I’ve heard recently from a few different teachers who are saying to me, Mary, you know that term you use, “pull up” (a common term that ballet teachers use to describe proper technique to their students)? That is an old fashioned, out of date, debunked, useless term.
What the heck? Teachers have been using that term for ages… world-renowned teachers, I might add. So why are people suddenly thinking that the term “pull up” is out of date and that we should be saying something else instead?
I did some research on various classical ballet and dance forums to see what other people are saying about “pull up.” What did I find? There are many people who are super confused about what the term even means.
This is the result of inadequate teaching.
One person on Ballet Talk put it best:
“I just recently started taking an intermediate class…[and] I find myself learning a great deal about the fundamentals in that class. The teacher is one of those teachers that doesn’t just say “turn out!” or “pull up!” but actually explains how to turn out and how to pull up. I love this class.”
Exactly, this is how it should be! There is one reason why people (teachers included) are so confused about this term “pull up” and that is because nobody has explained it to them. Here’s the “million dollar” answer right now, plain and simple:
Pull up = to tighten.1
That’s it. No confusing explanations about how there needs to be both upward energy and downward energy, pulling out of your joints, bla bla de blar blar, yadda yadda yadda… Pull up simply means to tighten, period.
Why is this so important? I can think of two really good reasons right off the bat:
#1. Tightening the legs is the single most important thing you can do to protect your joints while turning out.
Telling your students to “pull up”, and teaching how to pull up properly, ensures that students will not get injured when they turn out.2
#2. “Pull up” is the simplest and the most accurate thing to say.
You can give your students further explanation by using words like “lengthen”, “elongate”, or give them some imagery to help them better understand it (I believe that not all imagery is useful or good, but I personally have come up with the “Tight Rope Image” which I use to help my students understand this concept. The Tight Rope Image is explained in my other post here: The Solution for Thick/Bulky Calves). Explanation is important, however, keeping it simple is always better and here’s why:
Let’s pretend that, instead of using the term “pull up” you tell your students to “use grounding energy with multiple points of contact while elongating energy lines.” Are you confused yet? (I didn’t make this up– this was an actual suggestion on a ballet forum for teachers of what to say instead of “pull up”.) To be completely honest, even I can only understand the gist of what this is trying to say, and I don’t think of myself as a dumb person, so I can only imagine a 10-year-old who is trying to grasp this concept for the first time.
Not only is this alternative very confusing, but it also leads to incorrect training.
Why is that? Here’s why. I think what they were trying to say is that, instead of “pulling up”, students should also be instructed to “push down” (two points of contact… upward energy and downward energy.) Ok, that sounds alright, so what’s the problem?
The problem is that pushing down is bad. Why is pushing down bad? Because it impedes the flow of movement.1
This is a concept I had completely upside down and backwards, just like many other people, but now that I have taken teacher’s courses to understand the reasoning behind it, I now know why the Teaching Method of Classical Dance says to never tell students to push down into the floor. Try to dégagé the leg slowly while pushing into the floor. Ok, fine. Now do it really fast, beating in and out (battement). It’s difficult to keep the flow of movement now, isn’t it?
Here is my “Muscle Habits Rule” of Training:
If the objective of the training is to develop nerve-muscle patterns for performing the most difficult steps in the classical repertoire (which it is), then never teach something in the beginning which will have to be un-learned later.
Seem so simple a 10-year-old could have thought of it? Precisely. ;-)
So, what is your opinion on “pull up”? Do you agree or disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please leave your comments below!
Sources & Footnotes:
1. The True Method™ Teacher’s Course, instructing in the exact, pure, complete teaching method originating from Russia, founded by Agrippina Vaganova and completed by her first assistant for nearly 3 decades, Vera Kostrovitskaya.
2. It has been verified by the Dean at Texas Tech University that there were no injuries in the 31 years total that the classical ballet students there were being trained by a teacher utilizing the Teaching Method of Classical Dance, using full, 180-degree turn-out while pulling up by tightening.
Faraji Miller on said:
ANGELICA07 or anyone else, can you describe for me once more how exactly to pull up from the abs? Does the action feel almost similar to a reverse crunch?
And one other question I forgot to ask Mrs. Fernandez: with the legs, glutes, and abs taut, and the shoulders contracting down– how does one keep from being and/or dancing tense throughout the whole body with all of these parts so tight all at the same time?
Mary on said:
LET’S STOP RIGHT HERE and remember one thing that is very important:
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” (E.F. Schumacher)
Understanding the instructions of your ballet teacher should be perfectly simple. If you are asking questions like, “What does my teacher mean when she says XYZ”, as if they are speaking in some kind of code or another language needing translation, then I am going to be brutally honest by saying that you need a new teacher. This is why I don’t like overcomplicating things by generalization and lengthy explanations. “Pull up” simply means to tighten…
Tighten the abs! That’s it. Remember, skeletal muscles are mechanical: they aren’t capable of understanding your thought process, they are only capable of creating and releasing tension. Your brain controls which muscles to tighten, and to what degree (too much, too little, or just right). A good teacher will be able to tell if you are tightening too much or too little, and you need to trust your teacher that they will correct you when that happens.
To your other concern about being too stiff: Actually, the opposite thing happens. The shoulder blades are pulling down and together, yes, but this is actually RELEASING tension from your neck. By putting tension in all the right places (esp. the lower back, by way of the correct stance at the barre), and REMOVING tension from all the right places, the body can be strengthened in order to FREE THE UPPER BODY from tension and allow for greater artistic expression.
Whenever you see a dancer who looks stiff, I can guarantee that you are going to notice one blatant hallmark of incorrect training:
The shoulders are up.
The reason the shoulders are up is because that dancer is weak in their lower back and they are compensating for that weakness by putting tension in the wrong places. And the reason they have a weak lower back is because they were not taught how to stand correctly at the barre. It really is that simple.
The hallmark of dancers trained by Vaganova, and which the Russian critics at the time noticed right away, was the strength of their lower back and freedom of expression. If you want concrete proof of this, watch any of my “Then & Now” videos to see a comparison of dancers trained in both ways. Especially look at this video to see the difference a strong lower back makes in freedom of expression: http://youtu.be/7Jd7E6mejy4?list=PLX9sLdsTvZJyIJfqeYkLbWd6txlGJpS_x
Faraji Miller on said:
What about the core and the upper body though?
What should those two being doing while the lower body is being tightened in order to achieve “pulling up”? Should one be almost literally pulling up the rib cage or lifting up the stomach? How does that work?
The upper body is what confuses me the most.
Mary on said:
I’m glad you asked! “Pull up” isn’t really the best term to use when talking about the upper body because it begs the question, “WHAT is pulling up exactly?” So there are more specific ways to describe what the rest of the body is doing: The stomach is held tight and the rib cage is in (usually happens automatically when the stomach is tightened). The bottom is held tight as well. The shoulders, on the other hand, are DOWN and completely free of tension. To get the feeling of how the spine should be aligned, try standing straight up against a wall. Hope that helps!
ANGELICA07 on said:
In my concern, I really like the “pull up” term for the upper body also.
In so far as correctly pulling up (i.e. lenghtening) the abs (that’s to say from the botton (lower abs) to the top) really allows to hold them in a rock-like proper way. I truly don’t think one can go wrong doing this.
Moreover, if you apply what Mrs. Vaganova stated in her book (which is also reported in Mrs Kostrovitskaya’s one), the small of the back (that’s to say the lumbar spine) has to be pulled up, which makes it prefectly logic to also pull up the same way in the front of the body.
One of my Vaganova-trained teachers once told me that the abs are to be held tight the same way the back has to : that makes sense.
She also said me that the shoulder blades have to “disappear” in order for the back to be as flat as possible (that’s why the “contract the shoulder blades together” is a total heresy !! ). I am a still interrogating a little bit about the how-to-do-it : I meanwhile hold the lower ends of these bony traingles together and pull them down towards the lower back.
Please Mary, feel free to correct me if I’m doing wrong : your pieces of advice are gold to me.
Mary on said:
I believe what you are referring to is what Vaganova and Kostrovitskaya stressed, and that is the importance of the development of the lower back. This is achieved through the correct stance at the barre. As long as your students are standing at the barre correctly, you do not need to tell them to “pull up” their lower back… “Pulling up” the lower back means NOTHING to a student. Tightening the abs, tightening the buttocks, relaxing the shoulders, all of those things DO. Usually it is as simple as a few “pokes” in the right places and following the rules of teaching method, and you don’t ever need to tell the student anything about their lower back– it just happens.
ANGELICA on said:
AMEN, Mary, and a big THANK YOU for having made it clear !!!
You made me laugh with “blabla de bla” and “yadda yadda yadda” : that’s precisely what all that pointless flow is !!
You also brilliantly adressed the “push down” matter !!
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Mary on said:
I’m happy it made you laugh! :-) Thanks for the comment!
ANGELICA07 on said:
You are welcome !! :-)