3 Tips For Dancers & Teachers to Conquer Turns in Second

Written by Amy Miller, Dance Wellness Mentor

Amy Miller is a renowned leader in the dance community. As a celebrated judge, mentor, and award-winning choreographer, Amy’s expertise drives success for instructors, dancers, and events alike, all while bringing wellness to a deserving community!

Ready to feel confident in teaching and/or starting the improvement on your turns in second skills? In today's competitive dance world, these turns are becoming more popular and extremely difficult, with each turn combination being created. Whether you're a new dance teacher or a new dancer to this specific skill, mastering these can be crucial for your dance journey. In this guide, we'll explore three key strategies for growth, awareness, and taking action to learn turns in seconds in a simple progression. Let's embark on a quick journey to unlock your full potential in turns in seconds.

1. Balance & awareness

These are growing in popularity, especially after college dance teams are continuously raising the bar with creative combinations and how many dancers are asked to perform these in such a short time frame. Let’s start by simply grabbing your right foot behind you. You can grab your toenails to make it a little easier with your right hand and act as if you are going to be stretching your right quad muscle. Instead of stretching, we are just having a simple way to ignore the right side for a few minutes. The main focus is on the supporting leg. For this article and example, our supporting leg will be the left side. Feel free to switch up sides and try the other leg to be balanced with these exercises.

Bringing awareness to supporting leg

First, we are bringing focus to our balancing leg. What does this leg need to be doing over and over? Your standing leg will be going all the way down on your heel and reversing by rising as high as you can on your toes (balls of your feet). This is the repetitive action you will be showing and/or taking. Use music or just count, but stay on beat. Literally, we are just moving our supporting legs up and down properly over and over. A little bend (plié) is sufficient to complete this exercise. To be consistent, you can start with dropping your heel a total of 8 times. If that is too difficult to keep your balance, start with dropping your heel three times and work up to more once you have your balance more stable and aware of what should be happening.

• Specific: Be clear what count you’re down on your heel in plié and when your supporting leg is straight and high off your heel. 

• For beginners: It is easier to teach the concept of being down on the odd counts and up on the even counts.

• Achievable: This action, without turning, will set you up for success! 

• ​By starting small with recognizing where your balance is, and the simple action of the base/supporting leg, you will work wonders in the future!

2. Rhythm

Understanding where your body needs to be at any given moment is essential for grasping these turns. In the beginning, you definitely want to get the feeling of how the rhythm is going to be once you start rotating. Doing this in small increments and breaking down where you should be during each count and/or section will help tremendously. Gaining insights into where you are throughout the turns will show you what areas you need to still strengthen. The rhythm for most to start these turns is pretty difficult, as you’ll see dancers have their arms be in opposition to the proper placement. Or the up and down positions are reversed. At first, the dancers are trying whatever they need to get their bodies around. In reality, we need to be teaching the correct rhythm slowly from the get-go. (Which we all know is not the most fun and exciting thing to do.) 

Timing

This can differentiate between teachers. However, some like to teach with a longer plié and shorter relevé. For basics, I tend to start dancers off with 1 count on their heel and 1 count on the highest ball of the foot to get around completely. Teachers can speed this tempo up once you or your dancers are starting to see and feel the rhythm completed correctly.

Having an exercise, as shown in my dance course “Turns in 2nd (The Breakdown) Series,” while seated can highly improve dancers' timing. This is a simple way to feel how these turns are supposed to be, with gravity being their friend, not enemy, in the beginning.

When the dancer is getting completely to the front from each rotation, we are getting closer to having the timing and rhythm in our grasp and capable of adding more difficulty.

3. Strength

In today's digital age, we have a lot of dancers skipping this aspect if they do not have it built into their studio routine weekly. Some dancers want to learn these turns online, and that is completely fantastic. However, we have to ensure that these turns need a strong foundation of strength with their ankles, legs, core, and upper body. Moreover, the more strength a dancer has the more difficulty they can add to combinations of turns in the future. A nice cardio warm-up with a good, solid plank, push-up, or crunches to get the muscles engaged before starting these turns and/or turn exercises will be a plus. Making it relevant to have strength and keep strength is a special skill in dance that we, as teachers, truly need to keep alive. 

I see it fit to progress the way dancers not only feel the movement but also think about the movement. There needs to be that knowledge of strength in the background and from the start. Sure, there are styles of dance that can appear fluid, but even successfully performing those moves takes strength. There’s a difference between training for what you are about to dance and perform compared to just jumping in without practicing anything. Strength is a must to keep in our classes, as well as continuing exercises outside of the studio to help with easier progression and greater dance results.

Need further detailed instructions for these turns?

Find the Turns in 2nd (The Breakdown) Series dance course on my website. Feel free to purchase the course to see more exercises and lessons with these turns specifically. I have loved seeing quick growth in students and colleagues putting this dance course to use. You can also set up a 1:1 for further details regarding the course and/or whenever you’re ready to push your dance wellness to the next level. I’m looking forward to watching you expand your dance journey into helping yourself as well as others in the process. You deserve to improve!

Follow me on Instagram for more info!

Read more from Amy Miller

Amy Miller, Dance Wellness Mentor

Amy Miller’s journey from a young protégé to a professional performer has given her a deep, firsthand understanding of the physical and mental demands of the dance world. Recognizing that burnout is a silent epidemic in the industry, she has transitioned her focus toward helping dancers find the wellness answers they’ve been searching for. By bridging the gap between elite performance and biological science, Amy provides relatable, actionable strategies to help performers reclaim their vitality. Whether through mastering "limbic friction" with small habit shifts or optimizing recovery with targeted supplementation, her mission is to show that when we feel better, we perform and live better.