Modern Dance Warm-Ups: 1st Position Relevé

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Chell Garcia-Trias and I'm a modern dance instructor in Austin, Texas. I am going to show you how to do releves in first position the way we would do them in modern dance. So first we have to find first position. I am going to do that by bringing my feet together bending my knees and just gently opening my toes up to first position, just to where it is comfortable for me, just where when I bend my knees, I can see my knees coming over my toes, tracking my toes so once I have found that I am going to imagine a zipper zipping up to my stomach and it is going to pull my stomach muscles in a little bit and it is going to drop my tail bone a little bit and I'm just going to leave my hands down to the side while I imagine the energy from the tip of my head going up and out a little bit. And I'm going to imagine pushing a melon in between my legs, squeezing a melon and I'm going to come up on my toes while I squeeze that melon up and down and up. So to warm up I'm just going to come up and down, up and down. If I want I can do some plies in between, plies, releve, plies releve. Since it is modern dance I am just going to let my arms hang to the side. I'm not going to lift them up into a ballet fifth position or anything that that I'm just going to let them hang to the sides, plies, releve, plies, releve. So that is a nice way to just warm up our legs or begin to warm up our legs in a modern dance first position while doing releves."