Master the most common ballet position
Part 3: Learn exactly how to go from FIRST position to SECOND position.
Elbows up!
Round your arms more!
Don’t let your hands droop!
Don’t drop your elbows!
Engage your back!
Chest up!
Shoulders down!
Second position is probably the most difficult position in ballet.
Not for us, the people reading this article!
If you want to have a smooth and beautiful port de bras (and what dancer doesn’t?), you must know what to do with your arms. “Feeling” with your arms will only get you so far. But if you know how to move your arms “correctly,” you have a lot more room to play with gesture, power, and even character.
After going through my port de bras newsletter series and practicing my tips, you can be confident that you will have the best port de bras. It might even be better than most professional ballet dancers.
I know, shocking.
But many professional dancers have shockingly bad port de bras, and a lot could be fixed if they had a great set up with “tips” and “rules” to follow. Once you can master this coordination, it will feel and look effortless.
That’s where Ballet Wizard comes in.
Important: You already have information about how to get into your low fifth preparatory position, as well as getting into first position. Read them again. Those articles will set you up to engage specific muscles, release tightness, and understand the sequence of events that gets you into each position. Once you master those, only then can you move on to second position.
Quick recap
Rotation of the humerus (the lower part of your arm) is done by pecs.
Raising your arms is also done by pecs.
Rotation and bending of the forearms is done by biceps.
It is very important to be able to separate each of your body parts. What this means is that it’s crucial to separate your shoulders from humerus, forearms from humerus, and hands from forearms. The moment all these arm elements are “held” or “locked,” you will have to start over to release them one by one.
Maybe most importantly, when we move our arms, we must initiate from the elbows. It is tempting to lead the port de bras from shoulders or hands, but by using those body parts (instead of our elbows and pecs), you will already be setting up your body to compensate its natural body mechanics. This will lead to injury directly or indirectly.
Also, when we are not thoughtful about our body mechanics, we’re not going to “look” great either. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when you have good body mechanics, you will also achieve “good” classical ballet lines. They go hand in hand.
The most popular position at barre
Unless specified, a dancer’s general arm position during combinations at the barre is in second position. During longer combinations, you might feel your arms getting tired. Typically, you’ll feel tired in the shoulder muscles (deltoids). There could be more factors at play, but there is a good chance the main reason for that fatigue is because of the lack of engaged pecs.
We have discussed how to get into preparatory position, and how that is important for getting into first position. The same pecs engagement will be super important for second position. Let me tell you something I see all the time that you should stop doing it right away.
Infamous back corrections
There’s a big focus on using your back during typical arm corrections. I hear things like use your back to hold your arms, support your arms from the back, or something which indicates you need to focus more on your back. This is not always incorrect. However, you want to be careful about using your back when going to second position from first position.
You can think of muscle engagement as an on-and-off switch. Here is an easy example that shows an image of using the biceps and triceps.
As shown in the picture, when you curl your arm (by bending by your elbow), you are flexing (shortening) your biceps. In contrast, when you extend your arms, you are flexing (shortening) triceps. When you flex biceps, your triceps deactivates because biceps elongate the triceps. Vice versa, when you flex your triceps, your biceps deactivate. If the biceps are “on”, triceps are “off.”
So if using the pecs is crucial for good port de bras, what is the “off switch” muscle for pecs? It is the trapezius (traps) and rhomboids —the biggest “off switch” for pecs.
Below, you will see the muscle (the pecs) that you should be engaging with your port de bras:
It is important for dancers to know when and what movement turns their pecs off in port de bras because we want to prevent this from happening. The moment your pecs are turned off, you look weak and your dancing will be weaker.
Back muscles are not always your friends
When opening your arms from first to second position, if you use your traps/rhomboids to pull your arms, you will turn off your pecs right away. And all your work you did to engage the pecs for port de bras is ruined.
It’s not always wrong to use back muscles to open arms. For example, if you are a swan in Swan Lake, and you bring your arms down behind your back, then you must use your rhomboids so you can best engage your latissimus dorsi (lats). In almost all other occasions, you want to use pecs to keep your arms engaged to the front of our body.
Port de bras secret: Keep your arms FORWARD
Keeping the arms in front (literally in front of your body) is important because of the effectiveness of the power and stability you can get. Plus, it is the most healthy way to move arms. Not to mention, if you use your arms from your pecs, you are going to look good doing ballet.
Why does it look good when arms are in front of you (versus to the side or even behind)? Artistically, ballet is the communication between the dancers on stage and the audience. There is an inherent “distance” between those dancing and those people who are viewing the dancers. This means your gestures have to say something to the audience who is not up on stage with you, and you can say a lot more if you are in three dimensions with your arms in front more than two dimensions with your arms flat to the side.
Resistance training and second position
If your arms are pulled by traps/rhomboids from first position, your arms will naturally go too far back, because your back muscles dominate your arms position. When I say “too far back,” what this looks like is that your elbows will be aligned with the shoulders, or even behind them. However, if your arms are held by pecs, elbows will be in front of the shoulders, aligned with the front ribs. This is classical, correct, and more expressive onstage.
So how do you keep your arms in front? In order for you to keep their chest engaged, you have to understand how to resist the pull to move your arms behind you (you neither lock your arms in place nor do you relax and hold them wherever it feels right). This is where “control” comes in. And this is why resistance training can help you practice this sense of control in your arms.
Resistance training is a workout that trains you to work against gravity. A very important element of resistance training is to control the motion. For example, if you are curling your biceps with or without weights, you must control the movements especially when going down, meaning you don’t just drop and catch. You want to be engaged the whole exercise.
You are always working against gravity, which always pulls an object down. If you are holding a weight, then you are actually lifting it up at all times even when you lower the weight down. So when lifting the weight, you are increasing the energy up.
Be aware: When you lower the weight, you are only decreasing the energy up. You are resisting the pull of gravity less leading you to lower the weight. This results in less push upwards against the gravity making the weight lower.
We can use the same concept when opening and closing the arms between first position and second position.
You have already learned how to engage your pecs in first position from part two of this series.
Next is an exercise that will give you stronger port de bras.
From first position to second position, you will:
Imagine energy going in towards your sternum (center of the chest) when you open your arms.
Anatomically, pecs connect to sternum, and should be anchored from sternum.
Imagine the elbows opening from the sternum.
Do a little up and over to the second position with the elbows.
From first position, go slightly up only with your elbows to initiate opening. Elbows will make an arc arriving down to the second position. You might feel weird doing this because you might think that arms just open and there’s no circle involved. But what people see and what you do to arrive at ballet positions are completely different. This is why I always stress that you cannot teach ballet from what you see.
Keep the rotation of the humerus while you open.
This allows you to keep your pecs engaged, and only allows you to move your arms to the front of your body.
You will start to feel tightness in front of the shoulder area while going to second position. This could be a good indication to stop opening your arms more to second position rather than relaxing and letting them keep going.
Doing these three steps will give you an amazing port de bras. This sequence works great for any ballet technique you practice: Vaganova, Balanchine, French…etc.
Although, it would be hard to even start without first doing this exercise:
This push-up will help you make a beautiful second position
Don’t worry, you don’t have to be parallel to the ground for this. Your goal is to learn how to move your arms, and not to “build” muscles or “work out.” Here are the steps to think about whether you are parallel to the ground or propped against the wall or the barre:
Quick note: Setting up your posture correctly is most important. I could focus on the shape of the posture, but often that doesn't work. So focus on how to approach the posture, which will be more effective:
Engage your abs when you are setting yourself up. Without abs, nothing can be done right. Think about aligning and stacking your bones with gravity.
If you are doing it on the floor, start on your knees.
Keep your hands and wrists relaxed. When hands and wrists get tense, it disengages pecs.
Do not reach for any surface with your hands or fingers. When you reach for the floor, the tendency is to lengthen the arms, and shoulder blades will go out. That makes it almost impossible to engage your pecs. Instead, think about it this way: You get to the surface when your body gets close enough to the surface. And when your fingers get the feedback from touching the ground, you let your hands react to the pressure while keeping your hands relaxed.
Start with your hands at shoulder width, fingers facing forward, and the pointy part of elbows facing out. Elbows go in and out towards your center line when you bend them, rather than back and forth towards your head and feet.
Look to the horizon, do not look down or up. It's easy to tense your neck here. We don't want to associate the tensing of the neck with arm movements. Instead, think that your head is the extension of your upper spine, and your head is just floating, like an afterthought to the rest of your body moving.
Inhale as you go down, exhale as you go up. Exhale with your abs so you can bring your focus back to your abs constantly.
As you go down and elbows go out, you are resisting the gravity from collapsing you to the ground. So you must keep pushing towards the ground. When you go down, you keep engagement in the center of the chest. When you push the ground again, think about engaging from the armpit part of the chest.
As you go up and elbows go in, you are going to increase the push down to the ground. The inside of your elbows push more towards the center. It is easy to push your shoulders forward when pushing down.
Super important reminder: You don’t want to lock out your arms every time you go up or down (or even feel like locking out your legs to do this exercise). It’s so easy to think of “straightening” your arms and “hitting positions.” Don’t do this here. Or ever again. Think of keeping your elbow joints soft at all points of this exercise. It will feel like you never quite arrive and hit that final pose. Good. Trust this new sensation. This will help direct your energy to your pecs and abs, and that is key. This is something that will translate to the rest of your ballet technique. Anybody who is watching you will see you hitting positions. That’s the difference. And that is artistry.
So next time you are opening your arms to second position, you will have a new set of thoughts, strategies, and action plans. You will be paying attention to your elbows, pecs, and abs. You will remember to keep your arms in front of you.
And someone watching you will only see a beautiful second position.