penche

[Guest Medora]

I need some help on penche. I have the extension to easily get into six o'clock, but when I penche center floor my leg never gets there and I have trouble balancing when I try to do it correctly, that is, chest up, not locking back in my legs, standing leg turned out. If I were to drop my chest I could do it, but that is wrong. Also, it is kind of hard for me because my legs are hyperextended. If I lock back in them, I get into six o'clock, but can't hold it or come back up. When I penche, should my supporting leg be perfectly turned out? I have perfect turnout, and it is easy to hold when my leg is low, but when I take it up to a high arabesque, it wants to turn in or my torso turns and I lose my balance. When I penche my leg especially turns into parallel position. Do you have any advice?

[Mel Johnson]

Why try to do it at all? You'll almost never find choreography to use it. Better you keep a good arabesque line, and do things correctly than to distort things and turn ballet into contortionism. If, while keeping everything in its proper place, eventually the "Texas arabesque" evolves, fine, if not, fine too. You can fudge a little on the turnout of the supporting leg, if it's giving you balance difficulties. That will also help with the rotation on the "working" leg.

[Guest Medora]

What? I shouldn't try to perfect penche? Most classical ballets have them in their pas de deux. Or do you mean that most ballets don't have penches that the dancer does by herself without holding onto something? Don't you need to be able to do one to get a job?

[Mel Johnson]

A "six o'clock" penché and a perfect penché are two vastly different things, most of the time. Most dancers I see these days cheat, by opening the hip wide, or going into allongé, which you have correctly identified as wrong, except maybe for the Swan Queen in Act II, and then the high leg would be wrong (what happens to that tutu?), or dropping the turnout on the working leg to parallel position, which you also know is wrong, so what's the beef? Keep a constant angle between the torso and the working leg, and keep the line correct, and you've got a perfect penché. You can take a little extra extension at the end of it, but that's optional, and at the discretion of the ballet master or teacher.

[Guest Medora]

Oh, so the professionals cheat to do their six o'clock penches ;) I haven't seen any live professional performances because professional companies never come to where I live, I have only seen a few video tapes. I never really knew there was a difference. What do you mean exactly by "a constant angle?"

[Mel Johnson]

Believe it or not, a lot of professionals do cheat, if they're doing a split arabesque. In partnering, it's a lot easier, because the cheat doesn't look like a cheat, it's the partner putting the woman forward to make the leg go higher. If he's any good at all, the audience won't notice. But it's a cheat!;)

 

By a constant angle, I mean take a standard arabesque. Move the torso forward 10º. The leg should rise a corresponding 10º, and so on. If the leg out-travels the torso, then you get into distortion. If the torso out-travels the leg, you've got an allongé. An arabesque isn't an angle, it's actually a spiral, like the inside of a seashell!

[Guest Medora]

oh, thanks! You've actually triggered another question because you are so good with language, what do you mean by the spiral thing, I'm all for learning tonight!

[Mel Johnson]

Look in the dictionary; you'll find one of the definitions of "arabesque" as "a spiral decorative element". If you look at a cross section of a seashell called a chambered nautilus, you'll see what I mean by a spiral. The initial curl of the spiral starts at a little below the neck, the head forms the first part of the great curve of the shell, which continues down the torso, until the leg becomes the very tail of the spiral.