Learn The Five Basic Steps
If your son or daughter would like to learn ballet dancing, here is an easy to follow guide on the five basic ballet positions.
First Position
The first position is when your toes are apart and your heels are squeezed together. Many people try to turn out their toes too much and this creates stress on the knees, so follow your natural turnout line and stand fully supported and very tall. Make sure you are not rolling onto the inside of your foot around the outside. Make sure your feet and your weight are directly over and centered on your toes.
Then your arms are going to be like they are around a beach ball and you should have your arms directly in front of your belly button. Not too high and not too low. So directly in front of your belly button, your chest is open, your shoulders are down and you are engaging your back and stand in the first position.
Second Position
Your arms and legs are out the side. You actually want to gauge the length of your second position by putting one toe next to your heal an opening it out and extending it a little further. You shouldn’t have too wide of a second position or too narrow as you won’t be fully supported when your moving around in that position.
Second position arms are round and slightly forward you don’t want to pull your arms too far back so keep them nice round and forward.
Third Position
For the third position, your leg comes out and your heal is going to be placed infront of the toe with your arm coming out in front of your belly button. You want to make sure that your third position is not too wide just like the second position an not too narrow. You want to have a pretty narrow third position which will help you when you do turns in the centre.
Fourth Position
The fourth position is used at a very basic level and is one you practice to get to the fifth position. You want to put your heel to the center of your foot an stand with both feet firmly on the ground and the feet turned out. Your arms are going to come one high above your head and one directly to the side. Make sure that both arms are rounded and that your chest is lifted and your neck is long.
Fifth Position
Both arms are up very high and your chest is open with shoulders down and your feet and heals are going to be connected. You don’t want to try to squeeze your turnout and make both feet and heals connected fully. You want to follow the natural line of your turnout and make sure that when you plie your knees are going directly over your toes.
Standing in the fifth position, your arms are going to go all the way up like the picture above, which is called the high fifth. The low fifth is when you lower your arms down to the belly button area while holding them in the same shape as the high fifth.