The human body is a remarkable feat of design. Two arms and two legs are attached to a central structure of pelvis, spine, ribs, neck and head. The whole unit can stand upright, crouch, run, jump, grip, throw, twist, bend, sing, think, build houses and microchips, write television series and doctoral theses, play music and… dance.
When you dance, you use everything you’ve got – eyes, ears, shoulder-blades, hips, toes, the lot. Your training lets you control these components at will, deploying them for maximum artistic and technical effect, which is what fascinates your audience.
Dancers’ hands are expressive, their arms mesmerising (think Plisetskaya in that “Dying Swan” video). Indian, Thai, Balinese and similar dance forms employ fascinating finger and eye movements; many styles feature complex, intricate choreography for head, neck, shoulders, torso, ribs and hips. Classical ballet, Flamenco, tap dance, Irish dance, Lancashire clog dance and other genres require virtuoso footwork. The ability to do extraordinary things with limbs and body, way beyond normal human capacity, is key to this art form.
For many dancers, legs are among their most important assets. They tend to be strong yet flexible, capable of kicking in all directions, and able to propel their owners to impressive heights. A dancer’s leg is versatile, subtle, powerful, elegant and tough; a complex and efficient structure.
If we consider your leg from the top, we begin with the hip. In skeletal terms, this is a ball-and-socket joint, where the rounded end or head of your thighbone (femur) fits into a shallow depression, the acetabulum, on the outer edge of your pelvis. This head arises from the neck of your femur, which extends outwards and diagonally downwards. The outer end of the femoral neck connects with the femoral shaft, at a point between the greater trochanter, high up on the outside of the thigh, and the lesser trochanter in the inner edge, below the neck. The bones of your right leg, seen from the front, are illustrated in Figure 1, below.
Fig. 1, anterior R. leg
Your thighbone features various knobs and bumps, which function as attachment points for ligaments, cartilages, tendons and muscle, collective known as “soft tissue”. (We’ll look at these in a later post – today is all about the basic bony structure of the leg.)
Your femur is very strong. It needs to be, because this is where the entire weight of your head, arms, trunk and spine, transmitted through the pelvis, encounters a lot of impact force from landing, running and jumping. At its lower end, the shaft of the femur broadens and thickens, forming two condyles, the surfaces which interact with your shin bones and patella to form your knee joint. (This joint is complex and beautiful. It deserves a special post of its own, so for now we’ll just see it as part of the overall structure of your leg.) Figure 2 below shows the right femur, seen from the front.
Fig. 2, anterior R. femur
The two condyles at the lower end of your thighbone are rounded off in a front-to-back direction, and they interact with the upper surface of your shin bone or tibia. This surface, the tibial platform, also features two shallow, rounded-off depressions, the tibial condyles, so that when you bend your knee, the thighbone condyles roll easily against the condyles of the shin-bone in the line of the knee-bend, like a hinge. Figure 3 shows a sketch of the tibia, seen from the front.
Fig. 3, anterior R. tibia
On the front of your knee is the kneecap or patella, a roughly rounded bone which you can easily feel with your fingers. Figure 4 illustrates the shape of the patella, seen from the front.
Fig. 4, patella (front view)
The internal side of the patella forms a wedge shape, and as your knee flexes and straightens, the inner wedge of the kneecap slides up and down in a shallow vertical groove between your femoral condyles. Your knee is held together by an array of tendons and ligaments, firmly wrapped up in a tough supporting capsule — we’ll look more closely at those in the next post. Figure 5 shows the rear view of the patella, with its wedge-shaped profile.
Figure 5, patella, rear view
Lying along the outer side of your shin bone is your fibula. The top, the fibular condyle, is slightly broader than the shaft – you can feel it on the outer side, just below your knee. This upper point at which your fibula attaches to your tibia, is your superior tibiofibular joint. Running down the space between the tibia and fibula is a tough, fibrous web of interosseous ligament holding the two bones together in a long, tight attachment. This is the syndesmosis, which extends the length of your shin, forming the middle tibiofibular joint. This is illustrated in Figure 6, below.
At the lower end, your fibula tapers to a point, like the head of a spear. This is your lateral malleolus, the nobble you can feel on the outside of your ankle. On its inner surface, a little higher up, the fibula meets your tibia at the inferior tibiofibular joint. Here, the lower end of the tibia has broadened, forming a flattened horizontal surface, which continues across towards the inner side of the leg. This surface, the tibial plafond, is the point of contact for your ankle and foot.
Fig. 6, lower R. leg, anterior view
At its inner edge, there is a downwards continuation of the tibia, like the crampons that climbers strap onto their boots to dig into icy slopes for security. This spur-like downwards projection of the tibia forms the protruding nobble on the inner side of your ankle joint, your medial malleolus.
As we mentioned in an earlier post on the foot, the lower end of your fibula, joining with the tibial plafond and the spur-like shape of the medial malleolus, forms a squared-off space, in which the top of your ankle joint fits, and in which it rocks back and forth in such movements as walking, rising onto pointe or half-point, demi-plié and jumps. This configuration is shown in the X-ray below, which is taken from the front, looking at the right ankle.
Your legs are brilliantly engineered to do their job. The shapes of their bones directly influence how much turnout you have, the range of movement in your hip, knee and ankle joints, the way you walk, run, jump and land, pretty much your whole technique. Within the basic structure we’ve discussed here, legs come in multiple shapes and sizes. Some are straight, some are bent outwards or inwards, some turn on themselves, some bend a long way back, others cannot really straighten at all, some are evenly balanced, others are different lengths; the variations are many. Each of these factors will affect your movement options, and we’ll look at all of these anomalies in the next few posts, and discuss how dancers can work with them, and how to look after them, avoid hurting yourself, and continue to get the absolute maximum enjoyment and fulfillment out of your wonderful dancing life.
© Jeremy Leslie-Spinks
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