Learn the sauté: plié, push through the foot, a stretched flight phase and a quiet landing in the same position. With milestones and typical mistakes.
The honest answer to “How do I learn my first ballet jump?”: in a sauté you jump vertically out of a plié, stretch legs and feet in the air and land in the same position back in a plié. The jump sounds unspectacular, but it is the foundation for everything that follows: changement, échappé, assemblé, sissonne. If you land the sauté cleanly, you have half of jump technique.
Two things are good to know. First: in turnout you jump lower. In a study 13 collegiate dancers jumped with neutral (parallel) and turned-out feet; with two feet jump height was greater in neutral position [1]. That is normal and no sign of weakness. Second: the sauté also matters for pointe work, because in a systematic review the sauté test was one of several tests that were better indicators of pointe readiness than age alone [4]. More in the safety notes.
How hard is it really? You learn the hopping itself in minutes; a quiet, clean landing in all positions takes weeks to months because foot, knee and hip must work together (rule of thumb, no study evidence). Don’t compare yourself with dancers who have jumped for years; your first milestone is silence on landing, not height.
Stand in first position (second and fifth come later) and do a demi-plié. The plié is the spring: the more smoothly you sink, the cleaner you rise. Milestone: ten pliés in a row with both heels on the floor.
From the plié you push through the whole foot, heel, ball, toes, and stretch knee, ankle and toes one after the other. Your upper body stays long, the arms in preparation. Milestone: you feel the toes leave the floor last.
Both legs stretch, the feet are pointed, the upper body stays calm. The flight phase is short: it is not about height but about shape. At first jump only a few centimetres.
You land through the toes and ball onto the heels and sink straight back into plié. The landing is the most important part. In a study of 27 professional dancers jumping in different foot positions, mainly the ankle’s sideways and rotating movements differed between positions; in fourth position the ankle’s rotational power on landing was about double that of the others [2]. That means every position challenges the foot differently, so practise them one after another.
Once you land eight sautés in a row so that you are hardly heard, practise the same movement in second and fifth position. Keep knees and toes in one line. In a study of jumps with displacement in fifth position, hip and ankle provided most of the outward rotation and the knee little [3], so your turnout does not come from the knee.
Landings are the part of a jump that loads joints. Warm up explicitly (ankle and foot circles, pliés, relevés), jump only on a suitable floor and stop when you get tired, because tired feet land worse. After an ankle injury, restore range of motion before you jump in fourth and fifth position [2]. Pointe shoes are not part of this guide: jumping on pointe only after your teacher has cleared you. This guide explains and motivates but does not replace supervised training.
Describe the jump to yourself as a cycle floor – air – floor, not as “up and down”: the time you stretch the legs in the air is as long as the time you “gather” them while landing. If you count “and – up – and – down” inside, you get rhythm instead of hopping. (Practical experience, no study evidence.)
Supplementary strength and conditioning demonstrably helps: a meta-analysis of 36 studies in dancers over 16 found a large improvement in leg power (effect size 0.90) [5]. That includes squats, calf raises and single-leg exercises, ideally with guidance.
Land through toes and ball onto the heels and sink straight into the plié. The more joints (hip, knee, ankle) work together on landing, the better the load is shared. In the study of 27 professionals exactly this work of the ankle differed by position [2].
The study measured it but did not explain it: in 13 collegiate dancers, two-footed jump height was greater in neutral position than in turnout [1]. It is a measurement result, not a deficit; ballet jumps are turned out, so you jump with that height.
Only after your teacher has cleared you. A systematic review names the sauté test as a better indicator of pointe readiness than age, but stresses that only the interplay with strength, maturity, range of motion and teacher judgement counts [4].
Balance on Demi-Pointe: Standing Steady on One Leg