Steps: écarté

SSB dancer Alyson Mattoon mentioned below that one of her favorite ballet steps is écarté. Écarté, pronounced "ay-kar-TAY", is a position in which the dancer is lined up on a diagonal of the stage, stands on one leg and extends the other leg to the side. The arm on the same side as the extended leg is held above the head, while the other arm is held to the side.

Two famous ballet excerpts display écarté in its full glory. The first is the beginning of the Rose Adagio from Sleeping Beauty where Princess Aurora, danced here by Royal Ballet principal Alina Cojocaru, balances en pointe, or on her toes, several times in an écarté position.

The second is the beginning of Giselle's Act II pas de deux in which Giselle unfolds into an écarté position. Bolshoi Ballet principal Svetlana Zakharova demonstrates the position, albeit with a different use of the arms.

Gustafson School of Dance's Assistant Director Nicole Comella likes to go back to écarté's original French meaning of "thrown away" to explain the feeling of the position. For students, she likes to see the upper body stretched and not crunched, as if the various extremities of the dancer are being thrown apart or pulled away in opposite directions.

For the audience, Nicole points out that écarté presents a very flattering view of the dancer, since écarté is aligned with the diagonals of the stage, and lends a three-dimensional texture to the dancer's body. The dancer isn't facing directly front, which can flatten the dancer. Being at a slight angle to the audience, the contours and lines of the dancer's body become better delineated.