Every Ballet Hairstyle With Pro Ballerina Scout Forsythe | On Pointe | Glamour|The Royal Ballet

The best way to test your crown security is shaking your head real quick. Hi, my name is Scout Forsythe. I'm a professional ballet dancer with American Ballet Theater, and today I'm gonna be taking you through my top ballet buns. So I break my buns down into two different categories. One is class and rehearsal, which is really simple stuff, and then for performance, which is more of the professional pretty buns. Within those two categories, there's four buns that I typically fall back on. I've got my class and rehearsal bun, my braided bun, my classical high bun, and my romantic bun. So here's everything I need in order to create the ballet bun. A normal hairbrush, a bristle brush to smooth, a comb, non-aerosol hairspray, my sea salt spray and hairpins, bobby pins, hair nets, my standard regular old hair ties, smaller, thinner hair ties, and then I've got a compact mirror to make sure that everything in the back looks as good as I think it does. So the most important thing when you're doing a bun for class and rehearsal is making sure it just stays. You don't wanna be in the middle of rehearsal doing something and having your hair fall out. So I just come in with bed head in the morning and then brush my hair back a little bit, find the easiest middle part I can. I don't really mind if it's not perfect. Now that I've got my hair in a low ponytail, I'm gonna show you guys how I actually make the real bun. I twist it in the beginning to create the perfect circle shape, and then the rest of my hair I leave free and untwisted and just tuck it under. And the reason that I tuck it under instead of twisting it underneath is that when you have that extra twist, it adds another layer between the bun and your head, and I want it to be as flat as possible. The closer it is to your head, the less movement, momentum, space for it to fall out. After I create the bun, this is when I take usually about eight hair pins and I do this sewing technique. So taking this pin, I go straight down, I reach out, grab the part of my hair, and pull it in closer. It's almost like stitching my bun into my head. If you were to stick the pins in just straight in, it's just guaranteed to fall out, and you can see that it's almost even sitting higher. It's not flattened to my head. If I start to shake it, it's gonna start coming out. If I just take one pin and take this section and pull it and do the little sewing technique, you can already see the difference of this one area right here, how tight it is to my head, compared to all of this looseness that's happening back here. Where I position my bun on my head is kind of at the nape of the neck, where your skull almost starts to come out from where your neck comes up. And I usually go right underneath. It's like that perfect little pocket that you can just tuck your bun up into, and I try to get it as centered as possible, but same thing for class and rehearsal. If it's a little off-center, a little lopsided, I don't really worry too much about it. I'm not seeing the back of my head, so it doesn't bother me. I don't use hairnets for this bun. It's just an extra step that I don't need. Flyaways are not an issue when it comes to class and rehearsal. If I'm not talking and explaining every detail, this bun takes me like 30 seconds to do. It's super simple, and usually I'm doing it right before we start class. If I do have a little extra time before class in the morning, or I'm going out afterwards, I have a gala, I have a dinner, something like that, and I don't want my hair to have a big dent in it from the ponytail holder, I will do a double-braided bun. This one, same thing. Starts off parting it down the middle, but instead of just doing a part down the middle and leaving it, I continue as well as I can down the back, and I split my hair into two sections. And now these guys, I use the smaller ponytail holders for these ones, because I'm not needing it to secure the whole amount of hair. I'm using just the two at the ends. Take one side, and I just tie it up, just to kind of keep it out of the way while I'm braiding over here. This is a hairstyle I started doing when I was younger in school, because we had to have our hair high up on our head, and it was pulling a lot on the front of my head and giving myself a lot of breakage and damage. So I was like, I gotta figure out a solution to this. So I started braiding. By having the braids, when your bun is sitting back here and the weight of your hair is pulling down, it's kind of pulling from all over and not just this section of your hair or just from the part. The best part about this bun is that you don't have to worry about flyaways, you don't have to worry about bobby pins, anything. You can just throw it back. So this is where it gets kind of fun and a little bit whimsical back here. I take the two ends and I literally tie them in a knot. And then I go back again in another knot on top. And then I pin this area. And then taking just like the little tail ends and tucking those guys under wherever I find room in my head. What happens with this bun normally is you kind of start to get these little hairs up here that start to fly away or you get like a little shark in your hair. I just noticed that. So this is when I take a bobby pin and just kind of brush it and tuck it. And then I stick the bobby pin underneath my braid. So you don't even notice that it's there. And the best part is that I can sleep with my hair like this and put it back up the next day and it'll still look pretty decent. Now we're gonna move on to performance buns. And performance buns are way more detail oriented. And these are where like the perfectionism really starts to come out. So during our shows, there's certain ballets that require certain hairstyles. It's part of the costume. If we're doing a new ballet and there's something that we're not sure about, right when we walk into the theater, there's a call sheet that says hair and makeup. And that's for the specific ballet that we're doing that night. I'm gonna do a classical high bun. It's probably the most standard typical prima ballerina performance bun you'll see out there. So going into this, start with your hair greasier, the better for performances. When you have greasy hair, it sticks more because it's less slippery and soft. So I highly recommend not washing your hair during performance weeks. My hair is a little bit soft right now. I washed it a couple of days ago. So I'm just gonna throw a little bit of sea salt spray in here, just to kind of give it a little texture and roughness to it. Cause we just want it to be able to like grab and mold. So we part this right behind the ear because this section in the back is gonna go up in the ponytail. And then you have this whole front part to mold into whatever shape you need it to go. Now we're doing the basis of the bun, which is like gonna kind of hold everything together. And then the rest is just aesthetics. This is where I grab hairspray and I start to just kind of spray it around, pulling it up. Having hairspray in and then brushing it gets it really, really super smooth. And then it stays like that because the hairspray dries. When I'm doing this, if you noticed I bend my head forward and by doing this, it kind of allows the head and hair to go up and you kind of let gravity do the work here. Now that I've got my hair up and it's a little ponytail, your bun should be placed where your jawline goes up and your earlobes. So if you draw a line and it intersects, that's exactly where your bun needs to be. Taking these guys out, I do a little hairspray all over and then I just start brushing. And then this is where you get to play around with how you want your bun to be. But I typically go up and over like this. So you've got this little swoopy section going on right here. And what this does is it gives you a little bit of lift and volume. You're not just having a flat hairline that just kind of goes into nothing and then placing a crown on top of it. By doing this, you almost are creating a place for your crown. And then same thing, making just a normal bun. But I always want to make sure if you can see just a little bit on the top of my head, because if you can't see that, it just kind of looks like there's nothing happening. So I like to see a little bit of the bun up top and then just keeps twisting it and then taking the rest of the section and doing the same thing where it just kind of tucks under. And then this, I don't worry too much about the flyaways because I'm going to throw a hairnet over and I can always mold after. So I'll just do like one or two pins. So taking the hairnet, I go to the back and it literally just swoop everything up. I take it and twist it and then I place it back over and I kind of keep doing that technique until I know it's all in there. And you can usually get around three times. And then I take the two pins that I put in my head out. And then this is where you can kind of mold the bun to what you want it to look. So I kind of just mold it and bring it a little bit more forward. And I just look at this in the mirror just to kind of see what I like and what it looks like above. And then same thing, doing the sewing technique of grabbing and stitching it in. Our hair is technically part of our costume. So when we throw the hairnet on, it just kind of helps get that smooth, clean look across the board with every girl that's on stage with their bun. And also just it eliminates flyaways. And with the lights on stage shining on you really bright from front and side, it catches all those little micro hairs that are kind of sticking up and wispy. So when we have the hairnet on, it smooths it all out. And it's just one less thing that's kind of distracting. So really tucking those pins in. And I always just make sure everything's tucked in before I go on stage. So this back section right here, this is where you kind of get the sharks and the flyaways. The really simple way to take care of this is grab two or three bobby pins, lean your head back so you've got the space for it to kind of have that little bump out. And you just gently twist it and tuck it in like you would a French twist. And you take your bobby pin and do the same kind of stitching technique where you kind of go out and around and push it back in there. I bend my bobby pins. I curve them because some of my skull is curved. And it just makes it a little bit more comfortable. And you can kind of tuck them in almost underneath the hair when you do grab it. So you don't have like a flat pin just kind of sticking straight on your head. You can just slip it underneath and tuck it in. This is really good crown-based bun. And I've got this beautiful crown with me. It's got horse hair all around it. So it's really simple to pin into your hair. General rule of thumb is two to three fingers from your hairline is where you want the crown to be placed. The trick I learned with doing any kind of crowns or anything is always put the bobby pins or hair pins in the same way. So it's an easy removal process. And then the best way to test your crown security is shaking your head real quick. Going side to side and back and forth. And that thing is pretty secure in there. This crown is super lightweight. So even when I turn, I don't really feel it that much. When you've got a heavier crown on, that's definitely like you can feel it a little bit when you're turning. And that's where I tell people, don't worry about it and just really pin it in there. Now moving on to a romantic bun. So this one starts very similar to the classical high bun by splitting my hair into three different sections. But instead of going up with it, we're gonna keep it low. So romantic buns are typically used in very tragic ballet such as Giselle, Swan Lake is a tragic ballet. Taking the brush and brushing everything just straight back and low. Romantic buns kind of have an S shape to them. So this part goes back, this part comes forward and then it swoops around back behind the ear to give this classical shape. There's different ways of doing this. I'm just gonna show you the really standard way of just kind of teasing the hair and then shaping it into the way you need it to be. So now that I've teased it and hairsprayed the crap out of it, I just lightly go over with my bristle brush to get that front section smooth. And then I start molding it. So taking this part right here, I stick one of my bobby pins, one of my curved bobby pins and tuck it up underneath and pin that part of my hair back. And then swooping this section, you're kind of bringing it forward and then swooping it around. And this is just like you're molding it to your head. All right, it's not too bad. When I'm teasing my hair, I'm taking the brush and instead of going with my hair, I'm going against the hair. And by doing that, it gives it a little bit of volume and kind of creates a knot. You can see right here, it's already puffed up in sections. So like, I don't have to worry about creating volume or anything. All right, so taking and shaping it. Pinning underneath, kind of right behind the ear where the hair is down on your neck. We also joke that this is kind of like helmet hair. All right, so there we go. We've got the basics for the classical romantic bun over the ears. And then taking this section in the back and just same thing, kind of just twist it around without pulling too much. As opposed to a classical high bun, I'm trying to make this bun a little bit more oval shape. When you have it on the nape of your neck, if you have too much of a just straight out bun, I feel like it can kind of almost get in the way. Sometimes of moving your head. So when you have it a little bit more oblong and on the length of your head, there's more room back there to move your neck. All right, so then grabbing our hairnet, same technique, I start from the bottom and gather up, turn around. I don't put pins at the bottom of this bun. Like at the very bottom, I do it towards the side because when you have pins going up at the nape of your neck, like it can kind of start to get a little itchy or scratchy or just be uncomfortable. So I go kind of at a diagonal towards the bun instead of just straight up and back, I go to the side. Spray the living crap out of it and brush it down. All right, she's looking pretty. Learning how to do buns, whether it's for keeping the distraction away from having your hair all in your face while you're dancing or bringing a certain aesthetic or attribute to stage is all a part of being a ballet dancer. So I hope you enjoyed and watching all four of my buns and we'll see what happens next time.