Welcome back to 20 moves in 20 days. Today we're going to learn Porter bras, which are a lovely way to move your upper body. And they often go along with pleeeease and other exercises at the bar, and then eventually you'll use them in the center for combinations as well. Okay, so let's assume that we are in our first position, and we're going to do a, what's called a porter bra forward. Okay, so now we haven't talked a lot about arms. But we'll start with our arm out the side, we're going to do is called aileron j, which is the lifting of your fingertips just very slightly, very gracefully.

From there, you're going to go all the way down, so I'm going to bend from my hips, all the way down, all the way forward, curbing my arm overhead. You see this right here, Mike? My head is rested. I'm not. I'm not trying to hold it stiffly. So I don't want to have like this moment where I'm keeping it up or anything like this.

It actually drops with me And then I'm going to come straight up from there. Yes, there are actually two different ways to come up from a porter bra forest. I'll show you both. But again, that first way, you start with that aileron j out nice to the left of your fingertips, and you're going to go forward, I'm going to bend out my waist, I'm going to try to keep my heels not off the ground exactly, but no weight in them. So I'm thinking of my weight being a little bit forward, right? And that will help me avoid pushing back into my hips.

Okay, so I'm a lunging. I'm gonna bend forward all the way down, relax my neck and head, and then I'm going to come up straight. Yes, the alternate method for coming up. Either way is totally acceptable just depends on what your teacher asks or one here and I come down. Same way from here, like I'm going to do what's called a rolling up. So I'm going to think about each vertebrae stacking one on the other like, Yeah, so one more time, I go all the way down.

And I'm going to roll up, stacking the vertebrae as I go. Excellent. Okay, now what we can do corner bras to the side, we can go in towards the bar and out away from it. Again, our j when a reach with my rib and my shoulders, I'm going to reach up to the left. And then I'm going to come over and I'm going to curve against the bar here and then I'm going to come back to my neutral position here. And then to go away, I'm going to reach the other way just a little bit and then reach over to the opposite side.

Okay, so now my arms if I weren't to bend, they are still in correct positions, right? My my one arm is a pi, my other arm is down low. But these are still correct positions. We don't want to overextend like this and pretender stretching farther, but reality is we're just straightening her arms, right? You want to keep that lovely curve in your arm all the way over and up. And then again away and away.

Like so. Okay, me quarter brought to the back. Now I'm going to caution you before we even begin, I do not have a super Flexi back. Some people do and they can go super far and it's amazing. If you are one of those people enjoy it. I am not one.

So I'm going to show you probably the least flexible way to do it. But it's a great way to start. And it's actually really important because the way I'm going to teach you, it's going to help prevent back injury. Yeah. So I'm going to think first about lifting up like this, how you should think about taking a deep breath in. So I'm going to go in and then I'm going to go back from the top of my head back.

Now that's about as far as I can go. Some people again can continue on and just, they look amazing. And that's fantastic. But what I'm going to do, since I don't have that super sexy back, is think about just my upper body. It's almost like if you were to watch a fountain and the fountain, the way that it goes is up first and then out. It's the same idea for your Porter bra back.

So I'm going up first, then out, and then coming up the whole time you want your abs engaged, you wouldn't be very cautious about getting your hips out of whack. So what's tempting is especially if you want to be more flexible, it's very tempting to start doing this where you're pushing your hips forward and then all the pressure goes into your lower back and you start having lower back issues. Definitely, definitely, definitely want to avoid that. So keep your hips nice and square underneath you nice and tall thinking lifting up first. Then going back and coming straight up. Okay, again, if you have more flexibility than I do, you can continue that curve.

As long as your hips are not moving at all. Yes, they need to stay supportive and straight. Okay, so we're going to actually put this together in a little combination. So we're what we're going to do is our pleeeease Prime star plays with our port of rods, this will be the most traditional style of plays that you could probably do. So it's going to be just a very basic combination, I'm going to incorporate my arms this time, you can choose to do so or not, if you want to just focus on your legs, that's perfectly Great. So you're going to reach out away.

I'm going to go through First, open to second. That's my four count intro. So normally in classical ballet music, just start with a 5678 Before you begin, so it's gonna be 5678 then you have Demi, and straightened arm go Samba, Demi arm goes through first position opens the second, that grant goes through all those positions. down. And six, and seven, and eight. Now I'm going to put a record.

One, and two, three, and four, back five, and six, and seven, Tom do the second and, and straight, and Debbie, and St. Going through all the positions, and six, and seven, and eight. I go into the bar One and two, three, and four. Oh wait 567 and eight to four. We're gonna skip third and I'll tell you why in a second. But we have Demi and string and dummy and string from fun 67842 back, can we go over legs One and two, three, and four, back 567.

Tom do fifth and Demi, and straighten and two ends end straight from 578 into the bar, and two, three, and four, away. Six, seven, and eight kondou back to first and finish. Great. Now, when you do combinations on your own, you want to make sure that you're going to do both sides. Okay? So no matter what, in a classical ballet class, you're going to start with your left hand on the bar, always.

And that way your right foot usually is the prominent one that's doing the work. So I'm going to start with My left arm on the bar traditionally, and then after we do one side, we're always gonna switch to the other side and do the second side. Okay? So again, when you're practicing this on your own, make sure you do both sides every single time. And congratulations on learning Porter brass. We're moving onward and upward.

And I'm so excited for you.