Dance

Color Guard is visual music, our job is tell a story visually with our music, equipment, bodies and emotion.

Dance is so many things, color guard dance is creative dance with a goal of communicating the emotion of the music through movement.

4 Elements of Dance

Body, Space, Force, & Time

Body

Ballet

an artistic dance form performed to music using precise and highly formalized set steps and gestures.

Ballet is the basis for all dance, so we will learn a lot of basic ballet in color guard. Every dancer should know how to point their feet and toes, as well as how to turn our their legs and feet at all times while dancing. The dancing in show choreography tends to be more beginning contemporary or lyrical styles while using basic technique from ballet.

First Position

Place your heels together and toes facing equally out to either side. For a beginner, its best just to think of the heels as needing to touch and the feet at 45° angles.

The feet and legs should be equally turned out.

Second Position

Place your feet about hip distance apart, heels aligned. You want to have the feet and legs equally turned out.

It is important not to have your second position too wide that its not useful, or too narrow that it looks closer to a first position.

Third Position

Start in first position, then move the heel of one of your feet, touching middle of the other. Your legs should remain straight with the feet and legs turned out equally.

Third position can easily look similar to first or fifth, so be careful where you place your front foot.

We will use a version of Third Position a lot in color guard before your turn on Across-the-Floors. The difference in our version will be raising your left back heel up in "ready" position to step off on your left foot for count one.

Fourth Position

Place one foot in front of the other, about a foot’s distance apart. The legs and feet should be equally turned out away from the center of the body. It is important to remember not to have too wide of a fourth position that its not useful, or too narrow that it is confused with a “wide” fifth position. There are different thoughts on how crossed your feet should be, so be sure to clarify with your current choreographer on which part of your back foot is aligned with your front heel.

Fifth Position

Stand with your feet close together, one in front of the other and turned out away from the body. Place your front heel near the toes of your back foot.

The difficulty of fifth position is maintaining straight legs and proper turnout.

Sixth Position

Sixth Position is just a parallel version of the traditional first position.

Ballet Movements & Techniques

We will teach a few basic ballet movements in our Across-the-Floors as well as in show choreography.

Below are a few you should be familiar with in color guard.

Turn-Out

In ballet, turnout is rotation of the leg at the hips which causes the feet and knees to turn outward, away from the front of the body. This rotation allows for greater extension of the leg, especially when raising it to the side and rear. Turnout is an essential part of classical ballet technique.

Pointed & Flexed

Pointing and flexing refers to not only your toes but your feet

Battement

An extension of the leg to the front, side, or back, either repeatedly or as a single movement.

I will also say "step-brushes" after a tendu position as a description of the movement more than the actual ballet term.

Attitude

An attitude in ballet is a position where the dancer is standing on one leg with the other lifted, usually to the front or back. The leg in the air is bent at the knee so that it forms roughly a 145 degree angle.

It is important for a dancer not to over, or under, bend the leg in attitude causing the lifted and bent leg to look either too short or too long.

Chassé

Chassé is a classical ballet term meaning “to chase.” When a dancer is doing a chassé, they have one foot extended forward, the back foot then “chases” and meets up with the front for a quick moment before the front foot shoots forward again, all while traveling forward. They are often done one after the other in a series, but not always. The step is called chassé because the back foot literally looks like it is chasing after the front.

Chaînés

Chaînés is a classical ballet term that means “chains” or “links.” When a dancer is doing chaînés or “chaîné turns" they are performing a series of turns on both feet, picking up each foot back and forth in order to keep moving in a line or circle. It is considered one of the most basic turning step or exercise because you do not have to balance on one leg.

In Color Guard, we will begin by only teaching one chaîné turn at a time to focus on good technique as well as developing your spotting technique.

Spotting

Spotting is a ballet term that describes the action of a dancer’s head while turning. Learning how to spot correctly is a very important part of technique in all forms of dance. When spotting correctly, a dancer becomes much less dizzy (if at all) while turning, allowing for many turns in sequence.

When spotting, dancers will try to hold their head in place and fix their eyes on a “view” or picture (whether that is a wall of a classroom or the dark audience on a stage) as their body turns. Once a dancer physically can’t keep their head in the same position, they turn it around and try to see that same picture as before.

Dancers try to hit a perfect balance between using muscle to turn their head around and “help the turn” without gripping or tightening muscles too much. If so, the dancer may risk injury and tight neck and back muscles.

In classical ballet, having good spotting technique is important for both technical and aesthetic reasons.