Why Your Students' Dégagés Look Like Grand Battements (And the Tempo Fix That Actually Works)

You've said it a hundred times: "Dégagé is lower than grand battement." Maybe a thousand times (not to mention a thousand different ways). And the craziest part? It's easier to keep the leg low. Doing a grand battement instead of a dégagé is harder. So why do students keep doing it?

I used to wonder how so many students could ignore such a simple instruction. Lower should be the natural default. But then I realized: they're not ignoring me. They genuinely can't tell the difference between doing dégagé and doing a grand battement because they're using the same muscles for both movements. When you lift your entire leg with your quads, moderate effort feels impossible. It's either all the way up or barely moving.

If your students' dégagés look like low grand battements no matter how many times you correct the height, the height is the symptom. The problem is how they're executing the movement in the first place.

The Real Problem: Quad Work Instead of Foot Work

Here's what's actually happening: students think dégagé means "get your toes off the ground." So they use their quads to lift their entire leg, creating what's essentially a thigh workout instead of the foot-strengthening work dégagé is designed for.

Traditionally, we have been telling students what the end result should look like—"toes off the ground, leg stays low"—without teaching them why we do dégagé or the process of how to get there. So dancers place all their attention on arriving at the picture using whatever muscles work fastest, which is almost always the quads.

But dégagé isn't quad work. It's foot work. Specifically, it's about using the demi-point to strengthen the feet as you quickly point and create enough power to disengage from the floor. When students use their feet correctly, the leg naturally stays lower because the foot is doing the work, not the hip flexors and quads.

This is why students can't moderate the height no matter how many times you've reminded them of the correct placement for dégagé. If the goal for dégagé and the goal for grand battement are to make very similar pictures and there's no why or how being taught, the only difference is how much effort they put into that quad contraction. That level of somatic awareness develops years after we introduce these steps.

The Solution: Process Cueing and Proper Articulation

The fix starts with changing how you cue. Instead of "lift" or "tendu touches, dégagé doesn't," try "push through your demi-point to disengage" (process cueing). Or if you prefer less wordy cues, "demi-point, push!" This single shift redirects students' attention from the end result to the mechanism that creates it.

When students focus on articulating through the foot—really using their toes with enough energy to lift off the floor—they're building the foot strength that dégagé is designed for. The leg height takes care of itself because the foot is generating the movement, not the thigh.

You'll know it's working when students can execute dégagé with clear foot articulation and the leg naturally stops at the appropriate height.

The Tempo Component Teachers Are Taught to Get Wrong

Here's where some technique manuals and teacher training programs create problems: the insistence that dégagé must always be performed twice as fast as tendu.

I understand the logic. Dégagé is quick, sharp, and energetic compared to tendu's sustained stretch. Dégagé is designed to build the strength necessary for petit allegro and you can't jump particularly slowly. Fast dégagés build a lot of inner thigh strength. But when you demand speed from students who don't yet understand the correct process, you're guaranteeing they'll use whatever muscles can move fast enough—which brings us right back to quad-lifting.

Speed obscures understanding. Students rushing through dégagé can't feel the difference between foot articulation and leg-lifting because everything's happening too fast to notice. They just know they're supposed to get their toes off the ground quickly, so they do whatever works. They're thinking only in pictures again.

This is why I teach dégagé at different tempos depending on students' technical and developmental level:

Elementary Division: Students in the Elementary Division don't yet have strong somatic awareness (ability to sense what's happening in their bodies). This is partly because they don't have a lot of experience but mostly because the brain goes through a developmental shift around age 12 and dancers can become aware of their body in much more subtle ways. In the meantime, I teach dégagé at approximately the same tempo as tendu. This gives students time to feel the foot articulation, understand the muscular engagement, and build the correct pattern.

Intermediate Division: Students perform dégagé combinations twice—first at a near-tendu tempo so they can focus on how they're moving, then at double time so they start practicing moving quickly with correct technique. This bridges the gap between understanding and application.

Advanced Division: Speed is integrated naturally because students understand the process. They're not thinking about tempo—they're executing clean dégagé that happens to be quick because the foot articulation is efficient.

Notice the progression. We start with understanding the movement quality, then add speed once the correct muscular pattern is established. Not the other way around.

Why This Actually Works

When you slow down dégagé for students who don't understand it yet, several things happen:

First, they can actually feel what their feet are doing. The difference between isolating the specific muscles through using demi-point vs. lifting with the quads becomes obvious when you have time to notice it.

Second, the leg height corrects itself naturally. Foot-generated dégagé stays lower without you having to constantly remind students. The movement mechanics dictate the height.

Third, the differentiation between dégagé and grand battement becomes clear. Grand battement uses thigh muscles to create height. Dégagé uses foot and lower leg muscles to create disengagement. Completely different muscular actions, completely different results.

And finally, students who learn dégagé this way develop stronger, more articulate feet faster than students who rush through fast, technically incorrect dégagés from the beginning. You're creating better development through understanding.

Start With One Simple Change

You don't need to overhaul your entire curriculum. Start here:

Next time you teach dégagé to students who are still building understanding, slow it down to tendu tempo. Cue for the process: "Push through your demi-point to create enough power to release the toes from the floor." Watch what happens to the leg height when students focus on foot articulation instead of trying to lift their legs.

If students have been doing quad-lifted dégagés for a while, it will take a few classes for the new pattern to feel normal. That's okay. You're retraining muscles and rebuilding understanding. Give it time.

The students who consistently lift too high in dégagé? They'll probably resist slowing down at first because fast movement hides the muscular confusion. Slower tempo forces them to feel the difference between correct and incorrect execution. That discomfort is actually progress.

Once the foot articulation is solid, gradually increase the tempo until it is appropriate for the class level. Your students' dégagés can look clean, controlled, and distinctly different from grand battement. It starts with teaching them to use their feet instead of their quads—and giving them enough time to actually learn the difference.

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