Pelvic Placement in Ballet
This is Part 1 of a series on Pelvic Placement.
Pelvic (hip) placement is a very complicated subject in Ballet and of the most misunderstood, even among good teachers. The problem is that the pelvis is hidden inside clothing and flesh, and it has three axis of rotation in 3D space. Because ballet pedagogy is often too focused on fancy words and not enough pictures and lines, it perpetuates big misunderstandings like “square hips”. The ideas expressed in this article are controversial because it goes against so much engrained ballet pedagogy, but I will show you heaps of solid evidence using pictures of elite dancers and detailed image analysis.
The 3 axis of rotation for the pelvis are:
- Roll: One hip lifts higher than the other
- Pitch: Pelvis tilts forward or back
- Yaw: One hip swings forward or back
While it’s true that these movements should be restricted, and some axis of rotations should be zero for certain poses, the hip can almost never be fully square as soon as the dancer stands on a single leg.
Legs in Seconde (to the side)
The common ballet teaching is that the hip must be “square”, which is often wrongly interpreted as no lift, open, or tilt in the pelvis. For example, even Progressing Ballet Technique (a popular teacher certification authority) gets this wrong. I don’t mean to single them out and I really do mean they are good teachers and offer a good training system overall, but this is a good opportunity to point out how pervasive and common this misunderstanding is in Ballet pedagogy. Many teachers are even afraid to explicitly teach the correct hip-up technique because they fear being criticized as incompetent. This article will prove why hip-up is correct, and give teachers a good reference to point to. PBT responded to this article negatively and I rebut them here in Part 2 of this article, but PBT now agrees with our pelvic placement in Part 3 of this article.
In the image to the left, PBT’s founder wrongly teaches students not to “hitch” the hip up. But the torso is not fully over the standing leg making it difficult to lift the working leg. The vertical line shows that the torso hangs over nothing. Also, the working foot will never reach above the head and the working leg will look short when the pelvis is placed like this no matter how flexible the dancer is.
But if we look at the picture on the right from a different PBT video, their own model dancers instinctively place the pelvis correctly with the hip lifted and the same teacher nods in approval. Several other PBT videos show professional dancers doing hip up, yet they don’t notice the fact that it doesn’t match what they teach.
To further prove my point, the following are some of the most elite dancers in the world demoing it correctly with a lifted hip. I show how their torsos are placed and shifted over the standing leg. This puts the entire torso and standing leg into a tight funnel or cone. This makes the dancer taller by a few inches, their working leg starts higher and reaches higher, their standing leg looks longer, and it frees up their working leg to move with ease.
Hips are almost never level when standing on 1 leg
Even for low legs like Tendu side, the legs are not level in this video.
Hip placement to get Torso over Leg
Altynai Asylmuratova is one of the most elite Russian ballerinas of her era. I drew up the diagram on the right to illustrate the working side hip lift and the shoulder tilt. This hip lift is required even for low legs for placing the torso over the leg. The cone shown here is the critical concept that dancers must master because it serves as the foundation that makes everything else easy.
Note that pelvic tilt in the illustration should have been labeled pelvic roll. My old illustration hadn’t refined the terminology yet.
Some teachers may only tell you to shift your torso toward the standing leg, but that alone will cause the standing leg to collapse and lean over the toe and not achieve the tight cone. The dancer must simultaneously shift the entire pelvis and standing thigh towards the standing heel so that the standing leg becomes vertical, as shown by Altynai’s standing leg. This shifts the standing thigh in relation to the waist and merges them into a tight cone.
Weight distribution over the standing leg
Moving the standing thigh & pelvis towards the standing heel is even more important when starting in 3rd or 5th position. The image below shows the standing leg starting from a leaning angle shown by the red line, which is drastically slanted compared to the blue or green lines. When shifting onto the front leg as a standing leg en flat, the blue line represents the angle and location of the front leg. When shifting onto the front leg en pointe, the green line represents the location and angle of the leg when it rolls up to pointe.
The dancer should not stay on one leg over the ball of the foot en flat with a slanted standing leg because this is meant to be a brief transition state for releve and not something you hold. We want to practice with a vertical standing leg en flat so the dancer’s belly button should be over the front of the shin illustrated by the blue line, rather than over the balls of the foot. We want to a vertical standing leg to replicate the experience in releve demi or pointe.
The dominant school of thought advocates standing en flat over the ball of the foot and the disciples of that school can make it work so I won’t call that method “wrong”. I’m just pointing out that this results in a leaning leg and sitting in the hips and it makes working at the barre difficult, and the dancer constantly has to adjust back to vertical. The verticality of the standing leg and hip geometry should be the top priority, and working over the shin is a better alternative way of working. Many professional dancers instinctively know that working over the shin is correct, but they’re afraid to go against the vocal proponents of weight over ball.
The Correct Developpe Seconde
Gabriel Figueredo is a young up-and-coming star in ballet and shows one of the best developpe secondes in the world, male or female. Note how he reaches the working side arm high into the sky such that the elbow is at the peak of his head.
Many dancers fail to lift this arm and their elbows rest at chin level making the arm look short. Level shoulders push down the working hip and the entire leg such that the working foot is below the head. What’s even worse is the natural tendency to collapse and sink down in the working shoulder. When I train and partner student ballerinas and pull their working arm up, their legs in seconde will suddenly raise 2 feet higher.
Maria Khoreva is another young rising star of Russian ballet illustrates the same concept in her video.
Svetlana Zakharova is a prima ballerina showing the same thing.
Note that the most critical setup placement before the developpe seconde in both Maria and Svetlana is that the right edge of the waist is aligned with the inner hamstring of the left leg. For the other leg, it’s going to be the left edge of waste aligned with the right inner hamstring. This is represented by the red vertical line. For extremely high legs, the torso does have to go past that to make room for the leg, but we must resist letting the torso go too far over.
Kathryn Morgan is a former star in New York City ballet demonstrating the same concept in her video.
Note that the most critical setup placement before the developpe seconde in both Maria and Svetlana is that the right edge of the waist is aligned with the inner hamstring of the left leg. For the other leg, it’s going to be the left edge of waste aligned with the right inner hamstring. This is represented by the red vertical line. For extremely high legs, the torso does have to go past that to make room for the leg, but we must resist letting the torso go too far over.
Not in this elite company below is just 40-year-old me doing some stretches a decade ago, showing that I practice what I preach/teach. If older bulked-up me can still do this, I use this to motivate the young students to surpass this.
Legs Devant (front)
This concept of lifting the hip also applies when the leg is in front or back. Here is Maria Khoreva showing good front leg placement. Not only does the hip roll put her torso over her standing leg, it even lifts her entire leg above the red line because be the top of her leg starts higher. Even her head is taller! What we get is a a taller longer dancer with higher legs.
Arabesque technique
But what about Arabesque or Back Attitude positions when the leg is to the back? Here are some good examples that include Svetlana Zakharova in the middle, Joy Womack (I think) on the left, and Romany Pajdak in a video tutorial on arabesques from the Royal Ballet on the right. Lastly, the working foot goes behind the working shoulder and not behind the head as it’s often taught.
This is for functional and aesthetic reasons. Aesthetically it makes the legs look longer and higher. Functionally, the human leg going to the back really can’t get above tendu height without some pelvic rotation. That means a combination of rolling the working hip up, pitching the pelvis forward, and yawing the pelvis open. By doing all 3 rotations, it minimizes the degree that each is needed.
Below is 80s prima ballerina Denise Jackson showing the most perfectly placed arabesque from the 1986 Video Dictionary of Classical Ballet. She uses all 3 pelvic rotation axis to minimize each one. It’s important to note that there is a tendency to open too far, so it’s important to square off the rib cage as much as possible to restrict how much the hip can open.
Hanna Martin demonstrates below that you can go too far. The more she over-splits the more the hip opens and turns into a side leg position. Note that she’s just doing a stretch here on the right and not actually how to do a good penche arabesque. The image on the left shows how to do a really beautiful penche.
More of the lovely ballerina Hanna Martin showing how to do one of the best penche arabesques in the world. Note that having hyperextended knees help prevent her from falling over onto her face because it shifts her weight back. Not everyone can do this without a partner if their knee isn’t this hyperextended.
There are special cases where the arabesque or back attitude can use a fully squared ribcage which severely limits how much the hip can open. The lovely Adji Cissoko demonstrates one of the most impressive squared-off body elongated back attitudes. This would be the ideal pose for the iconic White Swan dive. The hip is still slightly open, but it’s mostly using forward tilt and lift. This pose also requires a lot of lower back-bend flexibility. The working side knee is allowed to go slightly out to the side to allow it to go higher.
Bad arabesque technique
Teachers that insist on square and level hips that don’t open or lift will only force the dancer to completely pitch the pelvis forward. That results in an amateur look with a horizontal torso and/or a low and turned-in working leg with the heel sticking up instead of pointing at the horizon. Sadly, this type of outdated wrong teaching is common.
Eric Conrad teaches this bad form of arabesque (illustrated below) that demands perfectly square hips that aren’t allowed to open or lift. Note how his student’s working knee is pointing down and calves pointing up. If she attempted to lift her foot any higher, she would have to pitch forward drastically. When I commented on his video citing elite Russian dancers like Artem Ovcharenko doing arabesque correctly with open/lifted hips, Conrad belittled him saying “As for Artyom, he was put in the unfortunate position of being promoted to a principal position prematurely”. Conrad has since deleted this video so I can’t link to it along with these comments, but I screenshotted it and saved his comments. Unsurprisingly, this gentleman who as far as I know never danced professionally but claims Maria Khoreva is incompetent. Needless to say, he’s in no position to mock the beautiful ballerina Maria Khoreva or Artyom Ovcharenko, which is why I feel the need to call him out.
Takeaway
Aside from reading articles like this, I recommend watching more videos of elite dancers and getting videos of yourself to compare. Looking at your own video or photo is one of the most painful things a dancer can do, even for professionals, but it is one of the quickest ways to improve yourself.
YouTube is a wonderful resource that we have never had before in the world of ballet and we should all use it. You can pause the video and even advance frames forward or backward one frame at a time using the “.” or “,” keys.
By: George Ou
February 3, 2023
