Accurate alignment, Soft landings and Squishy Chocolate

Any movement in ballet with your leg behind is a tricky one. Why? You can’t see your leg easily when it’s behind you and even if you were to turn your head to check the line, the entire body would go squiggly wiggly!

The second week back to class I decided to tackle grand battement derrière with my grade 3 class. I went in with what most teachers would see as a somewhat unique approach with something which I believed would be enough to inspire most dancers…. chocolates!!! After checking for allergies, armed with a box of Celebrations we got to work.

The first task was to decide which chocolate was the squishiest. After some deliberation the Milky ways and Mars bars came out on top, so we picked all those out of the box. Each dancer took a squishy chocolate and placed it where they thought their foot should go behind them. We checked that the chocolate was right behind the side of the body which they were going to use, for example, if they were using their right leg the chocolate would sit their leg length on the floor behind the right hip.

The next job was to perform a lovely whooshing grand battement into the air and control the landing with the big toe softly meeting the chocolate. The dancers who managed to keep their cholate in one piece could eat it after but if any got squashed it was game over! Luckily, I had 9 dancers with 9 chocolates which survived the grand battements test. Hopefully, next time I see them they will have beautifully aligned grand battements with a nicely controlled landing!