Tour Jeté (tours en l'air): Fixing Form

[tcritte]

background: I am a 41 year old beginning student (having 3/4 year once a week, 1 hour class with no childhood dance). Also take hip-hop and jazz classes (one year longer). Only signed up for ballet in order to "make my jazz dance more classy" -- this is just a fact because as old as I am, I never thought I'd actually be taking ballet. Have no issues with flexability and actually have stronger legs than I thought.

 

Issues with Tour Jeté:

1. landing in plié: hitting good plié about 10%, no plié 10%, small plié 80%
   
2. straight presenting (in air) leg 20-30%
   
3. Turned out setting leg 60-70%
   
4. Head and back up straight 70%
   
5. I am still doing a very small "round about" presenting leg 70%
   
6. Fully Good (no wobbling) Tour Jeté: 10%
   

Question: How high does the back (in air) leg need to be?

 

Misc.:

• Both Tour Jetés (leading left or right) seem to have the same ending result (although I can do left leading ones longer as I sprained my left ankle last year.
  
• I saw an item in the forum talking about practicing at home not as good since most don't have springy floor. Have now found that our wood deck is springy so I can practice on it.
  
• I have to do one Tour Jeté in a competition in 1 1/2 weeks so I'm trying to get it to hit more consistently.
  

All help will be much appreciated.

[Victoria Leigh]

Hello tcritte, welcome to Ballet Talk for Dancers

 

Your question is somewhat difficult, as a grand jete entrelace (tour jete) is really not a first year step at all, and certainly not a first year once a week class! However, since you have to do it, one of the most important things is realizing that the jump does NOT travel in the direction of the steps that lead into it. It actually turns around in the air and the body has to land over the front leg, so you need to be moving towards where you came from. You seem to know the other things, like landing in a plie and rotated on the landing leg. The height of the back leg depends on what you can do, and how good your arabesque is.

[tcritte]

Ms. Leigh,

I am so glad you replied to this -- because I am soo glad to know that this is not a "normal" first year step. I'm going to keep working on it, however, I won't be so hard on myself (note: my teacher is encouraging not hard on me, however, since she put this in the dance, I presumed that something was wrong with me since I can't do the step consistently).

 

Also, thank you for the correct name. The one I put in parentheses is one I found on another web site. My teacher only calls this step tour jeté.

 

Thanks,

Tracey