How to modify with terrible standing turnout in fifth position?
(picture is not me. I took a screenshot in the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq3RczgS2iI)
My standing turnout in fifth is terrible and it looks exactly like the picture above.
I already learned that I should tendu and dégagé diagonally in the direction my foot is pointing instead of directly to the side.
However, I’ve also found that my lack of turnout creates a lot of other problems that teachers never really explained how to work around. For example:
- I can’t lower directly from sous sus because I’ll step on my other foot.
- I can’t lower directly from passé or retiré because I’ll step on my other foot.
- Glissades and balancés travel diagonally. If I try to travel directly sideward, it looks awful because my leg isn’t turned out enough.
- When I tendu or dégagé to the side, the movement becomes triangular because my working leg has to move quite far forward to close front and quite far back to close back. It ends up looking more like a rond de jambe than a side tendu/dégagé.
- I feel like my weight is positioned between my legs because of how far apart they are in fifth, instead of being centred over two legs that are glued together.
- I’m prone to landing one foot on top of the other in petit allegro (for example changements). To avoid it, I have to deliberately leave a gap between my legs when landing.
If it’s relevant, I’ve been doing ballet on and off for around 5 to 7 years as cross training for rhythmic gymnastics (only 1-2 class per week). My standing turnout sadly never improved even though my flexibility in other areas keeps improving. In addition to gymnastic techniques, I do stretching, conditioning, strength training, Pilates, and yoga every day.
My lack of standing turnout is not a glaring issue in rhythmic gymnastics because my turnout in retiré is good so my fouettes and pirouettes look ok (with standing leg turned in - which is not a problem in RG) and other techniques don't use standing turnout much.
However, it certainly is a huge problem in ballet and it goes in the way in everything I do.
Has anyone dealt with this kind of turnout limitation before? How were you taught to modify technique? Can anyone advise what I should do? Thanks in advance.