Playing An Eleve Exercise
In a ballet class, the eleve is a very simple movement that involves lifting up onto the balls of the feet. That’s all there is to it? Yes. If that is not complex enough for your sensibilities, we can go into it in a little more detail. There’s another exercise in ballet class which is almost the same except that it’s done in a demi-plie or grand-plie, meaning the knees are bent to a varying degree. This one is known as a releve.
As you could guess, the purpose of the eleve and the releve is to build up the leg muscles as well as the ankles and feet. Beginning ballet classes are where you’ll see the most of these being performed, since mastering them is important for the proper positioning of almost all of the other ballet exercises.
Occasionally in a ballet class, the instructor will do a seperate exercise purely for eleves and releves. The pianist needs to play a piece of music which is in a moderate tempo and it should sound as if it’s moving faster than it is. This is for psychological purposes, enabling the dancers to maintain the positions longer than they believed they could. It is the sort of ballet position, especially for beginners, where the muscles start to burn fairly quickly.
The musician can assist the dancers in maintaining their positions through the burn and not break form by rushing the downbeats in the bars, and by delicately rushing the tempo towards the top of the phrase, slowing down again as it nears the end. This makes the phrases seem shorter to the listener.
It can also be helpful to match the shape of the melodic material to the motions of the dancer, which makes the exercise more fun. It is always good to have fun whenever there’s an opening for it, even in something so disciplined as a ballet class.
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This post is presented by Gaylord Pannitron. To hear eleve music you may visit Ballet Class Music and hear free samples by composer/pianist/dancer Don Caron from his First Class Album series of music for ballet class.
Tags: ballet class music, ballet music for class, music for ballet class, the first class album
