Turnout Pain in 4th & 5th Position
Dancing Smart Newsletter
February 18, 2005
We'll go right to the question of the week:
Hi Deborah,
I have a question about turnout. When I go into releve in fourth or fifth position, it is painful to hold what I consider to be my usual turnout. (I've never had easy turnout; I was born sort of pigeon toed and slept with braces on my feet as a baby.) I guess what I don't know is whether the pain I have while working my turnout is good pain or worrisome pain. How can you tell the difference? How much can you to develop turnout when it's not natural for your hip structure?
Thank you! I love getting your newsletters.
April
I will start by saying pain is always something to pay attention to. I never think that pain should be regarded as a normal part of being a dancer. Let's look at some of the issues that your question brings up.
Let's start with looking at what it means to be pigeon toed. In a young toddler under the age of two, they may be slightly pigeon toed, and yet walk and run easily. The bones of the forefoot sometimes turn inward to create this. Other times the toeing in can be caused by the tibia rotating inward, which is called internal tibial torsion. We have talked about the opposite motion of external tibial torsion in other newsletters. Typically, as the child grows and their muscles develop the tendency to turn their feet in dissipates with time. Every now and then a more severe case requires some type of casting or special shoes worn when sleeping. (It sounds like you had a more severe case, April)
If a child over the age of 3 still has a tendency to walk pigeon toed, they may have an anteverted hip structure. Anteversion is a structural variation at the hip joint where the neck of the femur is angled to create inward rotation of the thigh bone. Even with an anteverted hip structure children learn to walk with their feet fairly straight forward by the age of 7 or 8.
It's possible that you have some variation of the above factors, which may make it a little harder to work in a turned out position. The important clue you gave me in your question was that fourth and fifth position is where you felt your discomfort. Even for a dancer who didn't have a problem with being pigeon toed as a youngster may complain about holding turnout in fourth and fifth position.
Maintaining turnout is always easier in first and second position. It's when you begin to cross the legs past the center line of the body that you have problems. The wider the hips a dancer has, the more challenging to hold your turnout. A wider hipped dancer will prefer to stand in an open fourth position and perhaps need to take fifth position with their heel to the base of the big toe on the other foot. Personally, I have always allowed some individual accommodation to my dancer's fourth and fifth feeling the goal of a plié in those positions was about finding center between your two feet and challenging your alignment.
When you go from a stationary fourth or fifth, or from plié, to relevé, the more crossed your starting position is, the harder it will be to hold your turnout. In performance situations, one way I see dancers compensate is by standing primarily on the back leg with less weight into the front leg. There isn't any problem with that compensation unless you have a leg length discrepancy and your longer leg is in front. Then it's harder. A quick note on leg length discrepancies is dancers generally prefer to stand on the longer leg with the shorter leg in front.
My suggestion is to experiment with the amount of crossing in your fourth and fifth positions and see if that helps.
Dance on!
Deborah