Ballet is a technique which strongly shapes a dancer's consciousness of form and space. It is chiefly through muscular control that the skeleton can bring forth a clarity of line. In the Belgian tv documentary I Think the Body Likes to Move Forsythe referred to the sensibility of muscles. The muscles inform a dancer 'where the limbs are'. The quadriceps can be used to pick up the leg.
Recent findings suggest it is most advisable to use the deeper-placed muscles.
This is not just for reasons of stability and healthy use of the body. The more you can let go of your control, and give it over to a kind of transparency in the body, a feeling of disappearance, the more you will be able to grasp differentiated form, and differentiated dynamics. You can move very fast in this state, and it will not give the same impression - it won't give the impression of violence. You can also move with tremendous acceleration provided you know where you leave the movement - not where you put the movement, but where you leave it. You try to divest your body of movement, as opposed to thinking that you are producing movement.