How to Do a Releve | Ballet Dance

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My name is Maegan Woodin, and I'm a professional dancer, choreographer, teacher and student. I have danced for MTV, Diana Ross, Marc Jacobs and have appeared in many music videos. You can find more information about me and my career, as well as photos and videos, at www.dgtnyc.com. I'm going to be talking to you about ballet. Releve means to rise or to elevate and it's used in all areas of ballet. So I'm going to start by showing releve in first position. And you're going to slowly rise all the way up to your high, high demi point, engaging your legs and slowly roll all the way down - and that's a releve. When you talk about the position that your feet should be and the weight of your feet, you should make sure that your weight is not too far forward on your toes, on your big toe, or too far back on your baby toe. So if you just want to practice, you can go to parallel and make sure that your demi point is in the right position and that you're not rolling forward or back. So once you have that established, you can come to first position and you're going to slowly roll all the way up and think about engaging your abs in the back of your legs and your inner thighs, and you want to glue your inner thighs together when you rise up and glue them back down. You can also talk about releve as an spring point. So you're going to plie and you're going to, you're going to bring your feet a little far in, and then you're going to come back down the first position. So the difference between a normal releve rise up, which is rolling through your feet, is that your feet are staying in the same position. A releve with a spring, you're going to bring your feet in a little bit and then you're going to bring them back out when you come back to first position.