4th position

Dancing Smart Newsletter
August 18, 2006

Announcements

Yikes! I took one daughter to college yesterday – a sure sign summer is drawing to a close. While I could use another month before summer ends, what I do love about this time of year is my sense that a new year is right around the corner. Forget January 1st, my year goes from September through June as I imagine most of yours do. I'm envisioning all of us having a year filled with joy, abundance and personal growth because we are following our passions.

I'd like to start with a request from a reader for Marley recommendations. Does anyone have a recommendation for a brand of Marley that could be used over tile/concrete? If you have suggestions, please send them to me, and I will send them on. I'll also post the suggestions in the next newsletter (in 2 weeks) for other studio owners.

Our question of the week is about the value of grande plié in fourth position. Is it necessary?

This dancer teacher had remembered reading in an article that David Howard had stopped giving grande plié in fourth position. While I didn't read that article, I can understand why he would take it out of his barre.

Let's first talk about the difference between the open and closed fourth position. In an open the heels are in line with each other, or even an inch or two apart. In a closed fourth position you are crossing one heel over in front of the base of the toes.

I am an advocate of working at the barre in an open fourth position because you have a better chance of maintaining proper turnout and pelvic placement. In fourth, you want to have your weight evenly placed between the two feet and maintain an upright pelvis. It is the focus of barre to work on alignment, yes? In this ideal position the leg in back is in a slight hip extension, and the leg in front is in a slight hip flexion (slight – I emphasize).

In a closed fourth the minute you go across the midline of the body with the front leg most dancers will rotate their pelvis. They must, unless they have incredible turnout and joint range of motion. (Make your dancers take their hands off the barre and watch them get into fifth position. You'll see how challenging it is to keep the pelvis square when crossing the midline. They'll rotate as they close the foot into fifth, and then crank their pelvis back to square.)

So with both fourths, but especially the crossed, closed position, there is a significant challenge of maintaining the turnout at the hip. The temptation is to stand with more weight on the back leg in order to turnout the front leg more.

Now let's move! In a demi plié the stress is usually okay on the knee. The weight is still on the whole foot, and there should not be any extra 'screwing' of the knee – unless the dancer is already standing with more turnout than they have at the hip. That's easy enough to check by looking at their hip, knee, and foot alignment. In grand plié, though, as they lift the heel and try to bring it forward and keep the knees out to the side, you are definitely increasing the torque at the knee and ankle. Not good. Because the pelvis is in between the feet, the weight and pressure has been increased on the inside of both knees, putting undue pressure on the medial cartilage.

Generally, it feels uncomfortable to do the grand plié in fourth because your body is saying – "I don't like this!" Does choreography include this movement? Yes – although fortunately, not too often. The primary example would be the Russian dance in Nutcracker. A male with very strong, usually beefy thighs, who has enough quad strength not to keep his weight from totally dropping into the knee, typically does this dance.

If we add in the issue of age and the adolescent growth patterns, we've got another strike against grand plié in fourth. Since bone grows faster than muscle, and grand plié in fourth is almost impossible to do without strain on the knee, in the adolescent dancer you are running the risk or straining the ligaments and laying in some knee damage that will follow them through their life.

Grande plié is good for developing strength and control of the legs. I'm not saying that we should not ever do them. Grande plié in the other positions is an important part of a dancer's training. My suggestion is to only do demi plié in fourth and leave the benefits of grand plié to the other positions.

See you in a couple of weeks, and don't forget to check out Functional Anatomy for Dancers on the website. We're working hard on level 2!

Warm regards,

Deborah

"Education is the key to injury prevention"

Copyright ©2003-2006 The Body Series. All Rights Reserved.

Deborah Vogel is a dancer, author, and master teacher who conducts workshops across the U.S. for both student and professional dancers. Her numerous articles on dance technique and injury prevention have appeared in Dance Spirit and Dance Teacher magazines. She is the Director of the Institute for Performance Studies and a faculty member at Oberlin College and the OC Conservatory of Music. During her years in NYC she co- founded the Center for Dance Medicine. Deborah makes her home in Oberlin, Ohio.