recommended stretches to improve turnout

[FatimaShitbread]

As the title suggests really. Dd is nearly 8 and loves ballet. She is quite interested in auditioning for Royal Ballet Junior Associates next year as a few children at her dance have just auditioned. Her teacher said she needs to work hard on her turn out if she would like to audition so I wondered if anyone knew of any exercises she could do to improve turn out and also flexibility while we're at it!
Tia

[dodobookends]

Perhaps the best person to advise on this would be her dance teacher, who will hopefully be able to give her some exercises to do at home. It isn't generally recommended for youngsters to try stretching exercises unsupervised (eg copying stuff from youtube etc).

You might like to look at the 'Doing Dance' section of Balletcoforum.com (a UK forum) as there are loads of parents of young dancers who post on there, and also ballet teachers and health professionals. Loads of threads about Associate programmes as well, not just the Royal, but there are others too.

[FatimaShitbread]

That sounds brilliant, thank you dodo. I did ask the teacher but she was quite vague really and said dd could do what they did in lessons. I'll have a look at the forum now. Thanks again

[dodobookends]

No worries
Something to think about is that she will need to have the facility in her hips (which is where turnout comes from - not the knees or ankles) and that what she might actually need to work on is strengthening so that she can hold her legs in the turned-out position, if that makes sense!
How far turnout can be improved and sustained depends in the end on the skeleton, and no amount of stretching will be able to change the shape of the hip joints, in fact too much inappropriate stretching can cause damage to ligaments and tendons and lead to long-term injury.

[Balletgirlmum]

I agree that she probably needs to work on strength to hold her turnout rather than force it.
Dd has 180 degrees (measured by physio) but can't use it all yet

Some of the Lisa Howell stuff is good but it's expensive.

This really needs to be done under teacher supervision.