Session 3, Day 3
In this class, we tried to hold on to what we’ve already learned about the lower half of the body, and layer an awareness of the upper half of the body. So we worked on the same exercises (and some new ones) and coordinated the arms and back with our legs and pelvis. After our pliés, we added a simple tendus exercise. The trick to going faster is to keeping the weight down through the heels even in the pointed foot, and releasing the upper thigh and hip. When you close the tendu in first, your weight should be equal on both feet. If you shift your weight too far to one side, on the standing leg, then you get stuck and it’s much harder to change weight when you switch sides. We’ll keep practicing this, and keep adding variations to the tendus exercise. Across the floor, we also added a side traveling pattern. The second half of the step, as we step behind and around the big pizza pie, can be done very squarely – or you can challenge yourself to find the syncopation in the rhythm and really carve out the roundness in the step. The big highlight of the day (for me, at least) was the connection exercise. I’ve done this before in workshops, and it’s really helped to connect the group. It’s also a great tool, to breaking out of your box because it helps to get you out of your head/ego and really value feeling. (The work comes from Akira Hino, Budo master, and I studied some of it from Amy Raymond, former ballet Frankfurt member.) We did the basic connection exercise where we simply try to align our centers and connect with our partner. We will continue to explore some of this work in class, and hopefully you, too, will experience the openness that it offers. Next time, we will start on some choreography as well!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Baby are you down down down down down
Session 3, Day 2
The second session was all about the pelvis. We started off lying on our backs with our knees up. In this position, remember to let your belly and quads rest, allowing the weight of the legs to pour through the feet to the ground. We then dropped our knees to either side and brought our legs back up by rolling the back of the pelvis along the floor and grounding our feet. This is a sequential movement so we’re really trying to articulate the movement of the pelvis and feet separate from the knees. The knees should be the last to arrive, and with little to know effort. Which brings us back to the first point: keep the belly and quads released. This exercise helps us find our deep core muscles as well. As we keep the upper body more or less neutral, we still feel the psoas at work to move the pelvis. After our usual warm-up and stretches, we continued on with our pliés, paying much attention to the single-count/ pliés/élevé portion of the exercise. You can flow through each position so that you don’t get stuck anywhere. And the arms help with the feeling of zipping up through the center of the torso and then gathering and bringing it back down through the center. Sometimes blurring the lines helps to see the big picture. So one thing that might help some of you when trying to learn a combination of movements, is to not get so hung up on the details and just take a crack at your best shot of the overall phrase. Maybe for now, just notice if you work from micro to macro or vice versa. We then went on to our exercises across the floor. And added some legs swings to the mix. Remember to keep the supporting leg rooted into the ground and the leg swinging freely, with the emphasis on the downward motion. All the while, the pelvis is moving on top of that stable leg, albeit quietly so as to not send the whole torso swaying. For next time, we’ll revisit all these exercises and focus on coordinating the arms with the rest of the body. See you soon!
The second session was all about the pelvis. We started off lying on our backs with our knees up. In this position, remember to let your belly and quads rest, allowing the weight of the legs to pour through the feet to the ground. We then dropped our knees to either side and brought our legs back up by rolling the back of the pelvis along the floor and grounding our feet. This is a sequential movement so we’re really trying to articulate the movement of the pelvis and feet separate from the knees. The knees should be the last to arrive, and with little to know effort. Which brings us back to the first point: keep the belly and quads released. This exercise helps us find our deep core muscles as well. As we keep the upper body more or less neutral, we still feel the psoas at work to move the pelvis. After our usual warm-up and stretches, we continued on with our pliés, paying much attention to the single-count/ pliés/élevé portion of the exercise. You can flow through each position so that you don’t get stuck anywhere. And the arms help with the feeling of zipping up through the center of the torso and then gathering and bringing it back down through the center. Sometimes blurring the lines helps to see the big picture. So one thing that might help some of you when trying to learn a combination of movements, is to not get so hung up on the details and just take a crack at your best shot of the overall phrase. Maybe for now, just notice if you work from micro to macro or vice versa. We then went on to our exercises across the floor. And added some legs swings to the mix. Remember to keep the supporting leg rooted into the ground and the leg swinging freely, with the emphasis on the downward motion. All the while, the pelvis is moving on top of that stable leg, albeit quietly so as to not send the whole torso swaying. For next time, we’ll revisit all these exercises and focus on coordinating the arms with the rest of the body. See you soon!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Off to a great start - again!
Session 3, Day 1
So this is the first time we’ve done the workshops back to back. Pretty exciting; keeps everything rolling along. Looks like another great group of women – many new faces and some past attendees. So we started this session with a brief discussion about what our goals are for the workshop. And it seems that across the board, people were interested in having more confidence when they dance, and perhaps not thinking too much. Awesome! I think this is the perfect place to work on those things. Another goal that came up was flexibility. And I stressed that stretching should be about openness. We want it to be almost effortless in the body and work with relaxation, because forcing a stretch often becomes tightening some other muscles to accomplish the “shape”. Try to let go of this idea of “shape”, and don’t compromise alignment for some idea or image of what you think “flexible” is. During this first day, we covered a lot of ground in terms of learning movement and exercises – many of which will be repeated and built upon throughout the course. We did a basic warm-up of stretches. Remember that whenever we are lying on the ground, to allow all your weight to melt into the floor. A bit of laziness is actually helpful here! Don’t over exert yourself by lifting yourself off the floor. Just let the weight of your body fall to the ground and move into the ground as if you were turning over in your bed. We then learned our pliés routine, that we will do every day. During a grand pliés, remember to reach wide, and to the sides with your knees, letting your pelvis simply drop to the floor. Holding yourself up by engaging the quads too much, sometimes creates unnecessary stress on the legs and knees. Also, when rising from the grand, get the heels down as soon as possible. It’s as if there is gum on the bottom of the heels that keep them stuck on the floor. We then learned some traveling exercises across the floor – learning the principles of undercurve and overcurve, and learning that I like keeping the heels down (!), pelvis to the floor, and getting as low low low as possible. We will revisit just about all these things the next time. And explore the pelvis a little bit more. So this is the first time we’ve done the workshops back to back. Pretty exciting; keeps everything rolling along. Looks like another great group of women – many new faces and some past attendees. So we started this session with a brief discussion about what our goals are for the workshop. And it seems that across the board, people were interested in having more confidence when they dance, and perhaps not thinking too much. Awesome! I think this is the perfect place to work on those things. Another goal that came up was flexibility. And I stressed that stretching should be about openness. We want it to be almost effortless in the body and work with relaxation, because forcing a stretch often becomes tightening some other muscles to accomplish the “shape”. Try to let go of this idea of “shape”, and don’t compromise alignment for some idea or image of what you think “flexible” is. During this first day, we covered a lot of ground in terms of learning movement and exercises – many of which will be repeated and built upon throughout the course. We did a basic warm-up of stretches. Remember that whenever we are lying on the ground, to allow all your weight to melt into the floor. A bit of laziness is actually helpful here! Don’t over exert yourself by lifting yourself off the floor. Just let the weight of your body fall to the ground and move into the ground as if you were turning over in your bed. We then learned our pliés routine, that we will do every day. During a grand pliés, remember to reach wide, and to the sides with your knees, letting your pelvis simply drop to the floor. Holding yourself up by engaging the quads too much, sometimes creates unnecessary stress on the legs and knees. Also, when rising from the grand, get the heels down as soon as possible. It’s as if there is gum on the bottom of the heels that keep them stuck on the floor. We then learned some traveling exercises across the floor – learning the principles of undercurve and overcurve, and learning that I like keeping the heels down (!), pelvis to the floor, and getting as low low low as possible. We will revisit just about all these things the next time. And explore the pelvis a little bit more.
So this is the first time we’ve done the workshops back to back. Pretty exciting; keeps everything rolling along. Looks like another great group of women – many new faces and some past attendees. So we started this session with a brief discussion about what our goals are for the workshop. And it seems that across the board, people were interested in having more confidence when they dance, and perhaps not thinking too much. Awesome! I think this is the perfect place to work on those things. Another goal that came up was flexibility. And I stressed that stretching should be about openness. We want it to be almost effortless in the body and work with relaxation, because forcing a stretch often becomes tightening some other muscles to accomplish the “shape”. Try to let go of this idea of “shape”, and don’t compromise alignment for some idea or image of what you think “flexible” is. During this first day, we covered a lot of ground in terms of learning movement and exercises – many of which will be repeated and built upon throughout the course. We did a basic warm-up of stretches. Remember that whenever we are lying on the ground, to allow all your weight to melt into the floor. A bit of laziness is actually helpful here! Don’t over exert yourself by lifting yourself off the floor. Just let the weight of your body fall to the ground and move into the ground as if you were turning over in your bed. We then learned our pliés routine, that we will do every day. During a grand pliés, remember to reach wide, and to the sides with your knees, letting your pelvis simply drop to the floor. Holding yourself up by engaging the quads too much, sometimes creates unnecessary stress on the legs and knees. Also, when rising from the grand, get the heels down as soon as possible. It’s as if there is gum on the bottom of the heels that keep them stuck on the floor. We then learned some traveling exercises across the floor – learning the principles of undercurve and overcurve, and learning that I like keeping the heels down (!), pelvis to the floor, and getting as low low low as possible. We will revisit just about all these things the next time. And explore the pelvis a little bit more. So this is the first time we’ve done the workshops back to back. Pretty exciting; keeps everything rolling along. Looks like another great group of women – many new faces and some past attendees. So we started this session with a brief discussion about what our goals are for the workshop. And it seems that across the board, people were interested in having more confidence when they dance, and perhaps not thinking too much. Awesome! I think this is the perfect place to work on those things. Another goal that came up was flexibility. And I stressed that stretching should be about openness. We want it to be almost effortless in the body and work with relaxation, because forcing a stretch often becomes tightening some other muscles to accomplish the “shape”. Try to let go of this idea of “shape”, and don’t compromise alignment for some idea or image of what you think “flexible” is. During this first day, we covered a lot of ground in terms of learning movement and exercises – many of which will be repeated and built upon throughout the course. We did a basic warm-up of stretches. Remember that whenever we are lying on the ground, to allow all your weight to melt into the floor. A bit of laziness is actually helpful here! Don’t over exert yourself by lifting yourself off the floor. Just let the weight of your body fall to the ground and move into the ground as if you were turning over in your bed. We then learned our pliés routine, that we will do every day. During a grand pliés, remember to reach wide, and to the sides with your knees, letting your pelvis simply drop to the floor. Holding yourself up by engaging the quads too much, sometimes creates unnecessary stress on the legs and knees. Also, when rising from the grand, get the heels down as soon as possible. It’s as if there is gum on the bottom of the heels that keep them stuck on the floor. We then learned some traveling exercises across the floor – learning the principles of undercurve and overcurve, and learning that I like keeping the heels down (!), pelvis to the floor, and getting as low low low as possible. We will revisit just about all these things the next time. And explore the pelvis a little bit more.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
It doesn't stop here
Session 2, Day 8
Wow! We made it through the 8 weeks! It was a great session, ladies. For our last day, not too much new material… We spent a lot of time during the end of the class, running the choreography, and experimenting with improvisation. Everyone was really awesome about just jumping into the deep end with the improvising. I really felt, by the end of class, that everyone was beginning to let out their club dance – meaning, people were less afraid about letting loose the way that we do when we’re dancing at a club or in our room alone. Some tips if you get stuck during an improv…connect with another dancer and play off of their movements. Mimicry is great (to a certain extent of course). But go ahead and steal a move here and there. Really you’re just using your environment as inspiration for your own movement, and that’s exactly it! Or if other people are a bit too intimidating, then don’t be afraid to close your eyes every once in a while and move from a more internal place. This is ok too. Improv is great at teaching you about yourself and what you need. You can’t always rely on the choreography to get you through, so you really have to listen to yourself and open yourself up to your surroundings. And when purely new movement isn’t coming to you right away…then, for sure, use the choreography as a departure point. Repeat a move or two and then see where it takes you. …So if you’re not attending the next workshop, I hope you leave this one with some valuable tools and great memories. We’ve come a long way in such a short amount of time. And that’s due to your courage, trust and enthusiasm. So thank you for that. Hope to see you on the dance floor or in the studio again!
Wow! We made it through the 8 weeks! It was a great session, ladies. For our last day, not too much new material… We spent a lot of time during the end of the class, running the choreography, and experimenting with improvisation. Everyone was really awesome about just jumping into the deep end with the improvising. I really felt, by the end of class, that everyone was beginning to let out their club dance – meaning, people were less afraid about letting loose the way that we do when we’re dancing at a club or in our room alone. Some tips if you get stuck during an improv…connect with another dancer and play off of their movements. Mimicry is great (to a certain extent of course). But go ahead and steal a move here and there. Really you’re just using your environment as inspiration for your own movement, and that’s exactly it! Or if other people are a bit too intimidating, then don’t be afraid to close your eyes every once in a while and move from a more internal place. This is ok too. Improv is great at teaching you about yourself and what you need. You can’t always rely on the choreography to get you through, so you really have to listen to yourself and open yourself up to your surroundings. And when purely new movement isn’t coming to you right away…then, for sure, use the choreography as a departure point. Repeat a move or two and then see where it takes you. …So if you’re not attending the next workshop, I hope you leave this one with some valuable tools and great memories. We’ve come a long way in such a short amount of time. And that’s due to your courage, trust and enthusiasm. So thank you for that. Hope to see you on the dance floor or in the studio again!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
