Should the Heels Touch the Floor During the Plié in Classical Ballet Jumps

Introduction

In dance, feelings and actions such as joy, anger, despair or escape, chasing, confrontation, and others can be expressed through jumps. Therefore, jumping has the property to intensify and give aesthetic form to the acting of the dancer (Dias, 2009).

For Vaganova (1991), jumping can be simply a mechanical action of the individual leaving the floor propelled by the feet and returning to the ground. However, the dancer must create the appearance of floating in the air to achieve an aesthetic and expressive purpose. Vaganova denominates such characteristics as elevation.

Guest (1983) described the elevation on-air as a continuity of the vertical jump, like a movement that causes a false perception of hanging on the air.

According to Tamara Karsavina (1962), jumping in the sense of elevation is an ability that can be developed through a well-structured and systematised training, being very few the people who naturally possess it.

A preparatory movement before every jump is called plié, which is the flexion of the hips, knees, and ankles to impulse the jump. And according to the description of authors such as Vaganova and Karsavina, this movement must be performed with the entire foot, including the heels, resting on the ground. However, through the observation of videos, it is possible to see that renowned dancers do not support their heels on the ground when performing jumping sequences that require greater speeds. Thus, the question arises as to what would be the most efficient way to perform the jumps from a biomechanical point of view. Many factors might affect the plié, such as the degree and time of flexion affecting the biomechanics of the movement. Knowing how to classify classical ballet jumps according to the biomechanics and specificity of each movement is essential for the elaboration of adequate training to enhance the dancers' performances and possibly lower the injury rates.

This study was aimed to review the literature about the different plié techniques preceding jumps, the biomechanical characteristics of each, and how they might affect the performance of jumps in classical dance.

Background

Classical ballet or Classical dance is a dance modality that features the movements and appearance of the supernatural through levity, pointe, jumps, and turns that seem to “defy the laws of gravity” (Caminada, 1999). Jumping is a movement present in basically every choreography. Agrippina Vaganova (1991) divides jumps into aerial jumps, requiring sizeable vertical displacement, and the jumps performed “close to the ground”, presenting more significant horizontal displacement than vertical. In these “slid jumps”, the loss of contact of the feet with the ground is not so evident compared to more aerial jumps.

All jumps start from flexion of the lower limbs, that is, of the hip, knee, and ankle joints, which is called plié in classical ballet. The plié gives the impulse to achieve vertical displacement (aerial phase) and absorb energy when the dancer returns to the ground (reception phase), finishing in the same initial flexion position. In classical ballet, jumps are performed with lateral rotation of the limbs, called en dehors, or turnout.

Most of this rotation occurs during contraction of the deeper hip lateral rotators, making it possible to fully perform the rotation inside the acetabulum, which means that the femur can actively perform this rotation in the joint without rotating or retroverting the pelvis. Attempting to force the lateral rotation position will cause the twisting of the knees and hyperpronation of the foot and the ankle (Haas, 2011).

It is important to emphasize that the en dehors involves the joints of the hip, the knees, and the ankles, but the degree of rotation in the hip is much higher when compared to the other two: an angle of 70° (seventy degrees) of bilateral external rotation at the hip joint, 5° (five degrees) at the tibia, and 15° (fifteen degrees) at the foot joint is considered ideal (Gilbert et al., 1998). This means that approximately 80% of the position takes place in the coxofemoral joint while only about 20% occurs in the other segments.