The consequences of false positions are fatal. Simplicity in any style demands the greatest perfection.

 

Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), Lettres sur la danse et les ballets

 

 

What are Cecchetti’s Eight Directions of the Body?

And why should they be studied?

 

First, a “declaration of interest”. The author is Cecchetti-trained and teaches Cecchetti Method to amateur and pre-professional dancers.

Whilst there is no perfect method or system of classical ballet training that ‘solves all problems’, Cecchetti’s Days of the Week methodology aims to tackle them through classes based around a basic daily step, each with its corresponding movement quality. The six physical principles provide a key to understanding how all movement in classical dance actually works. Or does not work!

These six physical principles are outlined in an earlier essay on this site and video on YouTube: Ballet’s Secret Code.

Like his predecessor August Bournonville (1805-79, Ballet Master, Choreographer and Director of the Royal Danish Ballet) Cecchetti operated within a world where the classical principles inherited from the Greeks of proportion and relations, acknowledged Beauty as the tension between form and function, whether in architecture, engineering, painting or design. Bournonville, like Cecchetti taught ballet using a wide step vocabulary and sound physical principles.

 

An objective approach

Designed to be objective, Cecchetti’s approach is free from ideological messaging. For example in contrast, in the Soviet era, the classical ballet training of the Imperial Theatre which was honed to its apogee by the genius of Agrippina Vaganova, was re-tooled for grandiosity, emphasizing effort and force, in keeping with the ideology of the times. Another example can be found in the old French School which retained the mannerisms of the court of Louis XIV with the supercilious turn of the head and use of the eyes. These ideologies were neither artistically neutral nor objective.

In contrast, Cecchetti avoided parasitical additions and adhered to classical principles: form is function.

A teacher who follows the Cecchetti Method will cover all the basic steps and movement qualities needed to train a classical dancer to a high degree of technical competency in a scientifically well-thought out Method. This is why Cecchetti called his teaching a Method, in contrast to a System.

 

Cecchetti’s Essential Theoretical Principles

Enrico Cecchetti’s Positions of the Body also known as the Eight Directions of the Body form one part of his fourteen Essential Theoretical Principles, and are outlined in his teaching Manual.

These principles are: 1. The Positions of the Feet, 2. The Movements of the Foot, 3. The Study of the Legs, 4. The Study of the Hand, 5. The Positions of the Arms, 6. The Theory of Port de Bras, 7. The Positions of the Head, 8. The Movement of the Head, 9. Epaulement, 10. The Study of the Body, 11. Attitudes, 12. Arabesques, 13. Movements in Dancing, 14. The 8 Directions of the Body.

 

 

These shapes are elemental, directional positions that define recognisable and functional forms in the dance space. They can be reproduced on any point of the stage and facing any direction. There are three basic directions:

à la quatrième devant,

à la seconde 

à la quatrième derrière,

And five derivative positions:

croisé devant,

écarté,

effacé,

épaulé 

croisé derrière.

 

  

Why should they be studied?

 

Three Reasons:

 

1. The Notion of Tutto Tondo Or, ‘In the Round

The notion of tutto tondo or ‘full relief’ is a term used in sculpture to describe a statue that is free-standing, where the viewer can circumambulate the statue noting the contrapposto and chiaroscuro from different angles. This forms one of three reasons proposed by the author to study Cecchetti’s Eight Directions of the Body. The notion of Tutto tondo is opposite to bas-relief, which is a shallow projection from a supporting background.

Cecchetti uses this play of light and shadow in his derivative positions through the sloping lines of the arms and the carriage of the body. The arms are balanced or form arcs as though they are part of a spiral, the head ‘inclines’ rather than ‘turns’ -excepting in écarté– adding density and ambiguity to the form itself.

One of the physical difficulties dancers have is that they cannot move as fast as the music or convey every aspect of its complexity…some composers left spaces in their music for the ballet, such as Délibes and Tchaikovsky, however, no sane choreographer would attempt to interpret every aspect of a musical score! But these simple forms, these ‘building blocks from Cecchetti’, help fill the gaps.

Whilst the Eight Directions are initially learned facing the audience, the forms created may be rotated in the space or viewed from other angles, without needing to change or be renamed.

 

In other systems such as Vaganova, croisé, effacé, écarté, the three most-used positions, differ slightly in style from Cecchetti’s poses going by the same name; the former positions are learned and named based on what the spectator sees. By contrast, the Eight Directions of the Body in the Cecchetti Method exist independently of the spectator’s point of view, a shorthand form, enabling the choreographer to demand that a certain pose be shifted towards another direction, without renaming it – thus avoiding confusion.

 

2. Bio-mechanics

If we look back to the time when Cecchetti was teaching, from the 1890’s until the mid-1920s, there was no health insurance, no physiotherapy, and working life expectancy was lower than it is today. The human body, and a fortiori the dancer’s body and soul, bearing in mind that it takes ten years to train a classical dancer, was a precious instrument, to be molded, strengthened, and guarded against injury, through a rational and moral approach to technique and artistic interpretation.

Cecchetti addressed several problems of ballet technique in his Method using the ‘Least Action Principle’. The Method he called The Days of the Week focused on a family of steps with a specific physical principle such as épaulement or transference of weight, which was practised on the same day each week, gradually developing competency through cycles of repetition and variation.

Cecchetti’s Method aims to embody The Least Action Principle, working within anatomical limits to preserve the dancer’s physical and mental vitality, reducing visible tension and excessive wear and tear on the muscles and joints. The carriage of the head and arms in the Eight Directions of the Body is designed with this principle in mind. It should not merely be dismissed upon a cursory glance as a set of poses in the ‘Romantic style’ or labelled ‘old-fashioned’.

 

3. Choreographic Simplicity

The choreographic simplicity of Cecchetti’s Eight Directions of the Body provides the dancer and choreographer with an uncomplicated approach to placement and direction, particularly in groupings. This is an ‘in-the-round’ approach, not hindered by the ‘Fourth wall’, or the audience, typified by a proscenium-arch theatre, although the directions are learned ‘facing the audience’.

Once learned and understood, the eight positions can be replicated without corrupting their intrinsic body shapes, ad infinitum. They become an automatic point of reference for the dancer when learning new enchaînements or choreography.

The term ‘body shapes’ was coined and explored in detail by the late Roger Tully, in his manual entitled The Song sings the Bird. The author was his pupil for more than two decades.

Roger Tully explained to us the importance of the torso in creating the forms of classical dance which he termed ‘body shapes’. He used the example of archaeologists attempting to reconstruct a Greek statue missing a limb, and how they would be able to determine the placement of the limb from the torso’s musculature.

When performing any exercise using Cecchetti’s Eight Directions, the clarity, position and emotional resonance of the form should be obvious, even if there is no dégagé of the leg or port de bras. The position is indicated by correct use of the torso, head and eye-focus.

 

Background to the naming of the Eight Directions of the Body in the Cecchetti Method

 

The First Manual and the influence of August Bournonville

Cecchetti wrote his first manual on ballet technique in French whilst dancing and teaching in St. Petersburg at the Imperial Theatre in 1894. It is called ‘Manuel des exercices de danse théatrale à pratiquer chaque jour de la semaine, à l’usage de mes elèves’. It contains barre and centre exercises, theory, quotations from ‘An Elementary Treatise upon the Theory and Practice of the Art of Dancing’ by Carlo Blasis (whose pupil Giovanni Lepri was Cecchetti’s teacher) and some dance notation. In this manual, it appears that Cecchetti adopted Bournonville’s series of ‘5 Positions and Directions’ found in the Danish Master’s technical manual ‘Etudes Chorégraphiques’ of 1861, namely (a) ‘a l’effacé’, (b) le croisé, (c) l’épaulé, (d) en-avant, en-arrière, de côté, (e) obliquement (en-avant et en arrière) and to which he added écarté.

 

Erik Bruhn, in his book on Bournonville and Ballet Technique writes that it is highly likely Cecchetti met Bournonville on more than one occasion, whilst dancing in Copenhagen and St. Petersburg in the 1870s, and that he was sufficiently influenced by the great Danish ballet master and choreographer to include the Foreword of Bournonville’s ‘Etudes Chorégraphiques’ in his 1894 manual. Not only that, Cecchetti wrote in the manual:

 ‘…and now, to facilitate the description of the exercises which I present to you, I will cite Mr Bournonville again, and in disputing some of his prescriptions I hope to make my own better understood’. 

By 1922 an updated and more comprehensive version of Cecchetti’s Manual had been written and published in London by Cyril Beaumont, overseen by Cecchetti himself and with the practical help of Stanislaw Idzikowski, dancer at the Ballets Russes. It is titled; ‘A manual of the theory and practice of classical theatrical dancing (Cecchetti Method)’ and is still in print. In this Manual we find described in detail the 14 Essential Theoretical Principles and by this time also, the naming and illustration of all the Basic Positions. They are termed The Eight Directions of the Body.

 

A Shorthand Form for the elemental, directional shapes in space

Cecchetti’s Eight Directions consist of three basic directions and five derivative positions, the building blocks of forms that reappear in increasingly complex choreography.

In the daily class, the basic poses and directions in space are defined, from their simple repetition à terre in centre practice through the adage, where the gesture leg is held at 90 degrees, and finally to allegro, when the dancer creates dynamic forms in the air, travelling across the room.

The centre practice exercises using the Eight Directions of the Body proceed in this order:

1. croisé devant
2. à la quatrième devant,
3. écarté,
4. effacé devant,
5. à la seconde,
6. épaulé,
7. à la quatrième derrière,
8. croisé derrière.

Although students learn these as though proceeding around a clock-face, one could also imagine them as the world in its daily procession about the axis. Beginning with croisé devant, representing the dawn, devant and écarté represent the daytime directions, while the positions derrière represent the evening and nighttime directions.

The extensions to the downstage directions (towards the spectator) emphasize uprightness in the frontal plane; those towards the upstage directions (away from the spectator) emphasize a ‘high and long’ shape in the back; that is, the back has to be lengthened by leaning slightly forward; while in écarté and à la seconde both the front and back of the torso must be held equally ‘high and wide’.

Thus, the Eight Directions become a shorthand form for the elemental, directional shapes as well as manifesting a procession (clockwise or anticlockwise).

 

Please Note!

In order to test on one’s own body how the Eight Directions work, and preserve the tutto tondo (in the round) design, the dancer reading this will be asked to avoid all hyper-extensions, that is, to raise the gesture leg to hip-height and no higher (save in the écarté position), and to cross the fifth position no further than the big-toe joint, so as to avoid twisting the hips and flattening the spinal curves.

One could argue that one of the main reasons that the Cecchetti Method is not taught in most ballet schools worldwide, is that the in-the-round ‘body shapes’ are incompatible with hyper-extensions (e.g. the “Six o’clock” à la seconde and arabesque penchée). From the point of view of the spectator, the visual effect of the high lifted leg may appear impressive but when viewed from the side and behind, the gymnastic contortion in the spine and hips becomes obvious, detracting from any possibility of intellectual appreciation of the form. The extreme leg lifting of other systems does not work when dancing Cecchetti’s advanced enchaînements without applying undue force and strain.

 

The order of the Eight Fixed Points of the Room in the Cecchetti Method

 

Seen from where the dancer stands, the Eight Fixed Points of the Room indicate a relationship to the points of the room or the stage. As these differ to the Vaganova system it may be helpful to explain them now before describing how the Eight Directions of the Body are arranged in Cecchetti’s centre practice and adages.

Facing the audience, the dancer numbers off each corner beginning with downstage right, termed ‘corner 1’. To avoid confusion, this is the corner closest to the dancer’s right-hand side as he faces the audience, or the “mirrors”, or “front”, as in the diagram (left).

As he turns 90 degrees counterclockwise to the left, to face the downstage left corner, that is ‘corner 2’. Continuing counterclockwise, upstage left is ‘corner 3’, and upstage right, ‘corner 4’.

The 4 walls are numbered sequentially 5, 6, 7 and 8, similarly rotating counterclockwise about oneself, beginning with ‘wall 5’, which is facing directly to the audience; turn 90 degrees and stage left will be ‘wall 6’, upstage with the dancer’s back towards the audience ‘wall 7’, and stage right ‘wall 8’.

 

The Three Basic Positions: à la quatrième devant, à la seconde and à la quatrième derrière

 

 

The three basic directions: à la quatrième devant, à la seconde and à la quatrième derrière, are learned à terre with a battement tendu, (or dégagé) directly facing the spectator (or Cecchetti’s wall ‘5’, or the front). In French the à la means ‘towards’ indicating a direction rather than a position.

The three basic directions are simple templates for the derivative positions.

 

The Five Derivative Positions: croisé devant, effacé, écarté, épaulé, croisé derrière

And what they mean

Whereas the basic directions face directly to the spectator, in the derivative positions the body turns towards a corner. The arms, head and eye-focus also are all used differently. This allows for greater expressive potential.

The derivative positions develop into complex adage and allegro forms, depending on choreographic invention. Whilst the three basic directions are found in other dance forms and indeed, other kinds of movement, the five derivative positions are unique to the classical dance.

croisé devant, meaning ‘crossed front’ or ‘crossed before the body’,

effacé devant, meaning ‘withdrawn front’ commonly mis-translated as ‘shaded front’,

écarté meaning ‘widen’ also translated as ‘broadened’, ‘separated’ and ‘pulled apart’ being sideways extension towards the downstage or upstage corner,

épaulé meaning ‘shouldered’, and

croisé derrière, meaning ‘crossed behind’ or ‘crossed to the back’.

NB: devant and derrière should not be confused with “en avant” and “en arrière” which mean moving towards the front or downstage, and moving towards the back, or upstage.

 

Croisé Devant; ‘crossed front’

In Cecchetti Method, croisé devant is first in the sequence of the Eight Directions.

Unlike croisé devant in other systems, the head is inclined towards downstage rather than turned. This inclination of the head, along with the arms’ placement, gives Cecchetti’s croisé devant a particularly agreeable form, free of any “martial” flavour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: In all Cecchetti’s derivative positions, the lower arm is held differently than in other systems. In croisé devant, rather than in second, which is the usual position for the downstage croisé arm, the lower arm curves slightly downwards, in demi-seconde, providing a counterbalance to the raised arm and forming a wide ‘S’ shape. The arms and upper body create part of a spiral.

Contrast this position with the more usual croisé devant of other schools. The side arm is held at a right angle to the high 4^th and the head turned to face the audience -or even further, towards the opposite downstage corner:

 

 

At first glance croisé devant appears ambivalent: while the face, arms and torso are held open and wide without shadow, with the hips and shoulders in the same alignment, yet the legs are crossed.

The crossing of one leg over the other initiates a torsion or twist, which in turn launches the spiral. This eventually yields the sophisticated form of attitude, and the movement quality and dynamic thrust in pirouette.

Bio-mechanically, crossing of the legs creates stability and introduces depth by adding an X-shape onto the diagonal plane.  What is more, the X-shape holds the potential for moving dynamically either along the diagonal or rotating about the self.

  

Effacé or effacé devant; ‘withdrawn front’

In the Cecchetti Method, effacé devant is fourth in the sequence of the Eight Directions, after écarté. Effacer means to ‘withdraw’, ‘pull back’, ‘vanish’ or ‘wipe out’.

In the Cecchetti Manual, effacé is translated as ‘shaded’, which is inaccurate. It may have arisen from the vernacular of Edwardian London when Cecchetti was teaching.

Like croisé devant, effacé devant is perceived as a complex ambiguous form. Whilst effacé appears at first glance to be a sunny, open pose, the placing of the arms and head contradict this, being introverted, reflective in look and sensation.

Thus, translating effacé as ‘withdrawal from’ is a fitting description.

 

Note how the head position in Cecchetti’s effacé contributes to its ambivalence, rather than using the direct turn of the head as is more prevalent in other systems.

 

Inclining gently towards the raised arm, as though resting on a pillow, the head adds weight and repose and creates an effect as if ‘listening’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cecchetti’s effacé is a beautifully proportioned and noble pose, candid yet self-assured. Conforming to the notion of tutto tondo, the dancer herself appears to be part of a spiral. She is at ease but poised for action, the very essence of Terpsichore.

 

There is a fencing reference for effacer in the Littré, the French language reference dictionary: Escrime

‘Se présenter bien de côté, en offrant la moindre surface’. (transl: ‘To present oneself sideways on with the least amount of body showing’)

 

The preparatory position for a duel shows a fencer withdrawing his torso and hips virtually full sideways-on to the opponent, thus presenting the narrowest possible surface for attack; the rear arm is bent and raised at shoulder height, to assist with balance.

One can see the resemblance to the ballet pose of effacé.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the sequence of the Eight Directions, having just completed écarté, (see below) the dancer unwinds into the effacé, the arms change overhead and the downstage shoulder withdraws from view of the spectator. The gesture leg rotates in the hip into a forwards facing position, still en diagonale but this time it is as though the leg gently anchors the pose as the dancer comes to rest facing the downstage corner. The head is inclined, and the eye-focus becomes introspective, the dancer is facing the audience in a pensive pose.

 

Differences of Effacé and Ouverte in the French School

In the French School, both effacé and ouverte are used to describe the position termed effacé in the Vaganova system and Cecchetti Method.

In the Grammaire de la Danse Classique of the French School, the French School pose termed quatrième devant ouverte is the equivalent to the Vaganova and Cecchetti effacé devant.

Effacé in the French school is shown with the opposite arm raised overhead and termed quatrième effacé:

 

 

Croisé Devant and Effacé Devant; as explained by Vaganova, Legat and Volynski

From a theatrical perspective, a pose in croisé invites the audience to perceive the way the dancer stands in and moves around space differently relative to a pose in effacé.

Agrippina Vaganova explained her concept of croisé and effacé in her Russian Ballet Technique manual ‘Basic Principles of Classical Ballet’. It is found under the heading of Epaulement:

‘Speaking of épaulement, we arrive at the two basic positions of classical ballet and point out their indispensability for the development of diversity and completeness in the forms of the dance….croisé and effacé……

CROISE

The fundamental characteristic of croisé is the crossing of the legs. The crossing can be forward or backward…

EFFACE

In this position, in contrast with croisé, the legs are open.’[1]

Similarly, Nadine Nicolaeva-Legat, wife of Nicholas Legat names croisé and effacé as the two principal positions of épaulement in her book Ballet Education which details her husband’s technique for the teaching of classical ballet. Nicholas Legat was a principal dancer at the Imperial Theatre concurrent with Cecchetti and they became friends. Without straying into the complex discussion of épaulement it may be useful to note her comments about it in relationship to art:

‘Epaulement and the rules for it may be compared to the foreshortening in the arts of drawing and painting, such rules making for harmonious proportions in the eye of the spectator’ [2]

Serge Lifar’s Treaty of Academic Dancing has an evocative description of croisé and effacé by the legendary ballet critic Akim Volynski, (translated from the French by Katharine Kanter):

‘Effacé and croisé are notions derived from en-dehors and en-dedans. Here is what the great Russian art critic Volynski had to say:

“As a position, croisé represents a state of gestation in the broadest sense. While ice is croisé, as it melts down it becomes effacé. Condensed vapour is croisé; but when it serves to power a machine it becomes effacé. Here one has the concatenation of eternal phenomena present in nature: before our eyes, unconsciously, two poles, two images, two modi operandi change place unceasingly.

“Take the simplest example of effacé in nature: from its shell, the snail emerges, to slither forwards bearing its shell on its back. As it creeps out, the snail as it were unfolds, presents itself to the light, and becomes en-dehors. Without, however, this being the self-same, conscious en-dehors seen on stage. The former is a special case of effacé, lacking apperception and therefore instinctive. So the hedgehog shooting out his quills – effacé, indeed, but not the en-dehors one would see on stage, which strictly speaking, will result from thought, an act of will.

“Croisé poses virtually hypnotise the spectator. Crouched to pounce, a cat will frighten off the dog about to attack him. We are shaken at the sight of a clenched fist, or of a hand closing on the sabre-grip. Not so long ago, an adversary would be intimidated by the sight of enemy troops in battle order. In society, a man in a croisé pose conveys a certain state to others, reinforcing its active potential. A loaded rifle hypnotises the soldier or hunter. And a dispute may turn sour with a loaded revolver lying near to hand.”

 

  Écarté; ‘widened’

 

Écarté means to separate, to pull apart or to ‘widen’. It is third in the sequence, preceding effacé, and the broadest form of all Eight Directions.

 

Écarté is the derivative of the à la seconde direction, placed on the diagonal, head turned and eye focus towards downstage.

 

Cecchetti écarté differs from other schools because the downstage, raised arm is placed further away from the head counterbalancing the upstage arm, and it is not held as high as in other schools, where it is often placed above the head.

 

Bio-mechanically this makes sense, using the Least Action Principle again, the dense pictoral and emotional charge of this powerfully wide form is conveyed through the balanced oppositions of the arms and turn of the head.

Eye focus is key.

Richard Glasstone, the international authority on Cecchetti, would compare écarté to holding a mirror in the hand of the raised arm and gazing at one’s reflection.

 

In Cecchetti method the position of écarté derrière is also used, the head is turned towards downstage, with the eye focus lowered and directed over the lower arm.

 

Cecchetti uses écarté derrière in adages and pirouettes, such as at the end of renversé en dedans (also termed tir bouchon in the French and Russian schools) but it does not appear in the processional sequence of the Eight Directions of the Body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The more familiar position of écarté derrière is used as shown here. In most instances the head is turned away, usually towards downstage, with the eye focus is lowered and directed over the lower arm, the raised leg extends towards the upstage corner.

 

 Épaulé; ‘shouldered’

In the progression of the Eight Directions of the Body, épaulé follows sixth, after à la seconde.

Épaulé, meaning ‘shouldered’, in this instance refers to a pose in second arabesque; that is, the downstage arm is extended forwards in opposition to the ‘gesture’ leg, which extends towards the upstage diagonal. There is strong épaulement, or a twist in the torso above the waist which enables expansion and stability in the form; for example, to help maintain the lift and shape of a grande jeté en avant in 2^nd arabesque, but the hips remain square, facing towards the downstage corner.

In contrast to the croisé devant, from the point of view of the spectator, the downstage arm appears to cross over the chest and partly hides the upper torso from view, the legs are uncrossed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Margot Fonteyn in Apparitions by Frederick Ashton, who had trained with Ninette de Valois, a pupil of Cecchetti. The pose shows épaulé with a variation of port de bras and raised eyeline.

 

Alicia Alonso in grande jeté en avant showing arabesque épaulé. From the spectator’s viewpoint, as with most arabesques, it conveys a sense of reaching after an ideal, or into an infinite distance.

 

Croisé derrière; ‘crossed back’

In the progression of the Eight Directions of the Body, croisé derrière is the final position after à la quatrième derrière.

 

Cecchetti’s croisé derrière differs in appearance to the same named pose in other systems, using the same arm lifted in 4^th en haut as the standing leg, rather than lifting the opposite arm to the standing leg.

 

As with the other derivative positions, the side arm is in demi- seconde not second position and the head is inclined away from the spectator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To those familiar with the style, the incline of the head and looking under the raised arm resembles the iconic port de bras of ballets in the Romantic period, early to mid- 19^th century

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the French and Vaganova schools, the upstage arm is held overhead in croisé derrière, the downstage arm à la seconde. The head turns strongly towards the audience, emphasizing stability of form and a more defined ‘pause’. The chest is lifted and wide towards the audience.

 

 

The croisé derrière with the downstage arm is also used in the Vaganova system of training, and this version more closely resembles the Cecchetti pose:

 

Changing the arm affects the bio-mechanic potential of the pose

With the head inclined, the gesture can be interpreted as ‘listening’, ‘contemplation’, ‘introspection’ or ‘retreat’. Where the head inclines away from the audience, the pose being held through the back rather than the front of the torso, the spectator sees a complex form. Although the legs cross, suggesting a pause in the flow of movement, there is a sense of dynamic potential for moving upstage. Less force is needed to propel the dancer upstage (en remontant) in contrast to the more familiar croisé derrière form in other systems. For this reason alone, the Cecchetti croisé derrière is worth exploring. Simply by changing the upstage overhead arm so the downstage arm is raised, and inclining the head slightly to the back foot, one senses the differences.

Cecchetti addresses this precise issue of both kinds of croisé derrière, in his 4^th and 8^th Ports de Bras. An example using Cecchetti’s 4^th Port de Bras in the classical repertoire appears with the Jewel Fairies entrance, Act III of The Sleeping Beauty.

 

Cecchetti Adages using the processional directions: Trois, Cinq, Six and Huit Relevés

The traditional Cecchetti exercise that includes all Eight Directions is the Saturday adage called Huit Relevés, which is based upon développé and a test of balance in each direction, now found in the Diploma syllabus. Six Relevés explores the 5 derivative positions of the body. There are two further adages exploring the three basic directions of the body: Trois Relevés and Cinq Relevés.

 

How do Cecchetti’s Eight Directions of the Body differ from those used in other systems such as Vaganova, Legat and Bournonville?

The main differences are visually obvious as explained above; the Cecchetti positions balance the height of the top arm with the use of demi-seconde of the lower arm and the head is usually inclined rather than turned- except for écarté and épaulé. The positions are designed to work in tutto tondo and learning them as a sequence as though moving ‘around a clock face’ enable a choreographic shorthand for the dancer and choreographer.

Other differences arise with the biomechanical potential in the poses and how much force or effort is required to move into and out of them.

Inherent Dynamic Potential

In terms of bio-mechanical advantage, the 5 derivative forms of the Basic Positions: croisé devant, effacé devant, écarté, épaulé and croisé derrière, use the Least Action Principle, allowing the dancer to move from one pose or step to another, without applying unnecessary force.

Even when first learned as static, elemental poses, the derivative positions hold an inherent dynamic potential.

For example, the inclined head is used as a weight over the standing leg in effacé, helpful for the hovering quality in cabriole devant. The head may incline over the gesture leg for stability, such as in croisé devant or derrière.

Using épaulement in the torso in écarté and épaulé, the shape is expanded en l’air in allegro or adage. In the case of épaulé, the head is both inclined and slightly raised over the gesture leg for grande jeté en avant.

Once these directions have been integrated as pure forms they can easily be adapted with different styles of ports de bras, eye-line or turn of the head, depending on the classwork or choreography.

The Cecchetti Method of developing a classical technique differs considerably from other schools. for example, much of the power of the Vaganova trained dancer comes from the legs and the back. In the Cecchetti Method the emphasis is on building complete co-ordination of the arms, legs, head and eye focus with force generated and released through use of épaulement (opposition about the centre), and transference of weight.

 

“When the Shapes are clear the Dance will appear!” 

(Roger Tully)

 

On teaching Cecchetti’s Eight Directions of the Body to young students beginning the study of classical ballet

As a teacher of ballet to children, I follow the basic principles of the Cecchetti Method allowing the dancer to develop technical competency within the constraints of classical ballet training. It does not depend upon a hyper-flexible natural facility or gymnastic prowess.

For the older students who have a grasp of abstract concepts, I refer to Roger Tully’s classes and his body shapes. Roger Tully respected the anatomy and beauty of the human form and created many of his enchaînements around the notion of the spiral. They work in tutto tondo.

In his studio, he had a poster of the statue of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, juxtaposed with an iconic photo of Galina Ulanova as Juliet, to help illustrate this notion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

Like operatic singing, classical dance emerged as a derivative form of classical tonal music. While in the opera, one sees on the orchestral score itself the “blank” left for the vocal line, a ballet score has no visible such line:  it is produced by the dancer as an unheard voice.  Composers as skillful as Tchaikovsky, sensitive to the severe constraints posed to the dancer by gravity and imbalance (unlike an instrumentalist, the dancer is not sitting, or standing firmly on two feet, but always off-balance on one foot!), seems to have written in those “blanks” as space to move.

The beauty of the Cecchetti in-the-round directions is that they help the dancer to overcome gravity and imbalance, enabling him – without sacrificing density of expression – to move at extremes, either very fast and off-balance, or very slow and on-balance.

Or, one might wish to consider the various croisé/effacé/écarté shadings produced by the Eight Directions, as though they were modes, reflecting Western music’s tonal major/minor modes, or the ancient Greek modes.

In summary, this essay has sought to illustrate the importance of Cecchetti’s Eight Directions of the Body within classical ballet training and how and why they differ to the positions similarly named, of other ballet schools.

The clarity and unambiguity of Cecchetti’s Eight Directions of the Body make them straightforward to learn and are a vital part of his ‘Method of Classical Theatrical Dancing’. Ultimately the aim is for each dancer to not only master technique but also to develop their intellectual capacity for artistic expression and eventually grasp the higher notions of performance of this most complex and beautiful art form.

As a closing sentiment, I quote again the ballet critic Akim Volynski:

‘In ancient Greece the people already knew that the body could speak. One need only look at the figures of the sepulchral monuments of the so-called stelai to see how expressive the body and its posture can be…… Similarly the body by itself speaks, sings and occasionally shouts more fully and sonorously than the human word. In the same museum you will find many figures without heads-they have fallen off over the centuries- ….…. How vividly these fragments of the torso live, how much they say to us through the waves of pleats in their tunics, which Goethe called the thousandfold echo of the human body.”

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Basic Principles of Classical Ballet, Vaganova A., trans Chujoy A., A. & C. Black, London 1953

[2] Ballet Education Nicolaeva-Legat N., Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd. London 1947