What does “Jeté” mean in ballet?
( ; 'thrown.') A leap in which one leg appears to be thrown in the direction of the movement (en avant, en arrière, or sideways). There are several kinds of jetés , including jeté / jeté ordinaire (RAD) / pas jeté (Rus.), grand jeté , and tour jeté (ABT) / grand jeté en tournant (Fr./Cecc.) / jeté entrelacé (Rus.), or the common compound step coupé jeté (en tournant) . Jeté ( jeté ordinaire/pas jeté ) refers to a jump initiated en plié, with the pointed working foot brushing out in dégagé from cou-de-pied (derrière) to seconde (action similar to a non-Russian-style flat frappé ), weight being transferred via a jump propelled by pushing off the standing leg from plié, the leading leg landing tombé and the foot of the other/former standing leg ending cou-de-pied (derrière). Some schools (including ABT at one point) may still refer to this as a petit jeté . Grand jeté : Grand jeté. see Coupé jeté en tournant , a jump initiated with a grand battement en avant of the leading leg while pushing off the trailing leg from plié (usually led into by some moving step such as chassé, glissade en avant, or pas couru), the trailing leg brushing to grand battement derrière while in the air, the jump ultimately landing on the leading leg. Resembles the splits (en l'air). Tour jeté / jeté en tournant ('turn'/'interlaced') is a grand jeté done turning: a jump initiated with a grand battement en avant of the leading leg, followed by a fouetté turning the direction of the body 180 degrees and the trailing leg brushing through to a grand battement derrière, the jump landing arabesque with the leading leg now the standing (landing) leg. Coupé jeté en tournant is a compound step, usually done in multiples en manège ('in a circle'), of a coupé (changing the supporting foot) initiating the first quarter of a turn leading into a grand jeté completing the 360-degree rotation of the turn. Petit jeté in RAD and the French school refers to a one-footed changement passing through cou-de-pied and is what other schools refer to as a changement emboîté .
See also
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Definition adapted from Glossary of ballet on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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