Battement tendu is in many ways the core movement of ballet. A correct battement tendu strengthens our legs and feet, lengthens the line of our lower bodies, and teaches us about weight placement and weight transfer. It’s a powerhouse of a move.
In a battement tendu you start most commonly in 5th position, shift your weight onto your supporting leg and extend your working leg out along the floor until your foot is fully pointed, before reversing the movement back to 5th.
Here are six key pointers to help you get the most from your tendus, so they look good, and so they make you a better, stronger dancer.
1. Keep Thinking Turnout
Battement tendu is an excellent exercise to improve your turnout – but only if you remember to use it. Once you’re fully extended in the tendu position, you can turnout by thinking about rotating your heel to the front of the room (by rotating your whole leg from the hip). But make sure you think about your turnout at every other stage of your tendu as well: when you’re standing on two feet, all the way through to that final extended position.
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2. Move through your whole foot
A tendu is not standing on two feet and then magically having one foot pointed. It is also every position in between. Make sure you show your foot moving along the floor, through the demi-pointe position, then extending through the toes to the fully-pointed final position – and reverse this step by step on the way back.
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3. Love the floor
Stay on the floor as long as possible (only lift your heel off the floor on the way out when you absolutely have to, and get it back on the floor as soon as you can on the way back in).
Don’t scrunch your foot.
Don’t scrunch your toes
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4. Keep it centred
Move through the centre of your foot, not the back or the front.
Don’t sickle, keep your heel forward.
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5. Get longer legs
Straighten your leg as much as possible (think of pulling up all the muscles around your knee), point your foot fully (easy to forget especially at the back in tendu derriere). Work on pulling your leg away from your hip – making that leg longer. Over time, your muscles will respond to this effort and change to give you the delicious shape we see on the legs of the professionals.
6. Don’t forget your other leg
Keep the turn out on your supporting leg. Don’t sit in your hips.
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