Your Intermediate Ballet Breakthrough: Essential Drills to Elevate Your Technique Beyond the Basics
You’ve mastered the five positions. Your plié is steady, your tendu is precise, and you can make it through a full beginner class without feeling completely lost. Congratulations! You’ve officially entered the rewarding—and often frustrating—world of the intermediate ballet dancer.
This plateau is where many dancers stall. The leap from solid fundamentals to advanced artistry isn't about learning new steps; it's about deepening the quality of the ones you already know. It’s the micro-adjustments, the intensified muscle engagement, and the refined coordination that transform a step from "correct" to "captivating."
Your breakthrough awaits. Let’s dive into the essential drills designed to target the specific technical hurdles of the intermediate level.
1. The Foundational Powerhouse: Plié Revisited
Think you’ve mastered the plié? Think again. At the intermediate level, your plié is no longer just a bending of the knees; it's your primary source of power, shock absorption, and seamless connectivity.
How to do it: At the barre, perform a grand plié in second position at half your normal speed. Take 8 counts to descend, hold the bottom position for 8 counts (keeping the heels as elevated as necessary to maintain turnout from the hips, not the knees), and 8 counts to rise. Focus on:
- Maintaining a perfectly upright spine—no leaning forward!
- Spiraling the inner thighs forward and apart throughout the entire range of motion.
- Engaging your transverse abdominals to support your back.
Why it works: This builds immense strength in the deep rotators and teaches control over every millimeter of the movement, eliminating the "sinking" feeling and creating a powerful, stable foundation for jumps and turns.
2. Conquering the Wobbly Retiré: The Battle for Balance
A shaky retiré is the hallmark of an intermediate dancer working for more. The issue is rarely the standing leg alone; it’s a full-body coordination problem.
How to do it: Facing the barre, place your hands lightly for balance. Rise to a high relevé on your standing leg. Slowly bring your working foot to retiré (passé), ensuring the toe is connected to the knee and the knee is maximally turned out. Hold for 4 counts. From here, slowly développé the leg to à la seconde at 45 degrees, maintaining the exact same placement in your standing hip and torso. Return to retiré and lower the heel. Repeat 5 times per side.
Why it works: This drill forces you to find your balance on a high relevé before adding the complication of the retiré. The développément challenges your core and standing leg to stay immobile as the working leg moves, solidifying your balance for turns like pirouettes and fouettés.
3. Finding Your Center: The Secret to Solid Turns
Multiple pirouettes aren't about spinning fast; they're about finding a tight, centered spot and holding onto it.
How to do it: In the center, prepare for a single pirouette from fourth position. Instead of a full turn, push off and only rotate a quarter-turn, spotting fiercely. Land in a solid fourth. Then, do a half-turn. Then a three-quarter turn. Finally, a single. The goal is not the rotation but the sensation of stopping precisely on your spot at every increment.
Why it works: This deconstructs the fear of the full turn and trains your body to understand exactly how much force is needed for each part of the rotation. It builds incredible control and reinforces the all-important spotting technique, which is the true engine of multiple turns.
4. Beyond Bouncing: Achieving Ballon in Jumps
Intermediate jumps should start to have "ballon"—that light, bouncing quality that makes you appear to hover in the air. This comes from fully stretching the feet and using the plié as a spring, not a sinkhole.
How to do it: In first position, perform a simple sauté. Break it down: Demi-plié, push off the floor, and in the air, actively point your feet to a fully stretched position, creating a beautiful diamond shape with your legs. On the descent, land with your feet already pointed, absorbing the impact through your plié. The rhythm is: down, up-(point)-down. Repeat 16 times, focusing on the crispness of the foot action.
Why it works: This drill ingrains the habit of active feet in the air, which is essential for all small and medium jumps. It transforms a dead, passive jump into an active, energetic one, building the calf and foot strength needed for more advanced allegro.
5. Unlocking Fluid Port de Bras
Arms that look like they are moving through water, not jerking from position to position, are a sign of an advanced dancer. The magic is in the back.
How to do it: Sit or stand in a wide second position. Initiate a port de bras circle by thinking of your shoulder blades sliding down your back. As your arms move from first to fifth and down to second, focus on the sensation of your latissimus dorsi and rhomboids engaging to control the movement. Imagine you are pushing through a thick, resistant substance like honey.
Why it works: This shifts the work from the smaller shoulder muscles to the larger, powerful back muscles. This creates a stronger, more supported, and ultimately more graceful port de bras that integrates with your entire body instead of flapping separately.
