Heel Forward

[Guest LisaY]

I'm having difficulty in keeping my heel forward on the working leg when in passe (retire?) (is it called 'passe' when the toes touch the outside of the support leg knee?).

We do a barre exercise that of plie, sur le cou de pied, rising out of the plie to passe (or retire?), and as I raise the working leg, slightly tracing the inside of my supporting leg with the toes, my foot/heel rotates inward. One of my teachers is helping me to correct this by having me lie on my stomach, one leg straight as the 'support' leg and then raising the other to retire position while trying to keep my heel on that working leg in contact with the floor. It's an effort. Obviously a strength problem I need to work on.

Does anyone else have any good exercises or suggestions?

[Guest BethJ]

Lisa,

 

Is it that your foot is sickled or is it that you are not turning out enough at the top of your thigh?

 

Retire(with and accent on the last e) means to retire, therefore it is when the foot comes up to the knee and stays there...Passe(also an accent on the last e) means to pass, so that is when the foot either passes through retire when going from front to back or from back to front. Its almost like retire is the position and passe is the action. Does that make sense?

 

Beth

[Guest LisaY]

Yes, that makes sense, thanks.

I'm not sickling my foot, it's just not properly 'heel forward'. It's hard to describe, but my foot goes from heel forward at the floor level (for instance in tendu), to the bottom of my heel (what you walk on)'against' so to speak the working leg when raised to retire. It seems as though I don't have strength in the appropriate muscle to 'hold' my heel forward.

hold on . . . (closing office door so no one will think I'm looney tunes . . . raising leg/foot to retire . . . striking pose . . . )

I can hold my heel/foot in the correct position until I get my heel level with the supporting leg knee, toes about mid-calf.

My turn-out is not that great and may be a factor?

 

[This message has been edited by LisaY (edited May 05, 2000).]

[Victoria Leigh]

Lisa, Beth is right on with her explanation of retiré and passé. Retiré is a position, and passé is an action. Well, retiré is actually an action too, but it just goes to the position and back where it came from as opposed to passing from front to back or back to front. (By the way, Beth, to make the accent mark on the é just hold the alt button and press 130 on the numbers on the right of your keyboard. This does not work on a laptop which does not have the numbers on the right.)

 

Lisa, the problem with your retiré position may be rotation, but it could also be that you don't have enough flexibility in your foot for it to be able to bend enough in the pointed position to get the heel forward. If this is the case, then all you can do is keep working on the feet for more stretch and flexibility. A theraband might help some.

 

[This message has been edited by Victoria Leigh (edited May 05, 2000).]

[Guest Intuviel]

About retire...I've been taught that when the foot is just below the knee, the position is retire, and when the foot is placed just above the knee, it is called tier bouchon (corkscrew~~because when you do pirouettes in this position, it looks as though it has a spiraling action, like a corkscrew). Then tier bouchon ouverte is like an attitude devant, but with the knee sharply bent. My training agree with Beth and Victoria about the passe/retire issue.

 

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~Intuviel~

[Guest susan]

mostly doing this post to checkout victoria's advice about e with an acute accent é é é - YES! it works! thanks, victoria!

 

anyway, ON-topic: intuviel, i think 'tire bouchon' is a term pretty much only used by those with french training, such as your teacher m. leblanc (and one of mine, lucette aldous).

 

BTW, note spelling, from tirer=to pull, or something similar - and obviously the 'bouchon' is the corkscrew - hope estelle isn't looking in to correct us!

 

i've never heard of 'tire bouchon ouverte' - but that just means i learned something new from you today!

 

in ballet usage (as opposed to french dictionary-type translations), i agree with victoria that retiré is thought of as a POSITION, while passé(a term mostly used in AMERICA!, BTW) is thought of as an ACTION (of, for example, passing from front to back or vice-versa).

 

in england and australia, "no-one" (!) uses 'passé' much at all...many dancers would NEVER have heard of it, unless they'd had an american guest teacher!

 

[This message has been edited by susan (edited May 06, 2000).]

[Victoria Leigh]

Susan, I think I should have said that when you do the alt 130 for the accented e, don't type the e at all, just type the word up to that point, then hold down alt and type 130. But you have to use the numbers on the right of the keyboard, not those above the letters.

There is a code for all of the French accents, which I have if you would like it. It was posted here a long time ago.

[Guest LisaY]

You people are a WEALTH of information. Thanks.

Victoria, I do have a Theraband. One more reason to use it instead of letting it sit in my dance bag.

Testing . . .

retiré (<---- cool!)

[Guest Intuviel]

Actually, susan, tire bouchon (ouverte) is both a French and a Russian term (one book says that it is "the high retire position used by the Russian school), although the Russians also use "tier bouchon" to refer to a pirouette en dedans in the tier bouchon ouverte position! I suppose that must be an abbreviation for something, such as "pirouette tier bouchon ouverte." I should also add that the tier bouchon ouverte position is not normally used except in pirouettes.

 

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~Intuviel~

[Guest Salome]

Regarding the word 'passe', I am an English student with an English teacher and we say 'passe' (in RAD), it's also listed as a standard term in the RAD Dictionary of Classical Ballet Terminology. Susan, I would be very interested to know what Australian (and possibly other Enlish!) dancers and teachers say instead of 'passe'.

Amy

[Guest susan]

salome, sorry to have unintentionally 'excluded' you.

 

do you mean for a position, or for an action?

[Guest Salome]

Oh dear, I'm being vague again! I meant action, we use retire for position.

[Guest susan]

dear amy, sorry i didn't get back here for a while: i thought this topic was in Teachers, and then couldn't see it there!

 

anyway, you're quite right that it's impossible to make the generalisation i made, and have it be 100% applicable.

 

i stand by my observation, tho', that passé is predominantly american in use - certainly referring to the POSITION that way, is (as victoria has pointed out, that's NOT accurate) - but it DOES happen.

 

i teach RAD, too. and i know the word is in the books. in practice however, as, again, another generalisation: outside america, i have seen it more common to refer to simply 'retiré'- both when one is IN it, and when one is passing THRU it (in other words, to NOT really refer to the ACTION at all, as in, if you're on a train as it goes thru a station and you might observe 'Paddington', rather than say 'Paddington-ing'...strange example, but that's the best i can do before breakfast!

 

[This message has been edited by susan (edited May 15, 2000).]

[Guest Colleen]

Lisa, what I tell the girls that I teach is actually to think about relaxing the foot a little if they don't have the greatest flexibility in the ankle joint. Sometimes pointing too hard actually causes the foot to look sickled. And pointing, but slightly more relaxed can help the line of the foot. This technique/trick/cheat is also useful in the wrapped-foot position (which to this day causes me great distress!) for battements frappés. Hope this helps!

[Guest Shada]

Colleen, wrapped-foot in frappés? LOL. Please explain?