When not fine-tuning her braking technique down those devilishly steep bike trails in Marin, Sarah can be found tossing off triple pirouettes in the ballet studio.
Here she demonstrates one of the more difficult ballet poses – attitude croisée devant – difficult because you can’t simply lift the knee, you have to fully engage your turnout, rotating the leg from the hip, dropping the knee out to the side, lifting the heel, and turning out the foot beautifully, as Sarah does… you could balance your Starbucks venti caramel macchiato on the inside of her raised heel.
A famous use of attitude devant occurs in the virtuosic 2nd Shade variation from La Bayadère. This solo culminates in a series of fast attitudes relevés that travel forward as you switch from one leg to the other – a serious balance challenge! Perhaps no one dances this better today than Natalia Osipova of the Bolshoi Ballet: (attitudes at 0:57)
That was a really fun combination! It’d be a challenge to learn for sure. 🙂 And Sarah looks great! Now we can joke that biker chicks can have tough “attitudes.” 🙂