PBT now agrees with our pelvic placement

Progressing Ballet Technique (PBT) has now issued a second response to my original article Pelvic Placement in Ballet after I gave a rebuttal to their first response. PBT now essentially agrees with my position, so I’m going to offer some final comments.

I appreciate PBT making it clear that my teaching of Pelvic Placement does NOT harm students, and that our perspectives are “essentially aligned” by saying:

PBT - “We hope that the author and all those following this discussion can recognise that our perspectives are essentially aligned.”

I also appreciate that PBT no longer uses the spirit level to describe level hips, because it clearly is not level at any height, not even for degage height as shown here in the latest image PBT posted. Note that the red line was drawn by me to illustrate the child’s pelvic roll angle, which uses her leotard for guidance.

I appreciate PBT’s additional quote from the University of St. Davis saying that not allowing hip-lift will place unnecessary stress on the hip joint and lumbar, which adds support to my original article!

University of St. Davis:
“not allowing the pelvis to move commensurately with the gesturing leg will decrease the potential range of motion and place unnecessary stress on the hip joint and lumbar spine”

The key point I keep making is that the lifted hip is just a fundamental aspect of bipedal human standing on one leg. It is not a discrete yes/no function where below a certain gesture leg angle there’s no hip lift. There is always a hip lift when standing on one leg. The lower the gesturing leg, the lower the hip lift. The higher the gesturing leg, the higher the hip angle.

PBT is correct to limit the student’s degree of lift to prevent the student from going wild and spilling the torso over the standing side. I agreed with PBT’s “neutral” hip angle, but the line Marie created holding the student’s foot was far too level to be neutral.

I respectfully said “PBT has good teachers and a good overall program”, and never attacked PBT. I just wanted PBT to clarify their language and imagery of square and level hips. PBT’s model dancers were great, and this younger PBT model is great.

There was no need for PBT to raise safety concerns in the original rebuttal, especially in the context of replying to me because that clearly suggests I’m being harmful. PBT supporters accused me of being harmful, and some of them even said that PBT privately told them they didn’t agree with my method.

I hope this clears things up, and I’m happy that PBT updated its teaching to now align with my original article.