Tips from Gillian Murphy and Ethan Stiefel from The Ballet Companion

• Don’t move your front heel before you turn.
• Push off with both legs, but keep your weight forward.
• Relevé strongly and quickly. Pull up from the back of the leg right under your buttocks to get on your supporting leg.
• Use your spot. Free the head and relax the upper body.
• Good turns come from your work throughout the barre and center, especially from pliés, relevés and petit allegro.
• You know both a good and a bad turn immediately, and in a bad turn, you know to cut your losses. A good turn feels easy.
• Don’t sacrifice form. There’s no point to lots of turns without form. In fact, everyone just wants them to stop.
• There’s a smaller turning surface when turning on pointe, but not much difference in placement. You feel higher off the ground.
• You gain mastery through repetition—but not repetition of your mistakes. Make sure to practice correctly.

Pirouette Tips from Ethan Stiefel

• Learn to turn first. Form is important, but it comes later. Get the coordination of the spot first, and then clean up your position.
• There’s a moment of stillness essential to the preparation of a turn. For me, it’s at the outset in fifth position, before the quick rond de jambe into fourth. Power and momentum in the pirouette actually originate in that moment.
• Relax and exhale so you can float through your turn.
• Get to retiré position quickly. I prefer a high retiré above the knee, but there isn’t necessarily one perfect position.
• Success in a turn depends on a strong center. Strength and calmness come from your center; when doing air turns, it’s your only friend.
• There are turns, there are pirouettes and then there are spins. Don’t squeeze out an extra pirouette onstage; don’t throw in the ugly one.
• The music decides when a turn is done, and the turn decides for itself; its momentum tells you to finish.
• My favorite pirouettes are plain old pirouettes en dehors in retiré. It’s a perfect position. There’s a reason we turn in this position. Clean never goes out of style.
• Turns en dehors felt natural to me, but en dedans did not. What helped was a change in attitude. Don’t think of turning as a numbers thing. Do the right thing to set yourself up and let it happen.
• Repetition is the key. To improve your turns, practice them over and over again.