Introduction

Fouetté Turns
Before I begin explaining anything about my Genius Hour project, I'm sure I need to explain my topic first.  Fouetté turns are a kind of turn that dancers perform in ballet, jazz, modern, and lyrical styles of dance.  The term fouetté is a ballet term.  It's meaning in French is to whip, which makes perfect sense because of how the turn works.  Instead of me trying to explain what it looks like, just watch this video.

This video shows the fouetté turns done with pointe shoes, which basically means the dancer is putting all of her weight on the very top of her toes.  Personally, I am not at the level to dance on pointe shoes so I will be learning to do them without the pointe shoes.  As you can see, the "whip" definition makes sense for this turn because the dancer uses the momentum of her leg to whip her upper body around to complete the turn.

Now that you know what my topic actually is, I think it's important to talk about how I plan to accomplish this goal.  I will be using the studio where I dance to practice in.  Having the right amount of space, the big mirror, the ballet barre, and the right kind of floor is necessary for me to learn this skill.  There are parts of the turn I can practice at home, but having the studio to practice in will make learning the turn much easier for me to do.  

I go to the studio almost every day of the week, and I plan to make time on Saturday and Sunday mornings to designate specifically to learning fouetté turns.  In addition, I will practice during the week at the studio occasionally, but mostly at home.To help me learn how to do these turns I will be asking a few peers from my dance studio who know how to do fouettés to come in and help me.  I'll also be using online tutorials, which there are a ton of on YouTube, and the help of an instructor if need be.  

My main goal for this project is to be able to execute at least four fouetté turns and land, gracefully, that's the key word.  These turns may look easy to do to some people, however making them look so controlled and fluid is extremely difficult.  To begin, I plan to work on the basic motion of the leg that isn't the supporting leg (the one that "whips").  Practicing a basic motion like this will allow me to keep the control that is needed when performing the actual turn.  

I think the hardest part about doing this project and learning fouettés specifically, is being willing to make an absolute fool out of myself if I fail at the beginning.  I know that I will obviously not get these turns right away, and I am not really sure how good I will be able to get by the end of this project.  It took a lot for me to choose this topic because of my fear of not being able to succeed with these turns.  But, I hope to use this blog to update you with all of my successes and failures with this project.  

To measure my progress I will post videos or just write about my progress with the turns.  This will include whether I completed a certain amount of turns, what I still need to work on, what I've improved on, what I can do to improve on the turns, and the variations that I have tried or practiced with the turns.  

Wish me luck and I will most likely be updating after this weekend.