Hello, everyone.
My name is Alicia Graf Mack
and I am the director of Dance at The Juilliard School.
I had this idea.
I just ran upstairs thinking,
"Oh, here's something that I think I really wanna share."
When I was younger, I loved to explore
the full possibilities of my body.
And I loved to stretch.
I found that one of my strengths was my extensions.
Over my career, so many young dancers have asked me,
"How do you get your legs high?
"I wanna improve my extension."
While we have the time, why don't we talk a little bit
about how to improve your side extension.
I talk about it a lot with my students
when I'm teaching ballet and when I'm teaching modern.
And maybe some of these tips will be helpful for you.
The first thing that you wanna think about when you
are making an extension is where you place your weight.
Where you have your weight on your standing leg
is very important.
I'm gonna come to my pretend barre here,
I'm now at my house and not at The Juilliard School.
Before I say that, go on,
dancers, you want to make sure that you're really warm
before you start to work on your extensions.
Because it utilizes a lot of large muscle groups
and you wanna make sure you're really warm.
Take a whole barre.
If you want to, you can go to Juilliard's IGTV
and take the barre with me
that we uploaded about a week ago.
Yes, first tip, placement of your body.
Let's see.
If this were my barre, and I'm standing in fifth position.
When I extend my leg or when I begin my extension,
I want to make sure that if I were to draw a line
from my nose all the way down,
that my weight is not at my heel.
Understand?
I want to make sure that when I stand on one leg
that I shift my weight, so that I'm standing on one leg,
and that my weight is then shifted from my nose
down to at least, the middle of my foot or beyond.
Does that make sense?
Just try it.
If you were to go to your retire position
with your weight at your heel.
Which we do sometimes because we have that barre
so we think we're standing on our standing side
but we're really not.
Feel what that feels like for your hip flexor.
And then, take your weight and put it on your standing toe.
Do you see how you're able to have a little bit more crease
in your hip when you do that?
Also, it takes some of the grip away from your hip flexor.
And it will allow for more freedom of movement
in that standing leg.
Again, if I was standing on the other side,
if my weight starts in the middle,
when I start to take my toe
to the sur le cou-de-pied position, today I'm not wrapping,
you're going to shift your weight to the toe.
You should be able to slide, just like a little dollar
underneath that heel, right?
All right, so that's number one.
You ready for tip number two?
Tip number two is all about energy.
Newton's law states that for every action
there is an equal and opposite reaction.
If I were to think about my extension
as a demonstration of energy,
that standing leg wants to spiral actively down
into the ground, while the torso lifts, lifts, lifts out,
and the knee lifts and the toe lifts,
and we're all wowed by this
beautiful movement through space.
The idea then, is similar to this.
You know when you go to the fair
and you have that big hammer
and you wanna hit the plate so that the ball
lifts high enough and hits the target at the top.
If you were to put just a little bit of energy
into hitting that plate, the ball's just gonna go up
and putter back down, right?
But if you put a lot of energy down and hit that plate
with all the energy that you have,
the ball will shoot up and hit the target.
Let's think about how that works with your extension.
If I were standing here in fifth position
and before I thought about my working leg,
which is what we do when we think about
putting our leg in the air.
If we didn't think about the working leg
but we thought about putting the energy
into the standing side, so that the energy is shooting down,
so that the working leg can (exhales) shoot up.
The opposite action is happening, right?
As you are spiraling that leg dynamically into the ground,
then the other leg has the idea to have freedom to move.
You are releasing the leg in the air
and not holding the leg in the air.
Understood?
So we've talked about placement of the body,
we've talked about energy, allowing the standing leg
to dynamically turn out and root down into the ground
so that the working leg can be free.
We do not wanna bear down our weight to make that leg rise.
Yes?
We've talked about placement and we've talked about energy.
Now the third thing that I wanna talk about
is the use of stretch and strength.
You know we can all battement our legs way high in the air.
You can vap that leg as high as you wanna go
but then when it comes to extending,
it's a lot harder.
Because it takes strength to do that.
Let's talk about how we can start to gain more strength
so that our extension looks even higher
and more stretched into the air.
The first thing that you wanna think about, number one,
is that it's 2020, I say this to my students all the time.
I want to see a 2020 retire.
One that doesn't cross over the standing leg,
and one that is nice, and high, and lifted,
so that when you take your pirouette or your extension
the knee is all ready to go.
You're nice and open and have created a strong foundation
for whatever movement you want to do next.
Yes, dancers?
Another thing is, and this is a tip from my mentor,
Mr. Arthur Mitchell, who was the founder
of Dance Theater of Harlem.
He always said you should have a dirty mark
all the way up your tights, around the side of your knee,
and all the way down.
And every time you take a passe or retire,
you go through that same pathway.
Meaning, when you take a pirouette or an extension
you're not gonna disengage your leg,
because then you're going to grip in the hip flexor.
As you take your 2020 retire, nice and high and lifted,
and making that crease, and to your standing side
and you're using a sense of opposition.
Once you take that heel-in-hand stretch,
you want to make sure that you're thinking about
the placement of your ribs.
We're making two columns from the side of the ribs,
one, two, all the way up, up, up.
Your third column, in the middle,
is the one burrowing down, down, down,
so that this leg can have freedom
to shoot in the air and lift as high
as you would like it to go.
Now, when you practice taking your hand away from your leg,
you want to be sure that you engage your muscles
and rotate that leg so that when you take it off
you are extending both sides up, up, up in the air
and not bearing down, down, down, down, down
to make that work.
Lift into the joint to bring it back
and bring it down.
You almost want to feel like, I'm gonna use my hand
because now my leg's cramping,
that you are opening the joint to lift,
to come back and enveloppe all the way down.
That is a really great exercise
in order to lift the knee even higher
before it comes down.
Let's try that one more time.
You're gonna take that heel-in-hand extension,
we're gonna think about allowing our spirals
to move in opposite directions.
You're gonna think about making two columns from the sides
so that you're not displacing the rib
and that you are allowing that leg
freedom to just (exhales) shoot up and move.
I'm gonna change to the other side
because that leg is cramping.
Okay, so.
First thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make that 2020 retire,
yes, dancers?
And as you take that extension do not allow the rib to go.
The thing that I'm thinking about is making a neutral pelvis
and allowing my standing side
to support my weight, not on my heel.
Then, this one's gonna go down a little lower.
When I let go, I want to spiral the leg to the ceiling,
to the ceiling, to the ceiling.
Now, you're gonna think about opening the knee joint
to come down and then draw that line
that I talked about when Mr. Mitchell always says.
Draw that line straight down every pirouette,
every extension should go through the same pathway.
Dancers, I promise, if you work on your extensions
with that sense of scientific research.
The way that you understand the physics of your body,
I promise that you will get better
and improve those extensions day by day, by day, by day.
Okay?
The last thing I wanna talk about is making sure
that you practice dynamically stretching.
There's so many times, and now that we're home right now,
you are gonna be sitting in a split and doing your homework
or stretching but not using any of your muscles in turn out.
I'm gonna, hopefully this works,
I'm gonna transfer this down here.
And move this.
When you take your stretches, just a second stretch,
to have an example.
You don't wanna just sink down into the stretch
because remember, we talked about your extension
is a combination of your stretch and your strength.
Your flexibility and your strength.
When you are in your second position,
you don't want to just sit and let the legs open,
you really want to engage that turn out.
My legs are reaching so long
that the heels pop off the floor.
You want to think about those knees actively going
to the back, either to the ceiling or to the back,
as you make those extensions.
You're not sitting down, always thinking about that idea
of the ribs being elongated and something else happening
so that your body is always moving
in these amazing, dynamic lines.
Yes, dancers?
Let me know how it goes.
I thank you for spending time with me today.
These are things that I sit around and think about.
If you have any other questions,
leave your questions in the comments
and we will get to you.
Everyone take good care of yourselves and be well.