Movements of dance 1: Plié – to bend or to fold (continued)
Pliés in second position encourage turn-out from the hip. Students sense the rotation at the hip joints and are balanced on a broader base than they would be in first. Pelvic tilts or rapid growth may cause tightening across the front of the hip joint making rotation less than optimal. Teachers and dance physiotherapists can give helpful exercises to aid students through the challenges of growth spurts where pliés and stretching require extra attention and care. For dancers with hyper-extended legs, I would advise private tuition and advice, so that they understand the complexities of where to position their legs in pliés to ensure that the correct balance of muscle groups is being used.
Rolling feet and ankles are frequently seen in students. When feet are 'rolled' the weight falls on the inner side of the foot, mainly on the big toe joint area. Often this is because the ankles are more turned-out than the knees in an attempt to compensate for lack of turn-out in the hip joints. Repeatedly landing badly from a jump without maintaining correct placement can cause knee problems and may also cause toe joint pain.
Highly arched feet are beautiful to behold, but basically weak. If rolling is left unchecked in these feet, muscles that should be strengthening through firm floor pressure on all ten toes fail to do so and these soft, mobile feet will not develop push-off for elevation and will give way en pointe. Both alignments and strength suffer.
It is important to coordinate plié and port de bras from the outset and to add in head and eye-line movements. I wondered when I was young why pliés were taught at a slow tempo yet when it came to the allegro section of work pliés needed a different dynamic. I now also teach pliés in a variety of tempi later in class, prior to allegro without the heels leaving the floor or as small warm-up jumps. This helps to prepare the body, build strength with dynamic activity in the muscle groups and improves reaction time and confidence. To achieve perfect pliés, controlled breathing and attention to musical phrasing are very important. I particularly like Alicia Markova's tip to encourage correct breathing in a plié. She said, 'Imagine that you have nostrils painted on either side of your knee caps. These nostrils breathe out as the knees relax outwards and downwards and breathe in as they rise up.'
Too often young dancers pull on the barre to aid their grand pliés. They would gain much more strength if they attempted to maintain their own balance throughout.
Advanced students with the necessary muscular strength and control of turn-out may attempt full grand pliés into corkscrew turns and the Bournonville jumps that land in the grand plié. On no account should these be attempted unless the dancer has secure mastery of technique. Whatever the age of the dancer, the stretch of the plié will vary with each individual, but as Bournonville stated, '...each dancer must learn to strengthen and control whatever plié he has, because he will need to vary the depth and timing of his plié for different types of jumps.' (More on jumps in a future article.) Mastery of pliés is the foundation for jumps, force for turns, the cushions for landings and the source of smooth transitions in joining movements and adagio.
A controlled, well positioned plié is beautiful to observe and aids the flow of movement for a dancer.
The great pedagogues highlight the importance of this movement for as Lifar said, '...it is the foundation of all ballet.'
Mary Goodhew Click
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First published in
Dancing Times, May 2007, reproduced with the kind permission of all involved.
