Chasse Across the Floor
Ages 5 and up · A clear stretch of floor, hallway, or grass (fifteen-plus feet), bare feet or dance shoes
The chasse (the "chasing" gallop where one foot slides out and the other chases it, the dancer skimming sideways or forward across the floor) is dance's foundational traveling step and the runway under most leaps: grand jetes and their family launch out of chasse preparations, and across-the-floor chasse lines open studio classes everywhere. It is also, happily, a gallop: the youngest dancers learn it as pure play.
The standards turn the gallop into dance: pointed feet chasing through a tight first-position meeting in the air, the plie receiving each landing softly, posture lifted and presented, and the pattern equally fluent both directions and both lead feet. A hallway or yard makes a perfectly good across-the-floor.
How to run it
- The gallop, owned: sideways gallops down the floor leading with the right foot, then back leading left. Two trips each, just rhythm and joy.
- Add the dance: the chasing feet MEET in the air (ankles together, toes pointed) at each step's peak, the landing arriving through a soft plie, the chest lifted and eyes presented forward. Two trips each direction.
- Forward chasses: the same slide-chase-land traveling forward (one foot leading, the other chasing to meet it), the step that becomes leap preparation. Two trips each lead foot.
- Add arms: a held second position (arms rounded out to the sides) or the studio's pattern if one exists, quiet and carried while the legs travel.
- Finish with chasse-to-jump: three chasses forward and a two-foot spring landed in plie (the leap's skeleton, kept small and soft at home). Four reps. Trips are short; quality and both-sidedness are the whole grade.
What to say
Common faults and fixes
Flexed, sickled feet through the gallop.
The kiss-in-the-air image with pointed toes graded at the meet: slow trips where the point is the only focus. Feet finish the line of every step; the habit installs young or never easily.
Clomping landings (the plie skipped, every step a thud).
The quiet-floor standard: chasses should be nearly silent, the plie swallowing each landing. One barefoot trip listening to the feet re-teaches it immediately.
One lead foot only (the comfortable side calcifying).
Equal trips both directions and both leads by rule, awkward side first while fresh. Choreography demands both sides forever; the imbalance compounds silently if unaddressed.
Make it easier, make it harder
Pure gallops with no standards, shorter trips, holding a parent's hand for the youngest.
Faster trips with the meet-and-point held; chasse patterns (two side, two forward, turn); the chasse-tombe-pas de bourree preparation chain (the true leap runway, layered with studio guidance); chasse-to-spring reps growing toward real leaps at the studio.
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