How To Do Multiple Pirouettes- Turn Tutorial For Doubles, Triples, and Quads

Hey everyone! I am super excited to announce my next live dance workshop. So, on Sunday, August 9th, from 10am to 1pm, I'm hosting three hours of live dance content. That first hour is going to be a flexibility class where I will guide you through a ton of exercises and give you all the tips to expand your range of motion and nail those flexibility tricks. The second hour will be an open level lyrical class where you'll get to learn an exclusive routine choreographed by yours truly. And that third hour is going to be an inspiring interview with So You Think You Can Dance All-Star Alex Wong. I cannot wait. This is open to all levels, all ages, all backgrounds. Anyone who loves dance and just wants to learn and grow in their technique and mindset. Go to the link in my bio to get your ticket. Hello darlings! Today we're going to be working on how to do multiple pirouettes. So just a disclaimer, turning is not my forte, but I can teach it, and I actually think it's kind of cool for you guys to see the true journey of learning how to do multiple turns instead of someone who knows how to do like 15 pirouettes and is like, here, go do it. You're going to see the nitty gritty. The real stuff. And then the real pretty. Okay? Grab some space. Grab a little sock if you need one, or some shoes, or if you turn barefoot, do your thing. Let's do this. So there are three things that I want you to think about when you're working on your pirouettes. This can apply to your singles all the way up to like 18 pirouettes. Whoever you are, this list applies to you. You want to focus on your prep and posture. That's one thing on the list. Locking in that posture in your prep is going to help you with your turn. The second thing is your momentum. Where are you getting the power to propel that turn around? And number three is to make sure that you have control over your body and your mind. More on that later. All right. So the first part of our list is our prep and our posture. Our posture in our prep, double Ps, is really important. It's important that you lock in the posture. And what I mean by lock in is that when you go from your pirouette prep and you press up to your actual turn, that you're not moving things in your body. Your shoulders, your chin, your ribcage, your hips, your bottom knee, the supporting leg. You need to lock in your posture in the prep and maintain it throughout your turn. So when you are in this prep, today I'm going to be doing parallel pirouettes and not doing ballet pirouettes or turned out, so just keep that in mind. You want that back heel up. You want to be deep into a plie that's centered. Make sure you're not forward of your body and make sure you're not back. In terms of your arms, you want to keep that side arm in front of that side seam. Try not to lean back, it'll open everything up. Speaking of opening everything up, you want to close your ribcage here, press your shoulders down, bring your head back so that you're not leaning forward like a little turtle. And then in terms of your hips, you want to have a neutral pelvis, so don't stick your booty out and don't tuck it too far under. So we're here. So many things to think about in just a prep. Now when you plie and you press up to your passe, nothing should move from that prep besides bringing the foot up to passe and besides straightening that supporting leg. So an example of what not to do is I'm here and then I press up, right? Super dramatic, but lifting your shoulders up. Another example of what not to do, here. I'm hyping that hip up, right? You want to bring it straight from your prep, get everything going, go through your checklist, maintain that position in your turn. I danced right up for the... Oh, I was going straight for the lens, just like... All right, dancers, moving on to our second part, it's our momentum. So where are you getting the power for that turn? There's three things, again. It's your plie and it's your arm and it's your passe leg coming up. And maybe you're spotting, so that's actually four things. So for your plie, you want a deep plie. You don't want to come from a shallow spot. There's no way for you to propel up. So get a deep plie, that way you have somewhere to go in your turn. Your arms, it's that side arm, dancers. You want to make sure that it's whipping in like that. There's control and there's power there. And you don't want to wind up. This is incorrect. You're going to want to do that, but don't do it, okay? Fight it. Keep that arm to the side. And then when you come up, whip it in. When you whip it in, keep the shoulder dropped. All right, that third thing is lifting up that passe leg. The sleepier your passe, the lower your passe, the more it kind of drags your body down. But when you're able to lift your passe up, it activates the rest of your muscles to kind of zip up and pull everything higher. And then you're turning on this beautiful little axis. So we're going to zip up, up, up. So I got that triple around, but that last little bit, I had to lift, lift, lift, and I was able to complete it. And then our fourth one, what was it? Spotting. I have a tough time with spotting still. I love a dot after all these years. It's tricky, but you find that stationary thing in front of you, whatever it may be, a dot on the mirror, a friend that's not moving, whatever. So a clock on the wall. You lock in and keep your eyes on that spot. Spotting takes practice. It's tough. Don't get discouraged. Did I go through all four things? I think so. We're going to run it back. Okay. This third part of the list, we need to have a little heart-to-heart conversation. It's control. Control over your body is doing things like core exercises, your sit-ups, your planks, whatever, arm strengthening. Any sort of conditioning is control over your body so that you have the strong muscles to have a nice and smooth turn. But control over your mind is something that we need to have like a little, a little fireside chat right now. Oftentimes, and I do this to myself, I psych myself out for my turns because I go in thinking, oh, I'm not the strongest turner. I'm not going to be able to film this video. Or I, of course, did a good turn off camera. And then when the camera turns on, I'm like, oh my gosh. You start to get in your head. So controlling your mind is knowing that with practice, with consistency, and a lot of trial and error, you're going to get these turns. It took me a long time to be able to get to that place, but you can do it too. So when you're preparing for these turns, when you're watching this video, when you're practicing your multiple pirouettes, take a deep breath, let all the tension go out of your body, and just focus on what you're doing instead of all the worries in your head. Because that is the biggest roadblock to getting a lot of pirouettes. Okay, so a good pirouette progression is a chasse pas de bourree pirouette. We're going to start with a prep, move to a single, move to a double. You can move to triples, to four, to five, to six. Wherever you are is lovely, okay? I'm kind of working on triples, sometimes quads on a good day, so we'll see if we can get there. Let me show you the chasse pas de bourree. So you're going to start in a first position. You're going to plie with the chasse. Keep your posture locked, straight up and down. Pas de bourree, back, side, and then prep. So when I did the pas de bourree, my arms came down, and then for the prep, I have a plie here. Now I'm going to go up to my prep, and then I'm going to shoot out, and I'm going to land in a parallel eleve, okay? From there, dancer, you don't want to come down. You stay up here and go straight to the chasse again. Chasse, pas de bourree, prep, single, and land. It's okay if you're wobbly, always land in eleve. Again, chasse, pas de bourree, double, and land. So even those little hops that I had, it's okay, it's going to happen to you. You're here, try not to just come down and be like, ugh. When you do that, you're training your body to just come right out of your pirouette. Instead, I don't care if you're hopping, I don't care, land in that eleve, train yourself to stay upright. Have a tall spine, lock those knees in here, keep your posture up. So even if your turn isn't smooth, stick the landing, tell my dancers, always land. I've had dancers literally fall to the floor and I'm like, get up and land, and then they land in their little pirouette, and it's training your mind for that discipline. Let's go back again. I'll try the double, I'll try the triple, we'll see. Ready, five, six, seven, and chasse, pas de bourree, prep, one, two, land, good, and chasse, pas de bourree, prep, woo, and squeeze, again, chasse, pas de bourree, prep, land no matter what, last time, chasse, pas de bourree, prep, and finish. Good job, my loves. I am so thankful for all of you that you've given me a space to be able to teach you things and to show you things, and to not have them be perfect. I think when I first started the channel, I was like, everything I teach has to be flawless, or else, I don't know, or else what? This is the true raw nitty gritty of learning to dance. Sometimes you'll have a beautiful quad, off camera, and sometimes you'll have a single that you're hopping around on, but that's okay. It's learning how to navigate the in-betweens of your dance training. So, thank you so much. I love all of you. Hop over to patreon.com slash miss Auti, and I'll see you all next week. See if I can do this again, B. Yay!