Fouetté is a whipping turn in which the working leg's outward motion drives the rotation of the body around the supporting leg.
Fouetté ('whipped') describes a category of turning steps in classical ballet in which the working leg whips out and in to power the rotation. The most famous is the 'fouetté en tournant', performed on pointe: the dancer pivots on one leg while the other extends to the side, whipping inward to the knee with each rotation, generating angular momentum without the supporting leg ever leaving the floor. Pierina Legnani astonished St Petersburg in 1893 by performing thirty-two consecutive fouettés in 'Cinderella'; Marius Petipa wrote them into the Black Swan variation of 'Swan Lake' (revised 1895), where they have been the test of every Odile since. The step demands extraordinary core strength, balance, and spatial control. Outside the showcase moment, the fouetté family also includes slower, sustained variants used throughout classical and neoclassical choreography.