Tendus

Hi guys. I hope you all are doing well. I started a new job at a new restaurant beginning of this month, and it’s been really lovely. I have a lot more flexibility with this job, and it has fewer employees, which is both good and bad. It’s a good thing because there are fewer chances of having a conflict with co-workers, but it’s bad when it gets busy. However, I really enjoy it.

This post is next up in my ballet series. I think for this series, I’m going to write about moves that start at the basics and slowly increase in difficulty, where you need a good foundation on said basics in order to do the more complex moves. I’m talking about tendus this week, so let’s jump right in.

Posture 

As always, you need to have good posture. The thing I’ve done in the past and have noticed other girls doing is sinking in the hips. When you’re sinking in the hips, your legs won’t have enough room to fully stretch to the front/back or side. This will also prevent you from having a full turnout in fifth. If you lengthen your upper body, your legs will have more room to move around.

The way to get that lengthened feeling you need is to bring up your shoulders as high as you can so you feel your upper body lengthen and then slowly press your shoulders down.

Fifth Turnout

I’m not going to go into huge detail on turnout because that’s a whole other post for another time. In short, turnout comes from the hips, not the knee. Do not force yourself to turn out 180 degrees. It takes a while to get perfect turnout, and forcing it could lead to knee injuries (been there…not fun!) 

If you have hyper-extended knees, you can’t turn out in fifth without bending your knees. The tip to cheat that rule about “do not bend your knee” is to do it right before you hit fifth position. This trick also works if you don’t have perfect turnout quite yet.

The exercise I do to train my feet to turn out correctly is half tendus (just release the ankle) in devant, seconde, and derrière. This is also a good foot warm-up.

Tendus in the centre

Many people, myself included, have issues with tendus in the centre. The trick to staying balanced is to lift up when you close fifth.

For the side, think of over-crossing (chances are you won’t actually over-cross). Thinking this way will put your balance on your standing leg, making tendus in second so much easier, especially if they are fast.

Tendu warmup combination

This is my favourite tendu warm-up combination. I do it every time I do a barre by myself or on a rare occasion when I get to teach a class.

You’re going to stand facing the barre with both hands on it. Next, you will do eight tendus with the right foot and eight with the left foot. After that, do six tendus with the right foot and six with the left foot. Then follow with four tendus each foot, two tendus each foot, then one tendu each foot repeated four times. After that, you work your way up to eight tendus again. Do this as fast as you can.  

And this concludes my post on tendus. I hope this helped you and that you enjoyed this post. As always don’t forget to like this post, share it with all your dance friends and leave me a comment below if this post helped you. Also follow me on all social media (links below) and I’ll see you next week. Sending you all the love and light in the world.