“Tourner - turning” is the 4th in my 7-part podcast series on the basic movements of ballet, so if you missed them, you may also wish to go back and listen to Episodes #014 “Powerful Plies” #016 “Tendus & What it Means to Stretch, and #018 “Relever & Rising.” Stay tuned for “Glisser - to glide” and “Élancer - to dart,” still to come!

Rotation and turning are essential to human locomotion, as basic as turning our heads to see something, rolling our bodies over, and once we’re on the move, turning to change directions. As babies and children we love to spin and roll, and these constitute necessary actions that we perform many times daily.

In ballet, it all comes from being on-axis. Verticality must first be established, and a point of focus for spotting. We start with establishing our poise (more to come on this!) and dynamic balance moving through a variety of positions, anchoring ourselves to the floor below through our feet, building a relationship with it, engaging our core of support that holds all the body parts together as a whole, and honing our focus.

Then we practice rotary motions with one leg at a time, then pivoting on both feet, eventually learning to control acceleration and deceleration/stopping, allowing us to do multiple revolutions of the body turning foot-to-foot and on one foot, or even while jumping through the air! We rotate like the earth on it’s axis, or a spinning top.

In yoga, it’s useful to become familiar with our basic functional anatomy, such as which joints work best just bending/flexing and extending (knees!) and which do well with a degree of twisting (spine), and which can internally and externally rotate and even circumduct (shoulders and hips). We focus on honoring the proper function of the joints to establish steadiness and ease in their movements.

Metaphorically, our lives can take many wild and unexpected turns. I know that mine has! In the The Artist’s Way Julia Cameron explains, “We are now on the road [to artistic recovery], and the road is scary. We begin to be distracted by roadside attractions or detoured by the bumps...In dealing with our creative U-turns, we must first of all extend ourselves some sympathy. Creativity is scary, and in all careers there are U-turns. Sometimes these U-turns are best viewed as recycling times. We come up to a creative jump, run out from it like a skittish horse, then circle the field a few times before trying the fence again...A successful creative career is always built on successful creative failures."

So have some grace and patience with yourself when you are working to finesse a turn of any kind. It can be scary, but when we feel like we’re spinning out, we just need to get our bearings and keep practicing, willing to start again when we fail. 

What sorts of twists and turns are you experiencing and working with in your life right now?

For more information about all of these themes and the work I do, and for more free resources, visit me at ablythecoach.com