Arabesque is a ballet position in which the dancer stands on one leg with the other extended straight behind.
In classical ballet, an arabesque is a position in which the dancer balances on one leg (the supporting leg) while the other leg extends straight behind the body, typically with the torso inclined slightly forward to create one continuous line from fingertip to toe. The position exists in numerous school-specific variants — Cecchetti, Vaganova, and Balanchine technique all define the arm placement and torso angle slightly differently — but the underlying idea, a body extended into space along a single unbroken diagonal, remains constant. The arabesque appears constantly in the classical repertoire, from the frozen tableaux of Swan Lake's corps de ballet to the extended promenades of Petipa's grand pas de deux, and has become so emblematic of ballet itself that it is often the first image non-dancers picture when they think of the art form.