Those fouettés
You might say that the turns in ballet known as fouettés are a sort of parlor trick. They’re neither beautiful nor interesting – at least, not to me – and are mostly a physical feat that requires great skill. In that sense, I admire modern-day ballet dancers who not only can do them in abundance but casually throw in doubles and triples, something you never used to see when I was a child. Now they are almost routine.
In this clip of many segments of fouettés done by different dancers, you can not only see the doubles and triples, but variations on the arms, some of which make the whole operation more and more difficult. The closer to the body the arms are held, the easier the turns are; not that they’re ever easy. But whenever you raise the arms or place them away from the body, it slows down momentum and becomes even more difficult. There is also one dancer who varies the direction in which she looks or “spots” as she turns, and some dancers turn faster than others.
Enjoy:
I have learned a lot about ballet from Neo over the years.
Many thanks, Neo, and HNY!
Doesn’t seem to supplement the story line, one way or another. And after a couple of iterations, it becomes showing off a skill. Which, if I were immersed in the drama, would break my concentration of…the whole point of the performance.
I say this as one who has absolutely no possibility of getting into a story. Having been in a couple of high school dramas sixty years back, when watching a stage play I can’t help looking for the “business” of looking natural. So, even with that handicap, the fouettes seem to me to be jarring.
I am especially impressed by the dancers who flourished their fans while spinning!
This season, a local ballet troupe performed their own rendition of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” at a couple of community theaters. For their Christmas present, we sent each of our grand-daughters on a date with their daddies to the show.
The dancers are no where near the caliber of the ones Neo highlights: the ballerinas could not possibly do the fouettés in this post, and the oldest of the 2 male dancers (playing The Professor and Father Christmas in alternate scenes) is clearly past his prime, but they were competent and enthusiastic, the set was minimal but functional, the costumes quite inventive, and everyone had a good time.
And we could afford the tickets, which is not a small consideration when talking about 8 tickets (including ourselves).
I’m glad there are opportunities for the kids to see live performers, not just “canned” ones, even if they are not the top of the profession. It encourages them to pursue their own aspirations to do what they love, for the joy of doing it.
There is a season turn, turn, turn……
I love spinning and watching those who spin, so enjoy the turning here actually more than most leaps.
I also enjoy turning myself, and my wife, when we dance — and we never leap.
It was only the second dancer who changed her spots, in a series of multiple 450s (? 360+90? or were they 480s?). I watched it a second time because I misread, thinking that one changed the rotation direction. Which none did. All left foot lovely strong pillar, right foot lifted and used a bit in rotating clockwise.
Do even left handed ballerinas do only the clockwise turns? It’s so unnatural and requires such training, I’d guess the handedness doesn’t matter. For my own dancing, I deliberately try turning both directions (in rhythm! tho likely not so graceful).
Some had more good-looking smiles, the lack of which has turned me off of watching most ball room dance competitions.
I’m not at all a big ballet fan — but it’s great that Neo is, and her picks make it easy for me to wait for the next set and do a little tasty watching.
Let me recommend this Christmastime song for karaoke (my hobby w/o dancing but with some music):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E1ULv6LcOk
My son missed the “shoots missiles at your toes” reference the first time he heard it.
Why is this any less artificial than other ballet moves?
Turnabout is fair play.
Tom Grey:
Everyone has a turning direction preference but it is completely unrelated to handedness. The vast majority of people are right-turners no matter what their handedness. Dancers always practice turns in both directions in class, but on stage they will turn in their preferred direction, which is almost always to the right.
For example, I am left-handed but I am a right-turner.
Fouetté comes from the French verb, fouetter, to whip.
–French Snob
For example, I am left-handed but I am a right-turner.
–neo
I’m right-handed, but I surfed left-footed. I was a goofy-foot in surfer parlance.
Flutters of little feet whisk Danish ballet star Kirsten Simone, Warren “Red” Upton (the oldest survivor of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack), and former US president Jimmy Carter off the stage …
-Huxley, I was a goofy-foot sidewalk surfer (skateboards). When they had those terrible little metal wheels, like early roller skates.
@ Tom Grey – we couldn’t afford to buy the new skateboards (1960s), so my dad cut a plank of wood, shaped it properly, and affixed some extra roller-skate wheels to the bottom. Worked fine on our sidewalks, but clearly not capable of the feats of derring-do the newer generations of ‘boards became famous for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skateboarding_at_the_Summer_Olympics
The old ones lasted as long as our interest did, and with only a minor collection of scrapes and cuts.