Ballet positions, steps, and terms.

The building blocks of ballet

Ballet is a language before it is a performance. Every class you take is built from a shared vocabulary of positions and steps, most of them named in French, and the faster you learn that vocabulary the faster you can focus on dancing instead of decoding. This guide organizes our lessons into three layers that build on one another: the positions you hold, the steps you perform, and the technique that makes them clean.

Positions: where every step begins

Positions are the home bases of ballet. They come in three families:

• Positions of the feet: five numbered positions that define how the turned-out feet relate to each other.
• Positions of the arms: the port de bras that gives ballet its carriage and line.
• Positions of the body: the eight body positions that set how a dancer faces the audience.

Steps and terms: the vocabulary

Once the positions are familiar, the steps connect them. Terms like tendu, degage, plie, and allegro each describe a specific action, and knowing them means you can follow any teacher in any studio. When you meet a word you do not recognize, our A to Z glossary has it.

Technique: turning terms into dancing

Knowing a term is not the same as executing it well. The technique articles below break down the details, from how the foot articulates in a tendu to how the arms move through a full port de bras, so the vocabulary becomes real, controlled movement.