Understand Turnout: Why Dancers Need It & How to Develop It
9/7/20265 min read
Understanding Turnout in Dance
Turnout is a fundamental concept in dance, referring to the external rotation of the legs from the hips. It is a critical element across various dance styles, including ballet, jazz, and contemporary. Proper turnout enhances a dancer's aesthetic lines and allows for greater mobility and versatility in movement. In ballet, for instance, turnout is essential not only for stylistic reasons but also for executing many movements and positions effectively and safely.
The significance of turnout extends beyond mere visual appeal; it contributes to a dancer's balance and stability. When dancers achieve optimal turnout, they can utilize their body weight more effectively, which aids in executing turns, leaps, and intricate footwork. This alignment allows dancers to maintain a stronger posture and distribute their weight more evenly, thereby minimizing the risk of injury.
Understanding proper techniques to achieve and maintain turnout is crucial for dancers at all levels. This involves a combination of hip mobility, strength training, and mindful practice. Dancers must work to develop strength in the muscles that support hip rotation, including the external rotators. Additionally, enhancing flexibility in the hip joint allows for a more pronounced and sustainable turnout, which not only looks aesthetically pleasing but also contributes to overall performance quality.
Moreover, turnout serves as a foundation for many advanced dance movements, which often rely on the dancer's ability to rotate the legs externally while maintaining alignment with the torso and upper body. Therefore, focusing on achieving optimal turnout is imperative for dancers who aspire to improve their technique and overall performance. Without sufficient turnout, a dancer may struggle with executing complex choreography effectively.
Why Do Dancers Need Turnout?
Turnout allows dancers to move through positions and movements that are fundamental to dance while creating aesthetic lines. However, turnout isn't just about how far you can rotate your legs outward.
A dancer needs to be able to actively control their turnout while jumping, landing, balancing, turning, and changing positions. This is where strength becomes just as important as mobility.
Good turnout should allow you to:
Create clean and intentional positions
Improve control during movement
Maintain alignment through the hips, knees, and feet
Perform movements efficiently
Support strong lines and technique
Reduce unnecessary stress on the knees and feet
The goal isn't simply to look turned out. The goal is to be able to use your available turnout safely and effectively.
Turnout in Different Styles of Dance
Turnout doesn't look the same in every style of dance.
Ballet
Turnout is a major component of ballet technique. Dancers use turnout throughout positions, jumps, turns, and many traveling movements. Because ballet often requires sustained turnout, dancers need significant strength and control to maintain their positions.
Jazz
Jazz dancers may use turnout for positions, kicks, leaps, turns, and choreography. Unlike ballet, jazz often moves between turned-out and parallel positions quickly, requiring dancers to have control in both positions.
Contemporary
Contemporary uses a combination of turnout and parallel positions. Dancers frequently transition between different positions and movement qualities, making strength and control especially important.
Pom & Commercial Dance
Turnout will show up in pom and commercial dance through technique like kicks, leaps, turns, jumps, and more. Dancers also need to be able to transition efficiently between turned out and parallel positions. For pom dancers especially, strong turnout isn't necessarily about maintaining a large turned out position throughout choreography. It's about being able to access, control, and transition through turnout while maintaining strength, alignment, and clean lines.This becomes especially important as dancers progress to more advanced skills and choreography, where they need both mobility and active strength to control their positions.
Turnout is not one-size-fits-all. The amount and appearance of turnout a dancer uses will depend on their anatomy, training, technique, and style of dance.
What Turnout Actually Is
Turnout is the external rotation of the leg at the hip joint. The rotation should come primarily from the hip rather than forcing the feet outward.
Think about it this way:
Hip rotation → knee alignment → ankle/foot alignment
Your feet should not be responsible for creating all of your turnout. When dancers don't have enough available hip rotation, or don't have the strength to control it, they may compensate by turning their feet out farther than their hips can support.
This can create unwanted stress throughout the knees, ankles, and feet. Your body's anatomy also plays a major role in how much turnout you naturally have. Every dancer has a different hip structure, so there is no single "perfect" amount of turnout that every dancer should achieve.
Turnout vs. Flexibility: What's the Difference?
This is one of the most important distinctions for dancers to understand.
Flexibility refers to your ability to move through a range of motion. Turnout refers to your ability to externally rotate your leg at the hip. Active turnout is the ability to use and control that rotation through your own muscular strength.
You can have plenty of flexibility without having the strength to control it.
For example, a dancer might be able to passively push their legs into a large turned out position, but when they stand up and try to maintain that position themselves, their turnout decreases. That's the difference between passive range of motion and active control.
So, should dancers stretch their turnout?
Mobility work can be helpful when a dancer has appropriate restrictions, but stretching alone isn't the answer. Dancers also need to develop the strength required to actively control their available range of motion. This is why strength training can be such an important part of turnout development.
How Can Dancers Improve Their Turnout?
Rather than constantly trying to force your feet farther apart, focus on developing the qualities that allow you to use your turnout safely.
1. Improve Hip Mobility
Mobility exercises can help you access the range of motion available to you.
2. Strengthen the Muscles That Control Rotation
Your deep hip rotators, glutes, and other muscles surrounding the hip help control your leg position.
3. Build Single Leg Strength
Dancers rarely perform everything on two feet. Single leg exercises can help develop the strength and stability needed for turns, jumps, landings, and other movements.
4. Practice Control
It's not enough to have turnout, you need to control it. Exercises that challenge your ability to maintain alignment while moving can help transfer your strength into dance technique.
5. Respect Your Anatomy
Not every dancer will have the same amount of turnout, and that's okay. Your goal should not be to force your body into someone else's range of motion. Instead, focus on maximizing your own available turnout while maintaining strength, alignment, and control.
The Bottom Line
Turnout is much more than simply pointing your feet outward. It's a combination of anatomy, mobility, strength, and control that allows dancers to use external rotation effectively.
If you're working on your turnout, don't just ask:
"How can I get more turnout?"
Ask:
"How can I better control the turnout I have?"
That shift in mindset can help you train smarter, move more efficiently, and build stronger dance technique without forcing your body beyond what it can safely control.
Strong turnout isn't just about how far you can turn out. It's about how well you can control it.
About the Author
Coach Renée Ruchala, CSCS is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and professional dancer with the Arizona Sidewinders. With a background as a competitive dancer and extensive classical ballet training, Renée understands the unique physical demands placed on dancers both in the studio and on stage.
After bridging the gap between dance and strength training, Renée has developed a passion for helping dancers understand how strength, mobility, and physical preparation can complement their technique. As both a strength coach and professional dancer, she brings a firsthand perspective to the benefits of strength training for dance performance—including improving control, stability, and functional turnout.
Renée's goal is to help dancers become not only stronger performers, but also more resilient athletes by developing the strength and physical capacity needed to support their technique and longevity in dance.
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