Neuroscience Letters 369 (2004) 80–84

Multi-joint coordination in ballet dancers

Francine Thullier∗ , Hicham Moufti
Laboratoire de Neurosciences de l’Homme en Mouvement, UPRES EA 2131 and ModeSCoS, Maison de la Recherche en Sciences
Humaines UMS CNRS 843, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, Campus II, Bd Mal Juin, 14032 Caen Cedex, France

Received 6 February 2004; received in revised form 9 August 2004; accepted 9 August 2004

Abstract

In upright posture, we analyzed the multi-joint coordination during drawing ellipses with the foot in a horizontal plane in classical ballet
dancers (Elite) and gymnasts who had no dance training (Novice). In both groups, the stability of the head and the trunk was similar.
Furthermore, a comparatively simple synergy inter-relating the movements in the hip, knee and ankle joints, was revealed by the kinematic
analysis. However, novices made larger errors in the eccentricity and orientation of ellipses than ballet dancers. Ankle angular excursions
were smaller in novices than in dancers whereas hip angular excursions were larger. This study illustrates some rules underlying the ability
of the nervous system to integrate multiple degrees of freedom of the body to master body balance while producing complex leg movement
trajectories. This study offers a dynamical approach of the problem of redundancy.
© 2004 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Foot-drawing; Kinematics; Motor control; Redundancy problem; Synergies; Dancers

It has been shown that the shape of complex hand trajecto-
ries, for example, during drawing ellipses in a required plane
varies from a near circular to an almost straight [6,12,13]. Fur-
thermore, the spatial orientation errors of the ellipses largely
depended on the orientation of the plane in which the draw-
ing was produced. Errors were maximal for horizontal planes
and minimal for planes oriented sagittally or frontally. These
findings suggest that the error results from an anisotropic
representation of egocentric peripersonal space [4].
Previous studies tended to avoid the influence of con-
straints related to body stabilization on motor skills [6]. In the
present study, we analyzed the skill of the production of foot
movement trajectory in standing subjects. Dancing drawing-
like movements resembling the “rond de jambe” were ex-
amined. These leg movements required appropriate temporal
and spatial coordination of multiple segments of the legs and
the whole body while strictly respecting the task demand of
drawing with the foot tip an ellipsoidal figure with the pre-
scribed eccentricity in a horizontal plane [10].
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: thullier@staps.unicaen.fr (F. Thullier).
As proposed by Bernstein [1], the abundance of mechan-
ical degrees of freedom is vital for the ability to form mo-
tor skills. This ability is associated with the capacity of the
nervous system to solve motor problems imposed by the
biomechanical constraints, the task demand, and the environ-
ment. Specifically, we tested how highly skilled individuals
who might have excelled in the ability to stabilize postures
(dancers and gymnasts with no dance training) exploit the
redundancy in the number of degrees of freedom of the body.
This study is thus relevant to the classical problem in motor
control regarding the relationship between posture and move-
ment [14] as well as to the problem of multi-joint redundancy
[1]. In the framework of the concept of referent configuration
[2,10], we deciphered the production of this motor form by
subjects with different skill levels. This study thus offers a
dynamical approach of the problem of redundancy and pro-
vides an appropriate context for an examination of dexterity,
which has to do with the transformation of an uncontrollable
system into a controllable system [1,5,10].
Experiments were performed on subjects who might have
excelled in equilibrium: six classical ballet dancers (Elite)
matched by age, height and weight with six gymnasts with
no formal dance training (Novice).

0304-3940/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2004.08.011
 F. Thullier, H. Moufti / Neuroscience Letters 369 (2004) 80–84 81

Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the placement of the 17 markers at the level of the head, trunk and upper and lower segments (A) and orientation of the ellipse
in the horizontal plane (B). In (C) definition of the orthogonal projections in the sagittal plane of the angular rotation of the shank relatively to the thigh (α)
the foot relatively to the shank (β) and the thigh (γ) with respect to the vertical, in relation with the ground reference, the reference plane, the position and the
length of the major axis (MA) of the ellipse. The orthogonal projection in the frontal plane of the angular rotation of the thigh with respect to the vertical (φ)
does not figure here.

The subjects, wearing ballet shoes and gazing ahead hori-
zontally, stood upright with their arm down, their hands along
their thighs without visual guidance. They were asked to draw
a single ellipse with the right or the left foot tip in the horizon-
tal anatomical reference plane (RP) that was parallel to and
20 cm from the floor (Fig. 1C). The eccentricity of the ellipse
(ε) was 0.87 (major axis = 50 cm, minor axis = 25 cm). The
major axis was directed along the posterioanterior (Y) axis
(Fig. 1B). Movements were produced in counter-clockwise
direction. The starting position of the foot was identical for
all the subjects (Fig. 1B).
Initially, the experimenter showed (during 5–10 s) to the
subjects an ellipse template oriented in the RP, within the
limits of foot reach. Few practice trials were allowed to the
subjects before the start of the experiment. The template was
then removed and the subject reproduced the ellipse at a self-
paced rate (movement time was about 3 s) without visual
guidance. The drawing movement was made far from the
biomechanical constraints that could affect the shape and the
orientation of figures. For each subject, ten movements were
recorded.
The 3D body motion was recorded using a Vicon 3D-
motion analyzer (sampling rate 50 Hz). Four TV cameras
were used to record the movements of 17 markers placed
at the level of the head, trunk and upper and lower segments
(Fig. 1A). After reconstruction of the stick diagrams repre-
senting the movement of the leg and the body, we calculated
the orthogonal projections of the angular rotation of: (1) the
thigh in the frontal (φ) and sagittal (γ) plane with respect
to the vertical (Fig. 1C); (2) the shank (α) relatively to the
thigh and the foot (β) relatively to the shank in the sagittal
plane.
In order to provide an overall estimate of the stability of
the trunk and head, a consistency index of body stability was
computed [9] in the horizontal and sagittal planes by dividing
the length of the trajectory pathway of the barycentre of the
trunk or the head by the movement time and by the height
of the subject. This index has been calculated during the foot
movement time (mean value: 3.1 ± 0.3 s). To compare with
the situation of quiet standing, this index was also calculated
for the data obtained 3 s before the onset of foot movement.
In order to determine how accurately a RP was reproduced
in drawing, we computed the trajectory plane (TP) of the foot
tip. The TP was defined for each ellipse individually as the
best-fitting plane for the trajectory in a least square sense
(see1 and [4]). The angle (ρ) between the TP and the RP was
used to characterize the subject’s orientation error.
Estimated by the consistency indexes (see above), the
body stability in the two groups of subjects was similar (U
Mann–Whitney test, NS) and during the test movement was
higher than during quiet standing (see Table 1). During foot
drawing, head and trunk motions were indistinguishable from
those during the control periods when the leg was motionless.
It was found in both groups of subjects a substantial dis-
parity in the performance of drawing movements. For exam-
ple, Fig. 2A shows that the figures drawn, the eccentricity (ε)
of the ellipses drawn by subjects was significantly smaller
in the novice group (U Mann–Whitney test, p < 0.01). In
1 The equation of the PT is the first order polynomial fit to the ellipse in
3D space: nx x + ny y + nz z + d = 0, where n = (nx , ny , nz ) is the normal to the
PM, and x, y, z are the coordinates of any point in the plane. We measured
the angle ρ between the normal n to the PM and the normal m to the RP, m
= (mx , my , mz ) and ρ = arccos(m × n)/|m||n|.
82 F. Thullier, H. Moufti / Neuroscience Letters 369 (2004) 80–84

Table 1
Index of head and trunk stability (mean ± S.D.) in the horizontal and sagittal
planes during foot drawing in the two groups (elite/novice)
Head stability
Horizontal plane Elite 45.70 ± 4.43 NS
Novice 44.22 ± 8.53
Sagittal plane Elite 47.70 ± 9.45 NS
Novice 50.15 ± 5.43
Trunk stability
Horizontal plane Elite 35.50 ± 4.91 NS
Novice 34.18 ± 3.43
Sagittal plane Elite 34.98 ± 4.07 NS
Novice 37.20 ± 5.09

Table 2
Maximum angular excursions (mean ± S.D.) of α, β, γ and φ in the two
groups (elite/novice)
α
Elite 33.93 ± 2.01 p < 0.01
Novice 53.68 ± 2.96
β
Elite 103.85 ± 1.80 p < 0.01
Novice 59.82 ± 3.74
␥
Elite 31.52 ± 1.11 p < 0.05
Novice 26.67 ± 3.75
φ
Elite 20.07 ± 1.40 p < 0.01
Novice 43.12 ± 3.56

other words, the ellipses were deformed in the novices: the

minor axis was more than 45% greater than that in the elite
group. This deformation was associated with a substantial
abduction–adduction movement of the thigh in novices, as
estimated by the angular rotation (φ) of the thigh (Table 2).
Fig. 2B shows that the angle (ρ) between the actual and the
referent planes of drawing increased in the novice group (U
Mann–Whitney test, p < 0.01). This error in the orientation of
the plane of motion resulted from an upward rotation of the
ellipse due to a decrease in the ankle excursion in the novice
subjects compared to the elite ones (Table 2).
Fig. 3. Kinematic of leg and trunk movements during drawing an ellipse
with the tip of the right foot for an elite subject (solid line) and a novice
subject (dashed line). Temporal evolution of α, β, γ, and φ showing mean
(thick line) and S.D. (thin line) for a block of ten trials. For each block the ten
trials were scaled to a standard duration defined by the shortest movement in
the block and then averaged. The three vertical lines indicate, respectively,
from left to right: the onset, the reverse phase (i.e. distal end of the ellipse)
and the end of the foot drawing.

In Table 2, the maximal angular excursions of the hip (γ,

Fig. 2. Average eccentricity (ε) and orientation error (ρ) for elite (filled bars)
and novice subjects (open bars).
φ), knee (α) and ankle (β) reach during the motor task per-
formed by the two groups are compared (see Fig. 3). The
maximal excursions of γ, φ, α, and β were significantly dif-
ferent in the two groups (U Mann–Whitney test, p < 0.05,
<0.01, <0.01, <0.01, respectively).
Thus, the major finding in this study is that although
dancers and gymnasts are equally stable, dancers were more
successful in reproducing the orientation and shape of the
referent ellipses. The errors in the orientation and shape of
movements might be an indication of some imperfections in
the internal representation of the template and/or in the trans-
formation of the representation into specific motor control
signals eliciting the multi-limb movement [7,11]. Although
the present study did not address the problem of space rep-
 F. Thullier, H. Moufti / Neuroscience Letters 369 (2004) 80–84
resentation, two points could be emphasized. First, in our
study, subjects had no on-line visual information about spa-
tial localization of the foot tip. Second, they drew ellipses in
a plane which is known to induce maximal orientation errors
characterized by an appreciable upward rotation of the distal
end of the ellipses about the mediolateral axis, as has been
previously demonstrated for arm drawing [3,4].
Interestingly, the kinematic data in our study support the
existence of a relatively simple but robust synergy underly-
ing planar extension–flexion of the thigh, shank and foot in
combination with a hip abduction–adduction. According to
Bernstein [1] the nervous system has the capacity to interre-
late the central influences guiding different degree of freedom
(d.f.) and thus coordinates their motions. These constraints
may be specified in a task-specific way and co-exist with the
biomechanical constraints associated, in particular, with the
body geometry and limitations in the range of joint motion.
So coordinated, multiple d.f.’s of the body are controlled as
if they were reduced to a single joint. Such coordination is
called a unit or a synergy. It was assumed that the system may
organize several synergies and employ them in isolation or in
combination depending on task demands. This idea has ob-
tained a substantial empirical support illustrated by synergies
utilized during head movements accompanying shifts in the
gaze [9]. Head movements in 3D-space involve a complex
biomechanical system. This system complexity is especially
striking at the level of the upper cervical vertebral column that
includes two joints with six d.f.’s controlled by four pairs of
muscles. Kinematic and EMG analysis revealed a compar-
atively simple strategy employed by the nervous system in
dealing with the redundant number of d.f.’s of the neck–head
plant. It has been identified four functional units or synergies
that can be orchestrated by the nervous system to account
for the remarkable variety of trajectories and head–neck po-
sitions in 3D-space.
Although subjects in the two groups employed the same
synergy, their performance was different in terms of the maxi-
mal angular excursions in the three leg joints—in the novices,
the excursions in the leg joints were twice as large and as in
the elite group whereas the abduction and adduction of the
thigh was half as large as in the elite group. Explanation of
how orientation and eccentric errors can be offered in the the-
oretical framework of the referent body configuration [2,10].
The specification of a sequence of referent body configura-
tions produces a referent trajectory of the foot tip. Indeed, the
weight of the leg segments deflects the actual foot trajectory
downward relatively to the referent one. Subject could pro-
duce referent trajectories rising at the same angle from the
horizontal plane to make the actual foot trajectory horizontal.
If the final position of the limb is different from its desired
position with respect to the requested plane, control levels
may adjust the referent shift so that the movement errors are
nullified. Our data show that the process of adjustment is not
ideal, resulting in a residual error, even in skilled performers.
In addition, the movement constraints (planarity, eccentricity,
shape, and postural stability) forced the subjects to produce
83
referent body configurations that tightly relate motions in the
leg joints. Our results show that this task was performed dif-
ferently by the two groups of subjects—the novices produce
more large movements in the hip, knee and ankle joints, es-
pecially in the ankle joint. This result might be also relevant
to the recent suggestion [8] that multi-joint coordination can
be subdivided into two groups “controlled and uncontrolled
manifolds” one of which is most essential and the other less
essential for reaching the motor goal, respectively, a hypoth-
esis that can be tested in our ongoing studies on dance move-
ments using principal component analysis [15].
We have thus outlined a dynamical approach of the prob-
lem of multi-joint redundancy. Interpretation of these data
solution does not reject the notion of synergies. Rather, our
data suggest that synergies or manifolds, like trajectories and
forces, may be an emerge property of the neuromuscular be-
havior resulting from the response of the system to changes
in control parameters in specific environmental conditions.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Professor Anatol Feldman
and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and construc-
tive comments on the manuscript.
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