How to Do a Plie Ballet Position

Series Summary

A form sweeps lightly across the stage, gracefully arching arms and neck, balancing posture with poise effortlessly—this is the image that ballet dancers the world over spend a lifetime creating. Originating in Italy in the late 1400's, ballet is a beautiful dance that takes years of training to perfect. Ballet dancers train their bodies, investing years in dance schools, perfecting their jeté, their rand de jambre, their relevé. When everything comes together, the ballet is a spectacle of wonder, telling us the timeless stories of history and the human heart through measured expressions of fluid and beautiful motion.

In this free video series, our expert dance instructor will demonstrate a variety of beginning ballet steps and positions. If you want to get started on your ballet dancing instruction, let our expert show you how to do a battement degeage position, a passe position, and a pique position. This is a great video for children just starting out with their ballet classes, or beginners looking for tips and advice on ballet form and position.

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Eileen O'Brien for Expert Village in Suncoast Dance Academy and we are here to demonstrate for beginner ballet or basic plie position in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Demonstrating for me is Julienne Stevens one of our expert teaches she is standing in her preparation position in 1st position heels together toes turned out. Standing up nice and tall, she is going to do a preparation movement with the arms before beginning your 1st plie and your 1st plies is demi-plié which is half of a plie. Knees goes out over the toes and then the leg straightens and then grand plie where the heels comes off the floor, knees over the toes, heels lower before the legs straightens. Beautiful! She is progressing to 2nd position with the feet apart again demi-plié, knees over the toes, body is still up right and her arm is following the position going on plie on second position where the heels still stay on the floor and that is the only position where that is true. 3rd position demi-plié and demi-plié, grand plie again heels comes off the floor, heels lower before the legs straighten and the arms follows. Beautiful job by Julienne and that concludes our first clip. "