The HUGE difference between Vaganova and Balanchine technique
It affects how you stand. How you move. And how you look.
Some might claim that ballet technique is a universal approach to movement no matter where you are in the world.
I would respond, that’s not quite right.
I personally didn’t grow up learning any specific techniques. I mostly had teachers who were influenced by Russian-based technique. I had my first Balanchine teacher at The Rock School in Philadelphia. I didn’t like Balanchine technique growing up because it was generally considered a style of dancing, not a method.
I even heard that Balanchine is not ballet. Any other ballet techniques were acceptable, but just not Balanchine. As my professional career continued, and I had the opportunity to dance a few Balanchine ballets, I now know it truly is a technique to learn and master.
But there are also many more techniques: Italian Cecchetti, French School of ballet (Paris Opera Ballet), Danish Bournonville, British Royal Academy of Dance…even American Ballet Theater is now claiming it has its own curriculum. There’s probably more I haven’t listed.
The most popular or influential technique in ballet is probably Vaganova.
The biggest problem with teaching ballet technique
Nowadays, technique (all kinds) is taught to have a shape.
And the closer you can shape your body into some ideal shape, the more you are considered a good dancer. For example, something you might hear from someone teaching Balanchine technique is that the fingers in your hand have to look a certain way, or your plie needs to look fast and shallow. Or alternatively, something you might hear from someone trained in Vaganova might be to engage your glutes and really lift the chest.
Here’s the thing: Ballet has become a shape-based technique and not a power-based technique. And teachers rely more and more on language that are metaphors. Something like, turnout is like opening the flower. Even engaging abs is cued using phrases like hollow your abs… And it works for some people sometimes, and we call them naturals. But most students aren’t the natural one.
That said, I’ve noticed recently that more teachers are trying to teach a power-based approach by learning anatomy and implementing something like cross training and Pilates, and that is all good. So this topic about the smartest way to approach ballet technique is very timely and a great time for anybody to start thinking about it.
And here’s one more element that will add to that power-based teaching: physics. We need to add a bit of physics knowledge, meaning how to efficiently move objects like our body parts. You can simply engage muscles to move, but just because you can (or think you know the right muscle to work) doesn’t mean you should.
After some years of pursuing and searching for good technique, I realized that it’s not the technique that makes you a good dancer, but the understanding of approach to the technique that matters the most. A dancer’s goal is not a pursuit of what they should look like doing a certain technique, but the mechanics of movement that are the most important.
Of course, there are some benefits to practicing the technique that matches your environment. When I say environment, I mean…
The floor
What’s interesting about ballet technique as a whole is that this one element (the floor) is easy to forget. And it might be the most crucial element of applying corrections, understanding lines, and performing specific ballets.
The fact is that there is a specific relationship to the floor that must be accounted for every time you teach a certain technique. You might be thinking, the floor? But we all dance on the floor, right? What does the floor really have to do with my arabesque and tendu and epaulement?
There’s one important thing you must factor into the floor you’re dancing on…
Flat floor vs. Raked floor
I'm somewhat familiar with both Vaganova and Cecchetti technique, but I didn't study at a Vaganova nor a Cecchetti school. So I don’t know the nitty and gritty of their teaching. But I am well aware of the biggest difference that both Vaganova and Cecchetti vs. Balanchine and Bournonville have. It is well known that the Russian stages are raked, and I recently found out that Italian stages are raked as well.
For anyone who hasn’t heard of a “raked stage”—it refers to a stage that slopes upwards, away from the audience. Literally, the stage is on a slope. This led to popular theater terms such as “upstage” and “downstage.” And when it comes to dancing on a sloped stage versus a flat stage, there’s a huge adjustment when it comes to getting used to how to balance, turn, and jump, among many things.
When Bournonville was choreographing, dancers performed on flat stages, and he made choreography that was suited for an un-sloped floor. Another choreographer who also choreographed for a flat stage was Balanchine. And the most influential teacher that Balanchine had at the time was Stanley Williams, who is from the Royal Danish Ballet where they developed the Bournonville technique. A teacher once told me this anecdote that if Balanchine saw anybody who couldn’t dance the way he wanted, he used to say that they needed to go master a class by Stanley Williams.
All of these different techniques do not specify if they are designed or made for a flat or raked stage, but we can look at the historical time and places when those techniques were made. You must understand the fact that floors influence the way people move and stand.
Now, I personally don’t think that one technique is superior to others. And I believe any technique you train in is very capable of being adopted to either a flat or raked floor. It’s important to look at the physical logic of a person’s movement that is aligned with the floor. Dancing on a raked stage and on a flat stage must have different foundations for how you approach every ballet step. Even, and maybe most importantly, how you stand.
Is it possible to create bad technique? Yes, you can. If you create a curriculum that goes against the logic of the human body, you will set the body up for injury. For example, teaching someone to move an arm in a straight line instead of the natural circular motion of their bones. Or doing something that leads to misalignment of their bones in the wrong direction, and then forcing it to move. Usually there are common injuries that come along with those types of teaching.
Standing on a raked stage
So how do you stand on different floors?
I have a picture of Vaganova students below. You typically see from Vaganova-trained dancers that they very purposefully lift their chest up, and just below the shoulder blades are engaged (like they are pushed up). By doing this, it moves their weight back. But on a raked floor, the floor itself brings their weight back straight with gravity, so they are actually standing straight, aligned with the gravity.
Think about it: If you are standing on a slope, and you don’t want to fall forward, you would “pull up” by putting the weight in your upper body a little backwards. This is exactly what’s going on with Vaganova technique.
If you have a raked floor and you want to stand in alignment with gravity, which is always straight down, this makes sense. But if you stand the same way on a flat floor, you would be falling backwards. So on typical American floors, by lifting your chest up and under shoulder blades, you would effectively be de-stabilizing yourself.
Note:
I have identified the students’ weight being towards the middle of their feet, which is the ideal position to have the center of weight
They are standing at the same angle, just tilted by the floor
And yes, this is a very simplified version of a person below. But it does the job.
Standing on a flat stage
Let’s move to a flat stage (most stages in America.) Though I recently saw that there is a stage that is raked somewhere in northern California.
Take a look at Balanchine’s School of American Ballet (SAB) students. Typically you see their chest is open towards the front rather than up. And their whole back is very flat or some may say “lifted up.” I’ve heard that they teach students to have a chicken chest, which I think is their way to say inflate the rib cage all the way around, so that their back doesn’t collapse down or arch back.
This way of standing makes sense on a flat floor. But if you stand the same way on a raked stage, you would fall forward.
Just by looking at and thinking about the difference between the simple act of standing between Vaganova and Balanchine, we can already see that some technique-specific movement won’t make sense in certain environments.
Here are some things to think about:
How does it affect the way you approach turnout?
Should you put more weight on the heels or balls of the feet?
Where should you put your weight in 4th position preparation for pirouettes?
How do you keep your upper body alignment in jumps?
What becomes easier on a raked stage, and how can you do the same on the flat one?
How do you take off and land your jumps?
Are common corrections working against you?
I’ve seen professional dancers go from flat stages in America and get severely injured when they start dancing on a raked stage. And vice versa as well. And they are usually amazing dancers. And what makes them great dancers is partly a result of the corrections and coaching they have received.
So let's talk about corrections:
When you receive corrections, what makes it a good correction?
What is the correction trying to achieve?
How do you apply the correction so it works for your goal, and not against it?
Is there a right or wrong way to do pirouettes?
A very common correction might be to direct you where to keep your weight in the preparation for a pirouette. Some say put your weight in the middle, bending both legs in fourth. Some others say to put all your weight on the front leg and keep the back leg straight (think Balanchine-technique pirouettes).
Is there a right or wrong way?
Let’s make it make sense with this example:
This is Ivan Vasiliev, a superstar from the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia. First of all, notice the raked studio floor that slopes from the back to the front (you can tell if you look at the wall by the windows along the side). He is doing this pirouette on an incline.
Let’s notice what he’s doing in his pirouettes to make them work:
If you draw a line from his center, we can tell that in his preparation and the moment before he takes off for his pirouettes, his weight is mostly on the front leg. Even though he does shift his weight a lot towards the back leg as well, because the floor is raked, he is able to keep his weight on the front leg.
Now if I make the floor flat, what would he look like?
Visually, his weight is more towards the middle of the legs, and he might be thinking of putting his weight or hips in the middle of his legs. But because he is on the raked floor he is still able to stay on that front leg, which is going to be his anchoring leg. And that anchoring leg must be aligned with gravity to be straight up.
But what if you do exactly what he’s doing on a flat surface?
If you put your weight or hips in the middle of your legs on a flat surface to start your turns…
Just like this picture, you would be falling backwards, and your pirouette would not work.
Woah, right?
So if you are a student or professional dancer in America learning from a “Vaganova-style” teacher who is asking you to put your weight in the middle of your legs to start your pirouettes, and then telling you to “pull up” in the turn…that might be setting you up for not very successful pirouettes on a flat floor.
Similarly, if you are dancing on a raked stage and a “Balanchine-style” teacher asks you to do a pirouette with all weight on your front leg and a straight back leg, you will probably fall forward, and your pirouettes will be all over the place.
Who wins: The ground or you?
Whether we want to think about power in our dancing (or not), our bodies are still going to respond to the most logical feedback based on the ground we’re dancing on.
The stage doesn’t care if you’re a Balanchine dancer or a Russian dancer.
The stage is always going to be stronger than you.
I just wanted to spark some thoughts around how to approach different techniques. When you start taking a logical and physical approach to your technique (and where you physically practice and perform it), you will begin to start applying corrections that make most sense in your physical environment.
This is only the beginning.