Hello everyone!
My name is Eleanora Abbagnato, Étoile dancer at the Paris Opera
and director of the Rome Opera House since 2015.
[A DANCE LESSON WITH ELEONORA ABBAGNATO]
I was lucky enough to perform on stage
in Sébastien Bertaud's latest creation,
a new piece designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri.
The steps in this choreography
involved a lot of skirt work
and also a lot of ports de bras.
These are mostly upper body movements
that are easy to try at home.
Today it's my pleasure to give you
a short online lesson
for those people who want to try out
some dance at home.
Right now it's very important to free your mind,
calm your thoughts, and stay active.
WARM UP
We can start our warm up in parallel first position.
I'll start by tracing circles with my shoulders four times
while breathing one,
two.
Shoulders moving outwards, four, and then inwards,
one, two,
three and four.
Then we go into demi-pointe,
pointe, demi-pointe, a plié,
demi-pointe, point, demi-pointe, plié.
Do this on both feet four more times:
pointe, demi-pointe, demi-plié, demi-pointe,
pointe, demi-pointe, demi-plié.
Then a port de bras to the right, stretching
and a port de bras on the other side
then we'll bend forward.
Relax your head, and then we'll do a demi-plié,
bend both knees, then straighten up.
Try to go even further, so your head touches your knees,
plié, straighten, four times like this.
One more time then come back up slowly straightening out the spine.
Really stretch your legs, stretching the muscles. There you go!
We'll bend one more time, and we go up onto our toes,
keeping the legs tight so they're straight.
Then release.
Work your core here, tighten your stomach, naval,
glutes, and keep your back straight, shoulder blades still relaxed
and a very tall neck.
[EXERCICE #1 PLIÉS]
So we're going to start the first exercise on the bar.
Dancers always start with demi-pliés.
This is second position.
So, in the second position with our arms we're going to do
port de bras, demi-plié, straighten,
demi-plié, straighten, Grand plié with your arm
and come back up.
And bend forward lengthening the back.
Come back up, and a plié with the legs.
Push into the toes, come back up,
let go of the bar and then go into first.
In first, demi-plié,
first position, demi-plié.
A grand plié, keep your back straight.
And bend forward.
Plié, relevé. Let go of the bar.
Fourth position, demi-plié,
back straight, demi-plié, back straight,
and grand plié
now I come back up and stretch.
I'll let go on one side, and come back up on the other side
and bend!
Release, take the bar and into fifth,
demi-plié,
grand plié.
We bend forward
and come back up into a demi-pointe.
Let go of the bar, breathe.
There you go, these are called demi-pliés.
It strengthens the legs, warms them up
and builds strength in the muscles.
Pliés build strength too.
[EXERCICE #2 DÉGAGÉS]
Here we're going to work on the second exercise.
These are dégagés.
Straighten the leg.
We make a cross shape and then a plié in first position.
Three and four and a plié and release.
So, we do five, six, seven, eight, one in front,
one in second,
one behind and one in second.
A plié, a second plié,
one behind and one in second,
and a plié and onto the toes.
Let go of the bar.
There you are.
Always do it on both legs, both sides, okay?
Always work both sides for balance.
So now,
it's more difficult but we're going to try
and move into fifth position.
So you do plié, plié, plié and an enveloppé then fermé.
Plié, plié, plié, an enveloppé, fermé.
The leg by the bar goes into enveloppé,
fermé and a tendu, fermé.
And one, two, three and a tendu, fermé.
One, two, three and a tendu, fermé.
And one, two, three, enveloppé, hold,
rise onto demi-pointe.
Let go of the bar,
you release.
Be careful because
your balance
comes from your core.
You need to hold it here.
[EXERCICE #3 RONDS DE JAMBE]
Now we're going to do some ronds de jambe,
Rond de jambe,
means that the leg goes behind in a circle, okay?
To open up the hips and also warm up here.
So we'll do a rond de jambe, rond de jambe, rond de jambe,
rond de jambe, rond de jambe, rond de jambe.
And one and two, and three and four and a big rond de jambe outwards.
So, it's a one,
and two, and three,
one in front, one behind
and two, and three, and behind.
And in front, battement, and in front, battement,
and in front, battement, and a plié grand rond,
arabesque, fermé.
And one and two, three, and stay.
Soft arms, like this.
No tension the arms.
A petit battement, a petit battement,
a plié, into second, one in front, let go of the bar.
Stretch forward and breath.
Back, plié, relevé, hold
and come down and stretch.
Stretch, and hold with the toes behind,
plié. Toes in front.
This is the passé position,
let go of the bar
and you come up.
[EXERCICE #4 FONDUS]
Now we're going to do a fondu.
Fondus build up strength
above all on the bar as we lean onto it,
working on the legs a lot.
We'll do one in front, a plié in front, one behind, plié behind,
one second, a rond, two ronds, plié behind.
So it goes like this... and
it's often paired with tango music, that's important.
Bend, fondu, and behind,
bend, fondu, into second,
rond de jambe, rond de jambe, and plié,
into second, come behind, then fermé.
Fondu, plié, plié, attitude,
fermé, and a fondu outwards
and fermé.
Fondu, into second,
rond, two ronds, plié, bring it forward.
There you go!
OK.
So now we're going to do some battements frappés
to release the leg.
So that's one, two, three,
one, two, three and eight in second position.
Do it twice over.
Once in front, second behind and once behind, second in front.
Okay?
We'll go quickly, and in front, second,
behind, hold.
And one, two, three, and one, two, three,
and behind, into second, in front, hold.
One, two, three and eight in second.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, plié, relevé, onto the balls of your feet, relevé. There you are.
[EXERCICE #5 RONDS DE JAMBE EN L’AIR]
Now we're going to do some ronds de jambes en l'air.
Before we did small ones, now we'll do big ones
to strengthen the legs and start to be able to
lift the legs and become more flexible.
Flexibility is very important in dance,
but it takes many years of practice
to improve our turnout and flexibility.
So, we're going to do
a developpé, plié, pointe,
fermé, developpé, plié behind, pointe, fermé.
Second, and rond, and rond,
pointe, into second, and double and double, fermé.
Développé, plié, pointe, fermé.
Second, and rond, and rond,
pointe, relevé, and double and double.
Now we'll go in front, in parallel position and we'll stretch,
stretching the back. Stretch your back.
Hold onto your ankles for an even deeper stretch.
Come back up slowly,
and then onto the other side.
So now we're going to do some grands battements.
Grands battements are really for lifting the legs,
as I explained at the start the bar works from bottom to top.
The exercises become more and more difficult.
So we'll do one in front, grand battement,
one pointe in front,
one in second, close.
One pointe in second, one in front,
one in second, one behind, hold.
So that's...
in front,
second behind,
plié, hold, behind,
pointe,
second,
pointe, fermé behind,
second, in front,
a plié, hold.
[STRETCHES]
Now we're going to do some stretches on the floor
if you have some small mats,
like I have.
Get into what we used to call butterfly position when we're little.
We were made to do it all the time in our first dance lessons.
It's called the butterfly and you need to push through it.
There you are.
And we also stretch our calves and ankles.
We can do a plié tendu four times on the right,
plié tendu four times on the left to stretch.
Now for the other leg.
There you go!
We can also go into a half side-split.
You need to push yourself and open up the hips.
You need to stay at least 30 seconds in this position
and that opens our outer muscles and our hips.
It's a really good stretch.
[A "NUIT BLANCHE" BALLET MOVEMENT]
When we started working on it,
I immediately saw it as the start of a variation,
with lots of upper body work.
It's true that the body naturally follows when the arm moves a lot,
the movements follow one another well.
So you can have fun trying
the start of my Nuit Blanche variation.
And if I remember rightly,
the variation started...
I'll only do the upper body, I'll not do the foot work,
I also don't have any pointes.
So I'll just do the ports de bras in the upper body
mainly to start
working
on the arms.
It's important to remember
that arms are very important in dance, the hands, the final touches, the final position.
The best teachers would explain all the time
that the final position and the lines drawn
by the hands are very important in order to have long arms.
Long arms are very beautiful in dance.
So we'll start.
It starts from the outside, raise this arm,
this one just a small movement in the left arm,
but this will become a port de bras, it comes up and it bends.
At the same time you're stretching out this one.
So you're doing this
and this with your leg.
There you are. So we can start with this.
Port de bras, so this one stretches out like this from the elbow.
Think about it coming up from the elbow
and after it stretches out to the fingertips.
So there, both arms come out
and you raise the right arm and bend.
After you open it back up and come back to the middle.
Cross the arms
and bring them together, open them up again in front
using your head and elbows finishing with the hands.
So that's one
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight.
One in front, three,
four, here I did this move
and do this three times.
And one, and two bigger,
and even bigger, you finish with the last being the biggest.
Normally this was with ronds de jambe
but here we're only using arms
so you'll still move a bit.
So we'll start the moves again from the start of my variation.
So that's one,
two, both elbows three, right arm,
and five, and six, and seven, and eight.
And in front, and two, and bend, cross and one, and two.
And even bigger. And even bigger.
You twist, and we turn,
normally we would turn like this,
okay? And we drop and come back up.
There you go,
so that's kind of the idea behind the start of my solo,
obviously just with the upper body.
As we don't have any room,
we don't have the same space as a stage,
so we have to make do
and find moves
that can be practiced at home.
There you go! Thank you very much
and hopefully see you soon!