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The seven deadly technique sins.

Article Excerpt
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Throughout your dancing life, you've heard the same corrections over and over. The reason for the repetition? Dancers tend to make the same errors, sometimes with catastrophic results. Dance Magazine spoke to eight teachers about what they perceive to be the worst habits--the ones that will destroy a dancer's technique--and what can be done to reverse the damage.

1

Rolling In

To get a 180-degree first position, dancers will sometimes let their arches roll forward. at turnout is not about forcing your feet open; it's about opening up in the hips. "Turning out is an activity, not a position," says Irene Dowd, who teaches anatomy at the Juilliard School. "If we stop sustaining that movement, our feet will passively roll in." Rolling in places stress on the tendons of the feet and leads to injury because the rest of the body compensates for the imbalance when your knees can't line up over your toes.

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Dowd warns against using only the arch to combat rolling in. "Dancers will try to lift up their arches and pull up on the inside of the ankle," she says. This can result in the inflammation of the tendons in the ankle and lead to tendinitis, a painful overuse injury that's common in dancers. What she feels are "Victorian furniture feet--feet that aren't fully in contact with the ground" should be solid in three areas: the heel, the ball...

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