-
1.6. Terminology
- University Press of Florida
- Chapter
- Additional Information
20 1.6 Terminology Balanchine did not use terminology often; he would simply indicate what he wanted by marking it out for us. There are many schools and systems of teaching, each with its own positions and port de bras, and to avoid confusion I have chosen the simplest way to indicate positions. Where I have not been specific about a step such as croisé front, I mean it to be done in Balanchine’s version. Our teachers at the School of American Ballet—Balanchine, Oboukhoff, Vladimiroff, Doubrovska, and Danilova—all left Russia after the 1917 revolution . They used the same terms and names of steps used by their teachers at the Maryinsky as well as by teachers who had studied under Bournonville. Cecchetti was teaching company classes at this time. In Oboukhoff’s case, his port de bras came from his teacher, Nicholas Legat. Consequently, it seems that there was no one school as far as terminology was concerned. Una Kai has pointed out several terms that may be unfamiliar, and I am attempting to clarify them. The arabesque positions are a mix of several schools. The first, second, and third arabesques are Cecchetti Technique. First arabesque is right leg lifted in open arabesque position, with left arm forward, looking past the hand. The second arabesque has the right leg lifted, in the open arabesque position (ouverte), with the right arm forward and the head looking front. The third arabesque has both arms forward. The third and fourth arabesques croisé are from the Imperial Ballet School of St. Petersburg. The third arabesque has the right foot pointed back croisé and the right arm forward, with the head looking toward the front arm. The fourth arabesque is with the right foot pointed croisé back and the left arm forward with the head tilting left looking front. Attitude effacé with the leg lifted in back is Cecchetti Technique, the head looking in the direction of the lifted arm with the chin up. Attitude croisé with the leg lifted in back is from the Imperial Ballet School of St. Petersburg, the head looking toward the side arm (not up to the lifted arm), although sometimes this pose was also used. The arms were indicated, not named, so I am simply describing the pose and not giving it a number. The only teacher who taught us the arm posi- Terminology / 21 tions by number was Oboukhoff, and his port de bras came from Legat and was different from the other schools. There seemed to be no terms for a pose that I chose to call B+, referring to me and the closest form that I could find for the position that one arrives at by standing in fifth position and raising the heel of the back foot so that only the big toe touches the floor. This is the position that the corps de ballet stands in most of the time. Danilova was emphatic that the knees in this position should touch, crossing the foot slightly more behind. She wanted no space between the knees because, as she pointed out, in a tutu the space between the legs was ungainly. B+ can also be referred to as “attitude a terre” (see Gretchen Ward Warren’s Classical Ballet Technique). Our teachers called assemblé with beats entrechat cinq, and Gail Grant’s Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet calls it entrechat six de volé, or cinq de volé. Our teachers also used coupé for both the movement and the position. Coupé (meaning “to cut”) is the movement. The French dictionary calls this position “conditional” cou-de-pied. Fondue, meaning “melted,” applies only to the plié but has come to imply the entire exercise. What we call passé, as both movement and pose, the French call pose retiré. In the opening exercises, I describe how Balanchine would have wanted a given step to be executed. It would be too repetitious to describe this for every step, so I suggest that if there is any doubt about how a movement should be done, refer back to the opening descriptions of steps. Balanchine rarely used terminology. He indicated the step by marking it out for us. Musically, unless specifically noted, all steps begin [ON&] so that the first movement arrives at the position on count one. Preparations and in-between movements are just that and not to be emphasized but danced through, such as a preparation for a jump or pirouette. For the purpose of direction, as to where...