.
The ankles in the top photo are completely rolled in. This dancer is not rotating from her hips and engaging her gluteus muscles to keep her arches lifted. In order to properly rotate from the hips and begin to use your turn out, you need to squeeze your inner thighs together. At the same time, make a small outward circular motion with the upper legs.
When I was younger, my teacher spiraled a scarf on my leg to show me what turn out was. She started the spiral at my upper leg and ran the scarf around and around and around until it got to my foot. This created the image of a leg that was constantly "turning out."
Turn out is not stagnant. Is is something a dancer is always fixing and adjusting during class. Even the most advanced ballet dancers lose their turn out sometimes.
This post is an introduction to turn out. I plan to go a bit deeper in my next post with some videos that will help explain the application of turn out. Yours truly will be dancing in one of the videos. Stay tuned!
Hi Bri,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy your blog a lot, if I were to offer any constructive words, I'd only say perhaps letting non-dancers know how the lessons learned in dance could somehow benefit our (non-dancing) lives as well? :D