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How the bottom of the foot contacts the floor is very important. Whether standing on a stretched leg, or in a plie, the ankles and soles of the feet should not be tense. The tension in the ankles will be correct if the turnout is held from the top of the thighs, down to the knees, by the back of the thighs and inner thighs.

The foot may be naturally high under the arch, or flat along the floor. The foot should not be rotated towards the outer ankle joint in an effort to show an arch lifted off the floor. It doesn’t matter if the foot is flat, when you are standing on it. It is important that the foot and ankle are not tensely trying to hold a position. Ankles may fall in if the arches are fallen and many peoples’ are. Holding the turnout from the thighs will lift the inner ankle slightly, but that isn’t the point.

There are very simple exercises to strengthen the sole of the foot, aside from the numerous tendus, degages and sautes in a class.

But let’s go to turnout first. Ideally the 180 degree turnout of the foot positions comes from the turnout of the legs inside the hip joint - and it actually does for the most flexible dance student. Children and adults who take ballet once or twice weekly should never be allowed to turn their feet out more than their thighs can turn out. A good teacher will NOT allow this. In choosing a ballet teacher, extreme forcing of the foot turn out is easy to spot, even when the legs are straight; the knees will be pointing in one direction and the feet will be turned out to another direction. In a plie, or knee bend, even a slight exaggeration of the foot turnout is noticeable to an untrained eye, and the ankles will be rolling forwards and down as well.

A conscientious teacher will not allow unrealistic foot positions at the expense of healthy knee ligaments and ankle muscles. A constant sprain/strain of the knees and ankles is occurring with a forced turnout.

A well-trained teacher will instruct students to work with the flexibility that they have, and will teach stretches that may improve it. I say may, because some people do not get much more flexible with stretches, no matter how dedicated they are, yet most will see improvement. The importance is being able to HOLD the turnout that you have, while moving through adagio, jumps, and pointe work. And anyone can do that if they understand how to do it, and have the concentration to do it repeatedly.

Good technique DOES matter even if you are studying for enjoyment, with no professional aspirations. Straining off balance, working the muscles incorrectly and getting injured hardly leads to enjoyment. The overall development of strength and attainment of grace is more attainable if the basics are correct.

A wonderful exercise to strengthen the turnout is as follows: lie down on the floor on your back, feet in first position, flexed as though you were standing. Because there is no weight on the feet, you can turn your feet out for more feeling in the turnout muscles at the top of the thighs. Press the back of the legs into the floor, and move the legs, feet still flexed, slowly outward toward second position. Keep pressing the back of the legs into the floor, and don’t let your back arch. You may only be able to go an inch , - but you’ll feel those turnout muscles! Do that ten times every day and you will be much stronger standing up and doing the regular class movements. You won’t regret investing time in this exercise.

Dianne M. Buxton is a graduate of the National Ballet School of Canada. She taught there for several years, and also taught at York University and George Brown College in Toronto, and at Harvard University. More articles about ballet can be found at
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Global processes taking place in the modern world overwhelm different spheres of human life: social, economical, political. For the globalization of international relations becomes a characteristic of our epoch, naturally, appears the necessity to develop international cooperation in different fields and work out universal principles of relations between different countries and peoples. As a result nowadays we have such organizations as WTO, UN, and others that unite many countries by common goals which may vary depending on the organization and its members but the general goal remains unchangeable, i.e. preventing any conflicts and solving existing ones between different countries on the upper level of social organization.

Naturally, to fulfill this task the world needs regulations or laws common for all countries. That is why if we have economy then it concerns the whole world and demands an international cooperation as well as the world’s politics. Unfortunately, not only economy or politics have global character and not always they are fair and human. We can find a lot of examples when the criminal world spread its influence through out several countries, continents or even the world itself as well as the policy of some regimes may have a criminal character. In order to struggle against such phenomena and prevent them the international community came to the realization that we need such court that could have an international power. The realization of this fact led to the appearance of the International Court of Justice and, finally, the International Criminal Court (ICC).

By creating the ICC, people made a great step forward in their development but only theoretically because the idea of the ICC hasn’t been realized completely yet. Initially, the ICC was supposed to deal with the crimes that violate principle human rights all over the world such as crimes against humanity, war crimes, or crimes against whole peoples (genocide).

For much country couldn’t cope with these problems independently they began the process of the ICC’s creating that as they supposed would punish criminals who violated laws mentioned above. Not surprisingly that the first role here played the UN as the most authoritative organization uniting a great number of countries and which principle task is to provide the world for peace and protect human rights. And as I said in 1998 the Conference in Rome gave life to the treaty for the establishment of the ICC. But only in April 2002 66 countries ratified the treaty that marked the start point of official commencement of creation and work of the ICC. It means that these countries accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC and the responsibility to fulfill the obligations according to the treaty, i.e. since that time on they have to investigate crimes that violate norms of the international law.

So, the ICC is really necessary and has goals which correspond to the actual situation in the world and it also has a lot of supporters but, at the same time, there are enough skeptics who doubt in the effectiveness of its work. Unfortunately, they have reasons for such doubts. First of all, some countries draw international attention to the problem of antagonism of their national law and interests and the work of the ICC. Secondly, they estimate that it would interfere in their inner affairs and would impact their independence so as the ICC could have a big power and its jurisdiction extends to the country that are not its members. Also, some definitions in the treaty are not clear enough from a juridical point of view. Finally, there is certain misunderstanding in the interpretation of those crimes that should be treated on the level of the ICC.

That is why some countries oppose to the ICC and do not ratify the treaty. Among them we can name China, the USA, Israel. And they have their reasons because if we take into account last events in Iraq or Afghanistan it is highly probable that the American troops could be found guilty in the violation of human rights and international law. That make me think that the ICC won’t work effectively till the moment of finding a consensus that could content all countries and especially such strong and influential as the USA because it is impossible to build any international structure without support of main political ‘players’ and mutual understanding between the state parties.

At the conclusion I want to underline the importance of the ICC because, theoretically, it could solve many problems of the modern world as well as it could contribute to the development of democracy and protection of human rights all over the world. It also could punish those outcasts that do not want to obey to universal, human principles that are declared in so many international laws. But those contradictions that exist between the members of the treaty, misunderstanding, and, probably, overestimating of national interests more then universal ones do not permit to the ICC to fulfill its task as it could possibly do in better circumstances. Eventually, it will be a great mistake if mankind lose the chance to establish an effective ICC.
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