another beginning, but new just the same

Session 2, Day 1

The second installment of this workshop begins today with some discussion about our deeper muscles, like the psoas, and movement from the bones. We took a hands-on approach and tried to feel our bones with our hands, through our skin and muscles. We also reversed this and tried to feel from the inside out. Both sensations/experiences help us to become 3-dimensional dancers, so to speak. We started the warm-up exercises on the floor, remembering to melt into the ground and feeling the weight of the body against the floor. As we moved up to standing we tried to keep our weight primarily in the heels. We learned our basic pliés and tendus exercises which will be repeated throughout the course of the workshop. And then we moved to some exercises across the floor. Some basic terms that we covered were homolateral and crosslateral: used to determine which parts of the body moved together, either right arm and right leg together, or right arm and left leg together, for example. We also talked about undercurve and overcurve to describe the shape that we create when moving in space, with any given point in the body, or even with the whole body. These two can both be seen in the basic triplet walking pattern we did: down, up, up, down, up, up,… Lots more to cover for next time. We’ll concentrate on the upper body and review the exercises we’ve already learned. Stay tuned!