Paul Parish Posted October 18, 2003 Report Share Posted October 18, 2003 A young dancer posted a question on their board about twisting her hips, to which Ms Leigh reasonably replied "I'm not sure what you mean by 'twisting your hips.' It sounds to me like this is a rotation problem, possibly caused by over rotating." Perhaps this has come up before and there's an extensive archive on it -- but the idea of over-rotating, and of understanding it and other rotation problems, is one I don't know anything about and suspect I might profit greatly from understanding. What is over-rotating, how do you detect it, what do you do about it? And while we're at it, what are the common problems with hips that don't rotate equally? Quote Link to comment
Mel Johnson Posted October 18, 2003 Report Share Posted October 18, 2003 Over-rotating is easily seen in the classroom. The first thing a teacher will look for is rolling feet. The rolling positively identifies turnout which is not fully supported by the rotation of the femurs in the hip-sockets. The next sign upward is seen at the knee. Various signs of torsion show there, the most notable being the kneecaps not pointing outward to the same degree that the toes on the floor do. Next up, the pelvis itself. The big bone is tipped far forward, and the backside is "tucked under" so far that the lower abdominals in front are actually angled slightly upward! When you see these things happening with a student, then you really need to go back to the drawing board with the student, and reinforce the idea of proper placement and alignment, with a big emphasis on "work with what you've got and we can build on that slowly." Forcing turnout doesn't help anything and actually hurts in the long run. If a dancer has unequal rotation, they will still overrotate both legs, usually, and end up with hips that appear to be facing croisé or effacé when the body is straight front! Quote Link to comment
Paul Parish Posted October 18, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2003 oh is that all...... It sounded like actually rotating in the hip too much..... Is it p\ossible to turn out too much AT THE HIP? Quote Link to comment
Mel Johnson Posted October 18, 2003 Report Share Posted October 18, 2003 Next up, the pelvis itself. The big bone is tipped far forward, and the backside is "tucked under" so far that the lower abdominals in front are actually angled slightly upward! There are rare cases where the hip rotation is fine, but that the feet end up less turned-out than the femur. It's a sort of pigeon-toeing, and takes individualized, tough work to overcome. Quote Link to comment
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