Understand the tour en l’air: a turn in the air from fifth position. Prerequisites, spotting, build-up with a teacher and landing – not a copy-it recipe.
The honest answer to “What is a tour en l'air?”: it is a turn in the air: you rise straight up from demi-plié, make a full turn and land in fifth position with the feet reversed – single, double or triple, depending on ability. That is how the American Ballet Theatre dictionary describes it, classing the jump as a traditionally male step that today's choreographers also use for women [1]. Arm use and head work follow the pirouette: the arms assist, and the head “spots”, fixing on a point [1].
Plainly: this is a pro jump. This guide gives you no sequence to copy; it tells you what the jump demands, what research knows about turning and landing, and how to approach it with a teacher. No study has measured the tour en l'air itself; everything we can support comes from pirouettes and ballet jumps in general – that is transfer.
The numbers we have: in a study with 12 highly skilled ballet dancers performing 12 consecutive turns each (fouetté for women, à la seconde turn for men), the dancers oriented themselves better to the front with a visual reference; over the twelve rotations the path of the supporting foot also got shorter there. Overall the foot path was actually smaller without a reference, but the authors conclude: the more rotations, the more relevant the reference becomes [3]. Note: that is a turn on the ground, not a jump.
How long does it take? No study has measured that. Expect years of solid classes, not weeks (experience value, no source).
Prerequisites are sacred here:
This is a build-up, not a recipe. How the turn in the air runs in detail, you learn in class.
Fifth position, plié, jump, quiet landing. As a yardstick: in a pilot study with 11 adolescents, changement and entrechat quatre landed at 4.1 and 4.3 g of impact acceleration at the pelvis, the glissade at 2.1 g [4]. The tour en l'air was not measured there – but it also lands from the air in fifth position. Milestone: ten sautés without a sound and without wobbling.
Pirouettes or small turns on the ground must run calmly. In a pilot study with 8 professional and 9 experienced amateur dancers (pirouette en pointe, so a transfer), the professionals leaned back less in the turning phase (2.05° versus 3.88°) [9]. Takeaway: whoever keeps the axis over the base turns more calmly. Milestone: your teacher sees a stable axis.
Spotting is the feature that separates skilled from less-skilled dancers [2]. But training it is no walk in the park for beginners [2]. Clarify with your teacher: do I need targeted spotting now, or axis and balance first? Milestone: you know what your head should do in your turn.
Try a single turn only with a teacher, on a sprung floor and with fresh legs. Double and triple turns exist depending on ability [1]; they come later and only on your teacher's say-so. There is deliberately no execution description here. Milestone: your teacher signs off a clean single turn on both sides.
Film yourself from the front and from the side. Check: quiet, both feet, no re-hop, left and right the same. Ballet landings generate high forces, and classical jumps produced the highest ground reaction forces compared with modern and folk dance technique [5]. Milestone: five repetitions with an even landing.
The tour en l'air is a safety-critical jump: you leave the floor, turn and land on both feet. Errors show up in the knee, ankle and back. In a survey of 90 professional dancers, the lower back, knees, ankles and feet were most often injured [5]. A study with 17 experienced dancers showed that years of practice do not make a turned-out landing softer than a parallel one [7]. So: no copy-it instructions, never alone, never tired, never on a hard floor. If you feel pain: stop and clarify with your teacher and a doctor. This guide explains and motivates but does not replace supervised training.
Turn your video log into a side-comparison table: same angle, same side, always after the warm-up. Then you can see whether landing and calm differ between left and right. That is practice, not a study result – but it fits the finding that left-right differences are linked to injuries [6].
“Tour en l'air” means “turn in the air”. You rise from demi-plié, turn fully and land in fifth position with the feet reversed; single, double or triple [1].
Traditionally it counts as a male step, but today's choreographers also use it for women [1]. Which role it plays in your class is decided by your teacher.
No study has measured that. It builds on sauté, turning on the ground and landing, and needs classes over years (experience value, no source).
The head must spot as in pirouettes [1]. But targeted spotting training did not help beginners in one study [2] – so your teacher should decide how you learn it.
Biomechanics and Recovery Physiology