In teaching through the lens of Universal Design, one phrase returns again and again: find your engine. It is deceptively simple, but it fundamentally reorganises how ballet technique is taught, learned, and embodied.

In this article I explore the meaning and why it’s vital in making ballet for all…

What does ‘find your engine’ mean?

An engine is the primary source of propulsion, initiation, and musical drive in a dancer’s body. For some dancers, that engine may be the legs. For others, it may be wheels, crutches, the torso, the spine, or the relationship between body and floor. The engine is not a workaround; it is the dancer’s legitimate technical centre.

When I ask dancers to “find your engine,” I am not asking them to compensate for something they lack. I am asking them to identify where momentum, rebound, suspension, and articulation genuinely originate for them today – and to make that engine visible, musical, and intentional.

This shift is central to Universal Design in ballet. It moves us away from a single, limb-specific route through technique and toward shared technical goals achieved through multiple valid pathways.

Learn more about Universal Design in Ballet

Exploring the function of the movement

Traditional ballet teaching often names form before function: walk, stand, jump, plié. These instructions assume a particular body structure and propulsion system. When a dancer does not share that structure, the instruction must be translated, adapted, or privately re-engineered, often by the dancer alone.

Universal Design asks a different question first: what is the function of this moment?
Is it about travel? Landing? Momentum? Suspension? Directional clarity? Dynamic accent?

When function is named before form, dancers can locate that function within their own bodies. The instruction “jump” becomes “rebound.” “Walk” becomes “travel.” “Stand up” becomes “come to upright.” Each of these shifts invites multiple engines without diluting the technical demand.

Finding your engine is how dancers meet the function honestly.

Engine as a shared technical skill

In many traditional settings, the cognitive labour of adaptation – analysis, translation, composition, and memory – falls disproportionately on disabled dancers. They are asked to “adapt for yourself” while others copy and perform collectively.

In a Universal Design class, those skills are no longer hidden or individualised. Everyone is asked to:

• analyse the function of a movement
• select an engine that fulfils that function
• compose and set a pathway
• maintain musical and spatial agreements

This makes finding your engine a shared technical competency rather than a private survival strategy.

The engine in practice: The frappe

[Video caption: Suzie asks Ballet Cymru professional dancers to think about their frappe - using both a familiar and unfamiliar engine. She then talks them through a practice where they get to explore these in their bodies. They are in a brightly lit studio space and two barres run through the space. Suzie is at the front and she talks to the group.]

With Ballet Cymru, I recently ran a series of workshops where this was the exact way of teaching the company. We explored the frappe in depth and here is a video sharing the teaching process.

First we explore the function of a frappe – a short, sharp staccato movement with the extremity of a limb, a striking movement.

They practiced using their usual engine – as standing dancers, they used their legs and feet.

I then ask the dancers to choose an usual engine such as their shoulders, core, or upper body.

What unites them is not identical form, but shared musical timing, spatial clarity, and intention. The engine makes the function visible.

Seeing the engine: Coaching and legibility

An engine must not only function; it must read.

Coaching language plays a critical role here. I cue dancers toward clarity and legibility:

• “Name your engine – legs, wheels, crutches, torso – and make it musical.”
• “Where is the momentum coming from?”
• “Can the back row read your line?”
• “Is the engine sustaining the phrasing, or collapsing it?”

This is where standards are not only maintained, but sharpened. A dancer using wheels must demonstrate the same musical precision, clarity of épaulement, and length of line as a dancer using legs. The pathway differs; the aesthetic agreements do not.

Finding your engine does not lower expectation. It sharpens it.

“Find your 100%”: The engine over time

An engine is not fixed. It changes with fatigue, injury, access needs, and artistic focus. This is why I often say: “Find your 100% today.”

One dancer’s 100% may look different tomorrow. That variability is not a problem to be managed; it is information to be worked with. When dancers are fluent in identifying and adjusting their engines, self-regulation becomes part of technique rather than a reason for exclusion.

Tools like Drop & Join and Replace further support this. A dancer can momentarily disengage their engine, then re-enter on an agreed count, without breaking ensemble cohesion. We see breath appear, choice sharpen and listening deepen.

‘Finding your engine’ brings dancers together

Finding your engine is about shared design.

Classes move from individual exploration to duet and group structures – canon, mirror, call-and-response – while preserving shared parameters. Different engines operate simultaneously, but the ensemble remains coherent because timing, facing, and intention are aligned.

This is how difference becomes visible without becoming chaotic, and how access becomes part of the choreography rather than an exception to it.

Get in touch if you’d like to find out how I can help your company become more diverse.