“Caedmon” asks me to comment on this clip of Natalia Osipova’s fouettes. Let’s take a look and compare them to the ones shown in my previous post about those whiplike turns:

I have to say I lke Osipova’s fouettes the least of all the dancers in the clip I’ve posted. She obviously can do fouettes, of course; that almost goes without saying. Not all of hers are regular fouettes—she tosses off a lot of varations on the theme, but I’ll just talk about the ones that are the classic stuff.

Osipova performs them at a fast tempo. What makes her look somewhat hectic and sloppy at times is that she’s what I call a leg flinger, which is always a temptation with fouettes—just shoot that leg out there in a big hurry to start the turn so you don’t fall behind the music.

In her haste, Osipova doesn’t even usually straighten that leg all the way, nor does she sweep it out completely to the side before beginning her turn. Sometimes she only gets it about halfway there. Compare that to what the others do, and you’ll see that although they sometimes rush, with them there’s still more of a sense of the leg unfolding. With them you can actually see the sweep from front to the side, and you can almost feel in your own body the impetus of the leg’s trajectory beginning to lead the dancer into the turn rather than the dancer flinging the leg out in such a way that its momentum doesn’t seem to naturally start the turn.

It’s as though Osipova wants to get that leg-to-the-side part over and done with, as though it’s just a meaningless prelude to the main attraction—the turn—rather than an integral and necessary part of it. But it should all be one seamless flow.

Let me just add that I know about this problem because I was a habitual leg-flinger myself.