How to Do a French Twist | Pro Tip from Melody Staples Hammell

Our current School of Ballet 5:8 Featured Guest, Melody Staples Hammell, is a former principal dancer with Charleston Ballet Theater. We asked her to share some pro tips that she learned during her extensive career. Today, Melody offered a couple of tricks for putting your hair into a French twist.

Melody says:

Who Cares? by George Balanchine is one of my favorite ballets. I saw it for the first time when I was in high school, and I loved it. The Gershwin music was fantastic, of course. The costumes were cute and elegant, the choreography was impressive and a little flirty, and all the women wore their hair in French twists.

French twists themselves are so beautiful—the sweep of the hair, the elegance, no visible means of holding the hair in place, mysterious. But I could never get my French twists to stay! They would always loosen after a few hours if I could even get it smooth enough in the first place.

Fast forward 10 years to when I was cast as one of the principal dancers in Who Cares? and I was ecstatic, of course, but I also knew I had to figure out that French twist! So, I started playing around with it and wearing a French twist every day for class and rehearsal. I discovered two very simple keys to getting and keeping a tight, smooth French twist.

1) Greasy hair.

I know, it’s a little gross, but clean hair has “body”, which is essentially air around the hair strand. As it gets dirty during the day, the hair flattens leaving your hair smaller and causing your initially tight twist to loosen. Greasy hair causes your hair to “cling” to the strands around it producing a smooth, flat, tight twist. You can achieve greasy hair by not washing your hair for a couple days and/or by applying a product. Hair spray and styling gel are not great for this because they make the hair stiff which resists the twist. The best product that I have found for grease is Groom and Clean because it is very smooth—it doesn’t stiffen the hair.

2) Use a loose twist to start the French twist.

I used to start with a tight twist at the bottom and then, yuck, I’d have a loose, bulgy “twist” at the top. I figured out that if I started a loose hold at the bottom and then twist loosely to the top, I could tighten the whole twist at the same time. Then, make sure the first few bobby pins help tighten the twist-- take a bobby pin, grab a little hair on the edge of the twist, and then pull a tiny bit turning the pin so it is pointing slightly up and crossing the twist.

I had finally figured it out: a super tight French twist! I got so good at them that I ended up doing other dancers’ hair as well as mine for Who Cares?.