Perfect Your Piqué Arabesque With Christina Johnson

“Piqué arabesque is this beautiful, magical step that can take somebody’s breath away,” she continues. “And yet, nobody in the audience understands what kind of work it takes to get there.” Indeed, this deceptively simple move can be surprisingly hard to get right.

Below, Johnson offers her advice for a beautifully suspended piqué arabesque.   

Focus on the Pelvis

Johnson’s biggest tip for a successful piqué arabesque is to lead with the pelvis. “It’s easy to lead with the chest or the torso,” says Johnson. “But you want to follow the pelvis.” She often sees dancers, especially those who are hypermobile, lead with their chest and tip their hips down as they piqué into position. Doing so will make it harder to sustain and control your arabesque. Instead, engage your turnout (“Feel the muscles wrapping around your sitz bones”) and imagine that your hips are headlights. Keep those headlights beaming forward, with your torso on top of the pelvis. “You want to be like the bow of a ship,” Johnson says.

Push and Lengthen

As you start your piqué, maintain what Johnson calls the “fifth position/fourth position corridor,” with the back leg in plié and the front leg stretched out along this imaginary corridor, not to the side. Push off the back foot and continue lengthening through the front leg—Johnson says to piqué two inches further than you normally go, which forces the push needed for piqué. “You’re not bringing the toe back to you,” she continues. “I often see a slight buckling of the piqué leg when that happens.”

Time Your Position

Your leg should arrive in arabesque as soon as your piqué foot hits the floor. “The arabesque shouldn’t get there gradually,” says Johnson, “but it’s also not ‘aggressive.’ Your piqué leg and your arabesque leg arrive at the same time.”

Arms and Upper Body

Your arms, whether they are in first or second arabesque, or another variation, are responding to your back, says Johnson. The same goes with the head—let it go with the torso, as opposed to pulling back the neck or jutting the chin forward. “There’s a natural curve to the neck that you don’t want to lose.”

Control Over Height

Johnson often sees dancers open the rib cage to achieve a higher arabesque, sacrificing both line and control. Instead, feel both sides of the back working, with a sense of opposition. “If one side tends to twist open, address that by practicing with a lower leg,” says Johnson. “Find the strength to hold it, and then, once you have that, slowly start lifting it back up.”

Not all dancers are built the same, of course—some struggle with scoliosis or tighter hips, which can affect the arabesque line. Make slight adjustments if necessary. “Sometimes the torso does have to kind of twist a little, or the hips have to open more, to get the line that we’re after,” says Johnson. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward continuing to keep both sides of the back coming forward. And as I said before, it’s more important to keep the leg lower and feel what the torso needs to be doing, as opposed to distorting the integrity of your technique for the height of the leg.”