French For Dancers Newsletter: Adagio & Allegro, Part 2

French For Dancers

Demystifying dance terminology and steps for dancers and dance-lovers!

Issue 12: Adagio & Allegro, Part 2: Allegro

Bonjour! Welcome to French For Dancers!

This week, a little more Italian for Dancers!

Parlez-Vous Ballet?

(Do you speak Ballet?)

ADAGIO AND ALLEGRO

(A-dah-jio and a-leh-grow)

This is part 2 of our two-issue detour to Italy!

If you’d like to review last week’s mini history lesson about the Italian Renaissance, musical terms, and Adagio, you can read it here!

The opposite of Adagio is Allegro.

Allegro means fast. In music, Allegro comes between Moderato (moderate) and Presto (very fast).

Petit Allegro (small and fast):

In ballet, these are quick, precise steps, usually small jumps and connecting steps.

In the center part of class, ballet students work on petit allegro, which are quick virtuoso jumps like changement, entrechat, échappé, glissade, pas de chat. Beginner students will also have worked on many of these jumps at the barre. These combinations increase in speed and complexity as students progress, adding weight and direction shifts, beats, turns, and brief balances.

Pointe work also incorporates petit allegro as students become more advanced, with quick coupés, retirés/passés, pas de bourré, and échappés, interwoven with beats and quick turns.

Grand Allegro (big and fast):

Grand Allegro comes toward the end of class, once everyone is fully warmed up. This includes the larger, showier jumps and combinations that require more height and space and usually travel across the floor, like sissonne, grand jeté, entrelacé/tour jeté, grand assemble and saut de basque.

Blue working on a grand allegro Stag Leap

Savoir-Faire

(Know-How)

Student Tip:

Preparation is key for all allegro steps! All the barre work you’ve done in class, such as pliés, tendus, dégagés, frappés, and grand battements, helps get your muscles warmed up and strengthened for allegro combinations.

The last point of contact you have with the floor when jumping is your feet, so it is important to use them wisely! Press into the ground before lifting off, brush when needed, and articulate the whole foot through the tips of your toes. As you land, remember to work through the foot in toe-ball-heel order.

And, of course, jumps begin and end with a demi-plié! Like a spring, it must bounce, or rebound, off the ground on the way up, and soften your landing on the way down.

Teacher Tip:

Musicality is one of the most important skills for a dancer to absorb, whether they dance ballet, jazz, tap, ballroom, or hip hop. In the adagio movements, musicality helps dancers add to the lyrical quality of their choreography. In allegro steps, it helps with the often-changing dynamics or syncopation of the movement.

Can your students time their leaps to hit a certain musical note or phrase at the height of their jump? Can they stay on the beat when performing a succession of petit allegro jumps? Do they have a good sense of rhythm in general?

A good exercise for teachers to work on with their students is to listen to a piece of music and pick out the different parts – such as the melody, the harmony or countermelody (if there is one), the percussion or rhythm. This helps the dancers hear the different tones and rhythms present in the piece. After listening, dancers could be assigned different parts of the piece and improvise movement following their individual part.

Pachalbel’s Canon is a perfect example to use for this: it’s a structured piece that has a melody (the faster violin part), the countermelody (the 4-note “rhythm section”) and the harmony created by the repetition of the sequences (the canon in music involves offset repetition – we use the term similarly in dance).

À La Carte

(From the Menu)

Recommendations, reflections, and/or useful links

George Balanchine’s stunning Allegro Brillante (1956) is a fast-paced masterclass in the different kinds of allegro choreography, interspersed with some beautiful adagio sections! Performed here in 2017 by New York City Ballet principals Tiler Peck and Andrew Veyette, with eight corps de ballet (ensemble) dancers, the ballet highlights the quick, precise movements of petit allegro and the broader, more expansive jumps of grand allegro – along with some dizzyingly fast turns from Ms. Peck! It’s well worth watching all 14 minutes - enjoy!

Merci!

(Thank you!)

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-            Peggy