Welcome back to 20 moves in 20 days. Today we are going to talk about Demi play. There are two types of plays in ballet we have our Demi play and our garage play. So today we'll tackle Jessa Demi and then tomorrow we'll also expand to our grand plan. Alright, so if you have a surface, it does not have to be a bar by the way, you can use your kitchen counter, you can use a stool or a chair, anything that will kind of help you balance just a little bit. We're not going to try to rely on the bar here or whatever surface you're you're using.

We don't want to think about you know, pushing down or anything like that, but it is there to support us. So, one thing that we want to think about is starting with our arm on on Bob and our feet in first position. And a play is just a bending of your legs and straightening that's all is there. There's a little more to it than that in the sense of our body place. But just to start, all we're gonna practice is just going down. And so I'm bending my knees and straightening, bending, and straightening.

That's all. That's all that a dummy play is right? Just a little bit of a bend, and a straighten. Okay? Now, to go along with that, though, there are some other things you want to think about. my upper body has to be very still, it does not get to participate in these plays, only my legs get to participate.

Okay, so my upper body I'm thinking of, I like to think of it in terms of energy. So in my upper body, my energy in the front of me is going up, all the energy is going up and out. And in the back behind me, all of the energy is going down. So I have this nice opposition happening. And that helps me to remember to think really, really pulled up and part of that is engaging your abdomen and lifting From your core all the way through up, so your whole presence is lifted, lifted, lifted up. Yes.

So even my chin is a little bit lifted here and my shoulders are down and back. So as we curve over my head, again, the energy is going to go downwards. So my shoulders are down and back, my tailbone is down, and flat. And I'm trying to think about going straight down and straight up when I play, so I don't want to try. I'm trying not to bend. So I'm trying not to do anything like this where I lean forward a little bit and then everything kind of gets all out of whack.

I want to think about keeping like my hips in line with my toes, in line with my knees, all of that is stacked. So shoulders over, hips over knees over toes. Yes. So again, I'm thinking of all the way down, and up and down, and up. And this is where having a mirror actually comes in really handy. Sometimes I know it's intimidating to think about.

I don't want to watch myself do stuff in the mirror. That's weird, but What's really wonderful about ballet and a classical ballet class is you do have mirrors. And I always say, they're, they're there as a tool for you. They're, they're not for you to criticize yourself. But they're there to take a look and say, Oh, you know what, I couldn't feel that I was bending forward, or I couldn't feel that I was pushing my hips, you know, back or something like that, but I can see it. And now I can fix it, right.

So again, thinking of everything all lined up, I just go straight down and straight up. Yes, we can do the same thing in second position in all the positions, we're going to do the same thing. So in second position, I'm simply going to go down, and up and down, and up. And I'm sure you'll notice you have a little bit more flexibility in your second position as opposed to your first so we just want to be careful, we're not going too far down. Just a nice pleasant bend and straighten is perfect. Okay, then in third position, same thing.

I'm going Down and up. And again, this is where it's really important to not force turnout, because I'm forcing the turnout. And then I try to bend, my knees are going to go ahead of my feet, and that's going to cause a lot of strain on my knees, which eventually causes problems. So I want to again, think about where's my natural turnout, where am I working from? I'm going to go straight down so my knees are over my toes and straight up. Okay, then in fourth position, it's the same thing.

Straight down right here. It's really easy to push forward with our upper body and back with our hips. And we get a lot of that that's really exaggerated, of course what I'm doing but we really want to think about being careful to go straight down and straight up in fourth position, it's really easy to get that kind of out of whack. And then in fifth position, again, your natural turnout, work through that first, you're going to go down and up and down. And eventually you can start incorporating your arms. For now what I would recommend is focusing on your upper body staying nice and straight and so that you're not doing anything wonky with your hips or your shoulders or anything like that.

And then after that, you can add in some arms, and we will kind of tackle that at another time for now. Good job learning, Demi, please, and meet me back here tomorrow for our grand please