Pelvic Placement in Ballet — Part 2 Rebuttal of PBT
Update — PBT now agrees with our pelvic placement
The reaction to my first article on Pelvic Placement in Ballet was overwhelmingly positive, with only a few negative responses. The most notable negative response was from Progressing Ballet Technique (PBT).
PBT argues against lifting the working side hip whenever standing on one leg and refers to this as “hitching the hip”, but I will just refer to it as hip-lift for shorthand. The main arguments against my hip-lift thesis can be summed up like this.
- PBT claims hip-lift is valid for professional dancers, but not for students. They even strongly suggest it’s dangerous to teach students like this, which is an indirect way of saying my teaching is dangerous.
- Lifting the working side hip in ballet is only useful when the leg is extremely high but should be level when the leg is low.
- Lifting the hip only works for elite bodies.
PBT says the following
In response to the article published on ‘Ballet in Motion’ recently, we agree with the points made in principle, however, the article is referring to the alignment in professional dancers. PBT is all about the journey to get there.
Many young students, when in the ‘passé’ position, tend to tilt or raise their hip with the misconception that this will allow their leg to reach a higher range. Though they may be able to extend their leg briefly, it will not be sustainable without years of proper training to develop internal strength and alignment.
Pure line doesn’t have a measurement. Safety first!
This is a big deal to me because PBT is a major teacher certification authority. When they invoke the big scare word “safety”, that’s probably the worst accusation you can make against any Ballet Teacher. This is why many great ballet teachers who were high-level dancers will privately agree with me, but never publicly support my argument. Nobody wants to go against the popular consensus no matter how wrong it is because nobody wants to be labeled dangerous and incompetent.
Let’s take a look at the pictures PBT offers in support of what they teach.
The problem here is that this position is contrived because the student model dancer wouldn’t be able to hold this shape without Marie Walton-Mahon holding her legs up. This lets the student artificially push her hips level. PBT is so obsessed with being level that they include an image of a spirit level in the horizontal position.
PBT might sound logical until you analyze their own video on Pelvic Alignment technique. PBT’s “Neutral” position is what they teach as the correct position, the “Sitting” position is where the dancer is visibly struggling to hold her leg up against gravity, and the contrived position where the student is held up by the teacher. It’s notable that even the sitting example still has a higher working hip because the effort needed to hold the leg up is massive! A level hip increases the leverage of the leg from gravity and wants to pull that leg down harder.
You can clearly see that if Marie doesn’t touch the dancer, her correct position has a huge hip-lift or “hitch” as they call it. You can verify that by zooming in on the image and I was careful to draw the red line based on the rubberband location. It most certainly does not match the black line that represents the Spirit Level.
Here’s more of PBT’s model dancer not having her foot held up artificially.
I made it very clear in my article that the hip lift was a fundamental requirement for shifting the torso over the standing leg, and pulling everything into a tight cone or funnel.
Let’s revisit how PBT teaches passe.
Many young students, when in the ‘passé’ position, tend to tilt or raise their hip with the misconception that this will allow their leg to reach a higher range.
Oh really? Don’t raise the hip? Do you think one of the greatest ballerinas in the last 30 years, Altynai Asylmuratova is wrong?
Let’s go with something from the Ballet in Form YouTube channel which features some elite-level students and tell me if that hip is level. Luckily her leotard reveals the pelvic placement. As I said, the torso and standing leg need to be squeezed into a cone or funnel. Can you go too far with the hip lift? Absolutely, but the cone or funnel concept serves as a guide. Don’t lift enough and you don’t get into the cone. Lift too far and you go past the cone and spill out the other side.
What about low-leg positions? As I said in the first article, hip-lift is a fundamental requirement for shifting the torso over the standing upper leg because that’s human anatomy. Here’s me on a Bosu ball with a low leg, and I can assure you that trying to do this with level hips is incredibly tiring and unstable. The same can be true if you attempted a promenade in back attitude or back coup de pied. I have partnered and trained hundreds of girls and they can’t make it around a promenade without falling unless I shift their torso over their standing leg which requires this hip lift.
Here’s Vaganova Level 2 in 1989.
Different laws of Physics for Pros & Students?
OK, so what about beginning adults and children? Is this hip-lift technique too advanced, dangerous, and difficult for them? No! It’s much harder and less stable to do these steps with level hips! There are not two sets of physics for pros and beginners. The pros do things the way they do because it’s easier, more efficient, and correct. Students should figure out how to emulate pros,
You can verify yourself with a simple experiment. Stand on a flat floor with both feet flexed and try only lifting one foot off the ground a millimeter. You’ll find it incredibly tiring and unstable because you can’t lift the hip enough to fully shift your torso over your standing leg. Even when you walk, you naturally lift the hip a little on the side for the foot off the ground!
Applications in Pas de Deux stability
Here’s this concept of the hip lift and funnel in practice at the highest level. I can’t stress enough times how important this is. I’ve partnered with hundreds of girls to teach them Pas de Deux and I’ve never met one that can do this one-handed promenade with a stable beautiful position with level hips. Every single one of them instantly improves when I get them into this position. One time I held a girl en pointe in back coup de pied to promenade her one-handed and she kept collapsing and falling. I got her to lift her hip and shift her torso over the leg and she instantly stabilized, and she screamed “magic”.
An appeal to PBT
We didn’t need to have this awkward conversation. I was super respectful to you when I said PBT has good teachers and an overall good program. You could have just said, “George is right, but we were right too to teach students not to go too far”. Then I could have been more diplomatic and said “maybe I misinterpreted PBT and we’re actually in alignment”.
But you went down the path of telling the PBT community that you don’t agree with George and that his method is dangerous for students. But none of PBT’s own students do it the way PBT says to do it with “spirit level” hips. The notion that beginners should use level hips but magically transition to the right amount of hip-lift when they’re advanced is just wrong. This transition should be taught as soon as possible to make standing on one leg easier for the student.
So please stop advocating this myth of level hips and look at the overwhelming evidence. Stop calling your critics with valid criticism dangerous, update your thinking to align with the facts, and do better.
By: George Ou
February 7, 2023
