EPAULEMENT

In French, épaulement (ay-pohl-MAHN) literally means “shouldering.” In ballet, it refers to the position of the shoulders, head and neck. 

Pretty much, it is a type of isolating the positioning of the head from the neck and from the shoulder in an almost twisted manner to create a more interesting and elongated body lines, It’s used mostly in positions including croisé, ouvert and effacé in center exercises, though some schools, such as Vaganova (russian ballet school), incorporate it extensively into barrework. For example, in tendu devant with the working arm held to the side, a Vaganova dancer looks “over” by slightly lifting her head up and to the right over her arm. In tendu derrière, she looks “under” by slightly inclining her head down and to the right, as if looking under her arm. The term can also refer to more than just a dancer’s positioning. When a ballerina is praised for her “good épaulement,” it means she has combined lovely port de bras, upper-body work and artistic expression seamlessly.

When I am dancing myself, I always think about the idea of epaulement, to achieve this, I usually think of ever so slightly twisting  the upper part of my torso in a very careful manner (spiralling up and over). This kinetic work is an amplified visual representation of how I feel when performing movement that requires epaulement.

Due to the recent covid disruption, my output was resulted to be compromised, no access to the labs means that I wasn't able to go ahead with my initial vision for this project. If I had full access to all the facilities at AUT, I would've made this three times as long and probably would've varied the sizes of the pipes to give a more theatrical visual effect.

Below is the code I carefully sequenced to create a "choreography." The commands included for this are speed and direction changes, loop, activate/deactivate, the amount of time a command should be performed.