Good facility within her body?

[firstpostion]

Hi all,

 

 

This is my first post! have been reading lots on here for  a little while now lots of great advice and infomation.

my daughter has just had some audition feedback back they said she had a good facility within her body can anyone explain

what this means? thanks so much

 

Iam not sure if I have posted in the right place? not very good with tech, apologies if this is wrong place

[Jan McNulty]

Hello First Position and welcome to the Forum. 

 

You have posted in the best place for responses and I am sure our other members will be able to answer your query!

[firstpostion]

Hello First Position and welcome to the Forum. 

 

You have posted in the best place for responses and I am sure our other members will be able to answer your query!

Thank you, i don't know very much of dance language!

[sophika9899]

It means she's the right shape, has good flexibility, good turn out, good strong feet with high arches, long neck, small head, straight flexible back, long Achilles' tendon, and so on. Nobody has everything but as long as she ticks some of the boxes.

[firstpostion]

 Hi Sophika9899,

 

 

Thank you for your answer my dd has some of the above I think!! but defo not all.

[taxi4ballet]

I think good facility might mean that your dd has the right general physique so that the potential is there for her to respond well to classical training.

[drdance]

Hi - the term 'good facility' is a bit of one of those dance 'umbrella terms' that means more to the person saying it than the recipient! It usually refers to joint flexibility in my experience, and usually covers turnout, back flexibility, foot flexibility mainly.

[Anjuli_Bai]

Hi - the term 'good facility' is a bit of one of those dance 'umbrella terms' that means more to the person saying it than the recipient! It usually refers to joint flexibility in my experience, and usually covers turnout, back flexibility, foot flexibility mainly.

 

I agee with this.  It's a way of conveying a subliminal message of  "I'm on the inside - you are on the outside".  "Modality" is another of those words as is "trope."

 

How much easier to just say what one means without a subliminal message of insidedness attached.

 

Facility in this case would mean to me - as the dictionary describes is "ease of use."  

[Guest BD19]

We use it to mean flexible. You can actually be hypermobile and have poor turnout, but yeah, flexible. It has nothing to do with size of head and can have absolutely nothing to do with body shape. You can get people who are hyper mobile and flat turned out but their body shape is just dead wrong for  ballet.

 

Another thing, strength and facility aren't the same, in fact a lot of the time if you're hyper mobile it's a lot harder to build up core strength. It's one thing teachers with students who have good facility and are hypermobile have to concentrate on, in fact a lot of the time it's a given that you have to sacrifice a bit of that facility to build up the strength to control it.

 

You always know the girls and boys in open classes who've had bad teaching, at the barre they have legs around their ears because they're hanging on for their life but as soon as we get in the centre for exercises without the barre which rely on core strength they can barely stand on one leg and can't lift their legs above their hips.

 

Unless her teacher has looked at the shape and arch of her feet, how deep her demi is and how long her Achilles is and said she has a good facility for jumping, though she'd have probably said elevation and ballon she wasn't talking about her jump.

[Anna C]

Yes, when dd's teacher uses "facility" she is referring to both turnout and the strength to hold the turnout.

 

Firstposition, could you ask your dd's teacher what he/she thinks? Never having danced, I sometimes have to ask what a certain phrase means. :-)

[Guest BD19]

Turnout facility is different from facility when used in a general sense. Turnout is about the angle of rotation of the leg in the hip socket. Natural turnout facility you're born with and you can't do anything to change that.

 

Strength is another matter, you need to build up a lot of strength to control turnout and of course flexibility too and very often dancers with the most flexibility and natural turnout facility have the hardest time building up the proper strength to get it under control.

 

Yeah, I think it'd be a very good idea to ask her teacher what she means and ask about general facility - her flexibility, her turnout facility - that's very easily measured, the trick they do at ballet school when you're very young is they take your ankle and rotate your leg as you stand one hand on the barre or they get you to lie flat on your tummy and see how your legs rotate.

 

You can also ask her about her jumping facility, about the arch of her foot and length of her Achilles.

 

And if she has lots of facility, flexibility you can ask about building up strength to control it all.

[Anjuli_Bai]

Facility might also mean ease of using - dancing to - the music.  Or of covering space - movement.

 

The term is too general - you shouldn't have to guess what it means.