Splits & Warm Up Drills for Modern Dance

Video Transcript

My name is Connie Hale and thanks for joining me here at expertvillage.com. Today we are working on some beginner's stretches for lyrical and modern dancing. We are going to go ahead and work on some splits. I'll let you begin with a Russian split. Some people can just sit down and plop their legs open but first I would like to get into a deeper stretch with that so it actually gets to grow. We are going to go ahead and slide and catch ourselves on the floor in a second and we catch. Notice how my toes are still on the floor. This is going to maintain turnout for you. Keeping it down, just hold it there and bounce and bounce and you can go ahead and sit it down. What that just did was worked on getting our feet turned out. When you are in a split, I want you to make sure that legs are turned out from the hip. The whole leg is turned to the back, toes if they are flexed up they point to the ceiling so you turn them back and point them back. This is the position for your feet. None of this turned in like this. We reach over to the side and grab our toes and we reach up and over to the other side. Again holding each of these poses at least 30 seconds. Now here's the killer. We are going to slowly slide, side to side, side to side, bring it down to the floor and slowly get them down to the floor , down to your forms and we hold it here. You can just rest yourself on your chin with your hands, watch TV as long as you are getting here in the stretch. Toes are maintained in that position pointed, feet are turned out. Eventually you will find yourself getting lower and lower and lower. You can take it a little deeper the next time, little deeper the next time and a little deeper the next time. Pretty soon you know you are going to laying out flat on the floor. It is best to slowly work into it. That is your Russian split. Side split; we bring the leg in, we are going to go ahead and lift up, knee is turned underneath and we slide it down. This is a side split. Again, my toes are pointed front and back and we bounce right here. If you can't get all the way down that spine, if you can just get as far as here, that's all right. It's a beginner. We have to get there slowly and slowly slide out. Stay on that knee and hold yourself up with your hands and work your way down into it so you can get all the way down. Okay? All right, those are your splits. Keep on stretching folks.

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