The Importance of the Hands

Who would have thought the Green Eyed Monster would be the source for further blog inspiration?

I promise there is no tone of pride in those words. Just a wry observation.

And just how did said Green Eyed Monster emerge again? Well, it all started at the first class of the term. A new term means both familiar faces in the studio and the appearance of new ones. Some will try the class for a little while and disappear unnoticed, whilst other faces gradually become one of the familiars.

So enter a new face. Enter a new Nose (please see my very unclassy blog post of August 2017). This Nose is tall, straight-backed, sporting demi-pointes and has an extension that rivals that of the teacher.

“Oh dear,” I thought, “someone new to dislike intensely.”

But then, as the second group performed the adage in the centre, the Green Eyed Monster glanced over at the Nose and caught sight of her hands as she moved through to second arabesque.

They were dreadful.

The Green Eyed Monster smirked before I wrestled it back into the “Unacceptable Behaviour for a Grown Woman” box.

Monsters aside, it was something of a shame. There she had a beautiful line from the point of her toes all the way up to her wrist but then the poise of her hand destroyed it all. Her index finger pointed stiffly to the sky like an antenna and all other digits were held rigidly perpendicular to it.

Those new to ballet might have heard the term ‘line’ in passing and might wonder what exactly it means and why I’m making such a fuss. American Ballet Theatre dictionary defines the ballet line as:

“[t]he outline presented by a dancer while executing steps and poses. A dancer is said to have a good or bad sense of line according to the arrangement of head, body, legs and arms in a pose or movement. A good line is absolutely indispensable to the classical dancer.”

It is worth repeating: the ballet line is “absolutely indispensable to the classical dancer”.

As an illustration, a well performed arabesque is a very clear way of observing a beautiful ballet line:

Royal Ballet principal Sarah Lamb

If you look at the above picture, imagine there’s a beam, or line, of light that’s travelling from Sarah’s extended leg, gliding up her torso and along her right arm to her hand. The light would flow smoothly across her body and continue on its way, such is the way she holds her hands. It’s almost like her index finger is showing the beam the way to travel. Indeed, even if that line of light was travelling from her left hand to her right, it would still be unbroken.

But the Nose’s hand did the opposite: it stopped the light. Though her hands are only a small percentage of her body, they had successfully broken the entire line.

So how should she have been holding her hands?

The difficulty of an exact definition

There are several major schools of ballet throughout the world: from the United Kingdom, the Royal Academy of Dance; from America, Balanchine; Russia, Vaganova; France, The French School; Denmark, Bournonville; and from Italy, Cecchetti.

Each of these schools has developed its own style and its own preference for how certain steps and movements should be seen and performed. Thus there is no one set way the hands should be held. There are, however, similarities throughout.

Let’s have a look at two definitions:

“Hands and wrists should be relaxed and natural, flowing along with the arm, with space between the fingers.”

Eliza Gaynor Minden, The Ballet Companion  

“All fingers are grouped freely and are soft in their joints; the thumb touches the middle finger; the wrist is not bent, but the hand continues the general curved line of the arm from the shoulder.”

Agrippina Vaganova, Basic Principles of Classical Ballet

These are the American and the Russian schools of thought, and whilst they have their differences, such as how the thumb and middle finger are held or the space between the fingers, both clearly require the hands to continue the ‘flow’ of the arm and to be relaxed.

No hard angles, no spiky fingers, just the gentle continuance of the line of the arm. A clear path for that beam of light to follow.

The hands, in short, are just as important as everything else.

Oh NO, something else to think about

You might well be thinking “Hands are the least of my concerns right now”, and I understand. I know that when new to ballet there are SO many things to think about: pointed toes, straight legs, shoulders back, neck erect, POINTED TOES, pull up from the hips…

The list is circular. Just when you think you’ve mastered one aspect, like keeping your shoulders down, your teacher points out something else that needs attention. So your brain shifts its focus to closing tightly in fifth after each glissé and the next thing you hear is, “Remove your shoulders from around your ears”.

It is perfectly understandable that those things dangling at the end of your wrists are very low on your list of priorities.

But the Nose has illustrated oh-so clearly (the blogger wrote without glee) that they must not be neglected.

Tips that helped me

As always, your teacher is the best person to ask and to guide you, but a couple of tips have stayed with me since my early days in the ballet studio:

• Even if you are not of the Vaganova school where your thumb and middle finger touch, one of my beloved RAD teachers said to keep ‘your thumb and middle finger talking’, that is, facing each other throughout. This will help stop that thumb from forgetting its place and sticking out at a jaunty angle.

• When lowering your arms from second to bras bas, that same teacher advised me to lead the movement with the finger next to the pinky instead of, say, the index finger. This will help to stop the hands from over-flourishing inwardly (let’s pretend that that’s a technical description), keeping them correctly positioned all the way through to bras bas.