Antonia, Virgil and Gayla attempt the most difficult step in the ballet canon.
We start with plié at the barre not just because it underpins all movement in ballet, but because it happens to be one of the most efficient ways to warm up the entire body. It is not a movement isolated to the legs; even without any accompanying arm movement, it requires engagement of the hips, back and core muscles.
To plié correctly, the bending and stretching of the knees have to be continuous and smooth, both in demi-plié (half knee bend) and grand plié (full knee bend). Think of an elevator which never stops: the moment it gets to the bottom it starts its ascent, and the moment it reaches the top floor it starts to drop again (to the terror of the passengers trapped within.) Should you pause in the middle of executing a plié, the muscles around the ankles, knees and hips have to grip in order to hold the position, which is inherently unstable because all these joints are flexed. So you are not truly warming up the muscles but stressing them inappropriately at the beginning of class.
Throughout the plié you want to feel the feet pressing firmly into the ground, the toes long and arches lifted. I tell the younger kids that they need to be able to park their Hot Wheels in the arch under the foot; if the foot starts to roll forward and they flatten that arch, that vintage Hot Wheel will be history.
The first action in a plié should be an outward rotation of the thighs rather than a sinking in the knees. Most teachers will remind you like a broken record to keep-your-hips-in-line-with-your-knees-in-line-with-your-2nd-or-3rd-toe. Maintaining this alignment and turnout from the hips rather than just turning out the feet is key to protecting the joints from undesirable torsion.
I like to start pliés in a wide 2nd position, which allows you to keep your heels firmly grounded into the floor throughout the movement, and to get to your maximum turnout with easier flexion in the hips. It is also easier in 2nd position to keep the pelvis level and to maintain a vertical spine, without “tucking” under. Tucking engages the glutes and restricts the range of motion in your legs. It also makes you look like you just got off a horse. The muscle group you want to engage is the DOR (deep outward rotators), a smaller set of muscles underneath the glutes. These are the muscles that you need to rotate the thighs outward and keep them rotated.
In 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th positions, the heels stay on the floor in demi-plié but have to lift off the floor toward the bottom of the grand plié, then you have to conscientiously push them back down into the floor as soon as you begin your ascent.
A common error is to leave the heels up until the knees have almost fully straightened – this is akin to the airline pilot who forgets to lower the landing gear until the plane has almost touched down – not so much an aesthetic problem as a failure of technique, as the air traffic controller might say. The Achilles tendon does not get adequately stretched, and the bad habit carries through to centre work: heels that tend to pop up off the floor. Dancers who fail to correct this often move across the floor in a kind of demi-pointe limbo, never quite on top of their toes but never flat on the floor either.
Many students get used to performing pliés at the barre at a fixed tempo, usually on the slow side, but I think it’s a good idea to mix it up occasionally and execute them at uncomfortable tempos. Performing them slowly – really slowly – allows you to focus on the isometric quality of the plié, your muscles actively resisting the movement downward then actively resisting the movement upward. It is very strengthening to perform pliés slowly, as you work harder to recruit the muscles in the backs of the legs, especially in the ascent. At slow speeds it’s also easier to focus on keeping a strong core, pushing “navel toward spine.”
On the other hand, performing pliés on the fast side emphasizes the smooth, continuous quality of the movement and helps get rid of any jerkiness or tendency to sit at the bottom of the plié.
The elevator image also helps to remind you to keep your spine vertical, your tailbone pointing down to the floor, as you descend. Another helpful image is to imagine you are encased in two narrow plates of glass, and as you go up and down you need to make sure that no body part touches the glass in front or behind.
For the more experienced student, imagine that you have to execute a pirouette from the bottom of your grand plié. You will quickly realize whether your back is straight or not, because there is no way you can spring into a pirouette from 4 inches off the floor if you are tipping even the slightest bit off-centre. (Pirouette from grand plié is an old exercise from the Italian and Russian Schools, a step taught mainly to men but rarely used now; it is still a great drill to drive home the importance of pushing against the floor, of actively resisting gravity from the depth of the plié.)
Physical therapists are not big fans of grand plié in any position, and most especially not in 4th position, which can produce too much torque in the joints if you are the slightest bit out of alignment – and most people simply are not built to stay perfectly square in 4th position. Which is why some teachers today skip grand plié in 4th position altogether.
Demi-plié in 4th position however is never omitted; it’s a very important step as it is the most common preparation for pirouette, the key to temps lié and many other linking steps.
Suzanne Farrell said “the plié is the first thing we learn in ballet and the last thing we master,” the main challenge being to keep our torso properly aligned, our legs fully turned out from the hips, and our heels pushing relentlessly into the floor as we bob up and down like a well-oiled elevator in a Hitchcock thriller. To complicate matters, we are usually asked to coordinate our arm movements with plié and the most common port de bras taught today involves bringing the arm down from 2nd position to low 5th (bras bas) then lifting it to 5th front and opening to 2nd position. This is a 20th century invention that unfortunately encourages the back and shoulders to drop forward.Teachers can modify the port de bras to help keep the torso lifted throughout the plié; my favorite port de bras for grand plié is to carry the arm from 2nd to 5th high on the descent which helps to engage the back correctly. Other solutions, especially for beginning students, are to place the arm in 2nd position and leave it there, or place the hand on the shoulder with the elbow lifted throughout, or float the arm out from low 5th to demi 2nd (a low 2nd position of the arms) during the descent and float the arm back down to low 5th during the ascent.
I’ve always found pliés to be the most challenging exercise at the barre, no matter how simple the choreography, but this has the benefit of forcing the mind to focus quickly, to leave behind the distractions of the everyday world, and mentally take you where you need to be for class.
This essay was fascinating! I had no idea all of that went into a plié. It’s interesting to read and absorb so I can keep it in mind for future classes.
Thanks for this step-by-step post. Extremely informative.
I was also fascinated to read that you had “cured” your arthritis with intensive ballet. I have what I believe is arthritis in my toes–exacerbated by god-awful bunions. I wonder if ballet would be any help.
Fodder for future Ballet of The People blog posts!
I stumbled upon this essay while looking for additional sources of information for a research project which I am conducting in regards to Plies. I would like to sincerely thank you for posting such an essay as not many people are as brave, confident, or as knowledgable as you are when it comes to understanding what a Plie really is. I have some comments, They are not meant to be offensive, or belittling. They are meant to be helpful, thought-provoking, critical in a constructive manner, possibly insightful, and sincerely open with the purpose of sharing ideas and knowledge.
I generally like this essay. However, there are a few points that have bothered me a little. The first is “I like to start in a wide second position”. What bothers me about it is that if you are teaching a “wide second position” then you are not teaching actual ballet, you are teaching some kind of a spinoff of it, or something else completely (I don’t really know what). Second position of the feet has been described since the very beginning of recorded Ballet history as having the distance between the feet being equal to the length of one of the dancer’s own feet (the same is true in regards to the distance of the feet in fourth position). In England (I say “in England” but what I am truly meaning is “in anywhere the English have influenced Ballet and its development such as England, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, South Africa, etc.”), there has been some discussion about the foot equalling 1 1/2 length of the dancer’s own foot, and in some Italian references, there is a distance given of 18 inches between the feet. Following the information from 1725 through to the 1990s and even until now, the general documented distance between the feet in both the 2nd and 4th positions of the feet remains to be the length of one of the dancer’s own feet. If one does not follow this rule, then one is losing out on the majority of the benefits of doing plies in those two “open” positions. An example of one of the missing benefits caused by opeing the second position into a wider position than prescribed is; missing out on the lengthening of the Achilles tendon and other ligaments etc in the legs and ankles. Additionally, when one opens the feet further apart in second position, it creates a risk to the dancer’s safety and well-being because it will place a great amount of unnecessary stress upon the knee joints because the 90-degree angle formed at the knee by the feet being further apart from one another creates a situation where the condyles of the femur are resting upon the condyles of the tibia. This, and the fact that the pelvis and head of the femur are also a joint, and are also supported by adjacent muscle groups, there ends up being a ton of force placed upon the patella tendon and the quadriceps tendon. Which will lead to numerous problems such as patellofemoral syndrome, tearing of the surrounding tendons and fascia, strained muscles, and torn ligaments etc. This is in addition to adding a much more heavy load to the quadriceps in general which develops undesirable bulky thigh muscles resulting in much less appealing classical lines. Ultimately yes, a wider second and fourth positions may make the doing of Plies feel much easier, however, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, Ballet is, never has been, and never will be easy. It is only years of training and extremely hard work that make it appear that way. And, who said that ballet is supposed to be easy anyways? If it was easy, everyone would do it.
Your comment about physiotherapists not being too keen on the idea of Grands Plies is correct, I have both experienced and read about this happening often. What they are concerned about, however, is exactly what one of the goals of doing Grand Plies is – to maximize the outer rotation, or “turn-out” within the three points of turn-out which are the hip, knee, and ankle joints. If the dancer is trained properly, and the Grand Plie is built from the bottom up developing a strong technique using a graduated and pedagogically logical order of learning, then there will be no problem with the dancer’s physique requiring attention from a physiotherapist. On the contrary, if a teacher is one to just demonstrate a Grand Plie in front of a student and then suggests that the student try it without giving the aid of a proper and thorough in-depth description indicating how to properly execute a Grand Plie to that student instead just having the student repeat the movement over and over again in say 4 counts, while each time the teacher gives a correction or two or three or however many. Then the learning process is still flawed because the student is attempting to do something after seeing it once or twice, without the knowledge of potential risk factors, and without knowing what the various components that make up the movement are, etc.
The elevator analogy is good, except for not stopping at the top. This is only true if one is doing more than one Plie in a row. If there are two Plies in a row then there will be no pause at the top of the first Plie as it transitions into the second Plie, and there will be a stop once the dancer arrives at the crest of the second Plie. Similarly, if there are three Plies then there will be no stop at either the first or second crests of the Plies – only on the third as the dancer either holds the position, or transitions to whatever movement is next in the sequence of the set combination. With that being said, a whole Plie, or “Grand Plie” Plie is broken into 4 parts as follows:
1. from straight legs to 1/2 Plie (Demi-Plie)
2. from Demi-Plie to full Plie or “Grand Plie”
3. from Grand Plie back to Demi-Plie
4. from Demi-Plie back to straight legs.
Demi-plie is also broken into 4 parts as follows:
1. from straight legs to 1/4 Plie (Plie en Quart)
2. Plie en Quart to Demi-Plie
3. Demi-Plie back to Plie en Quart
4. Plie en Quart to straight legs
Each of the 4 parts of both the Demi-Plie and the Grand Plie must be synchronized with 4 beats, 1,2,3, and 4. The beats are the equivalent of 1 measure of music in western methods of training and are equal to individual notes within a measure of music in eastern training methodologies. Continuing with and using western methods for the sake of simplicity, each beat of the movement will consist of 4 notes (for a 4/4), and, 3 notes (for a 3/4) etc.
I will demonstrate the musical layout for a plie using the time signature of 4/4 for the purpose of simplicity. Here are a few rules that every plie must follow:
1. Each part of whatever type of plie one is doing must be done in synchronization with the downbeat of each measure (for clarity the downbeat is the first note of each measure)
2. Every plie is a movement with both a beginning and an end that must be done without any pauses throughout the 4 parts of the movement.
3. Both the descent and the ascent must be done in equal time. (2 beats for the descent, and 2 beats for the ascent) with an even and consistent velocity for both the descent and the ascent (Many teachers vary the speed of the Plie on either the descent or the ascent of the plie. This is incorrect and is not ballet, it is again something else and opens the door for severe knee injuries due to extreme amounts of strain on the muscles, tendons, and ligaments due to the additional force generated within the muscles initiating the change of speed within the movement.
So, a proper Plie will end up looking like this (if I have learned anything in this lifetime, I may just be some idiot without a clue) if done in 4 beats of 4/4
Beat 1, start the descent on the first note and continue for the other three notes to a depth of a 1/2 Plie, or Demi-Plie.
Beat 2, on the first note – arrive and continue to pass through the height of the or Demi-Plie without stopping, pausing, or slowing down. For the additional three notes proceed to move continuously to the depth of a full or Grand Plie(the Trough of the Plie).
Beat 3, on the first note of the 3rd measure, hit the depth of the Grand Plie and immediately change direction and continue to proceed to ascend to the depth of a Demi-Plie for the additional three notes.
Beat 4, hit the depth of the Demi-Plie on the first note and proceed to continue to ascend back to having the legs completely straight for the last three notes without any deviation in the velocity of the ascent.
I hope that I have been able to add to your work in some manner or another, whether you like or dislike this. I like to think that it is at least something to ponder.
Sincerely,
Dave
David, this is so thoughtful of you, thank you for weighing in with your considerable wisdom.
I see that you have spotted a laziness in my writing – when I wrote “I like to start plié in a wide 2nd position” I did not mean a version of 2nd position that is wider than the prescribed 2nd position. I was referring to a true 2nd position, as prescribed not just in ancient texts but by modern physiotherapists.
When I write, both in my reviews and my blog posts about technique, I aim for an audience that doesn’t know a lot about ballet, including in this case, students who are probably at the beginning or intermediate level. Mentioning “a wide 2nd position” was my way of informing the novice (or reminding the student) that 2nd is wider than 1st!
So the point I was making there is that, in many classes, it is traditional to start class with pliés in 1st position, whereas in my classes I like to start in 2nd.
I hope that clarifies what you were thinking was dodgy pedagogy on my part 🙂
Thank you for clarifying. In this day and age, the number of dancers and charlatan self-proclaimed “ballet experts” who are posting numerous videos of themselves telling “what is” and “what isn’t” in regard to ballet’s technical requirements who demonstrate giant wide second positions terrifies me.
Thank you for the good work you do!