Head to Tail

side effects

2011-06-28T22:14:00.000-07:00

neupogen should list good karma as a side effect, at least for those who use it short term based on use as stem cell donors. Stressful work week at an end. LA, Chicago, Paris and then back to SF (boo hoo!). Yes, this is a FABULOUS life.

Moving on

2010-06-12T09:28:00.001-07:00

Session 4, Day 5

When we’re learning more complicated and longer phrases, what can we do to get past the mental blocks? Often, I see in class, that we know the choreography but when it comes time to do the phrase as a group or with the music, everything goes out the window. Being able to consistently perform a dance is a skill developed and practiced over time. But I think at the heart of this challenge is the balance between the mind and the body. Knowing the difference between the times when your mind is an asset to remembering, an when your thoughts aren’t serving you much, is key. The latter, usually happens when we judge ourselves or get fixated on a “mistake”. Just remember, that your body is going to feel different day to day, minute to minute, so you’re working with different variables every time you move. For now, just keep in mind that the dance will never feel perfect. And even if it does feel perfect one time, I guarantee, it will feel differently the next time. So when you’re learning choreography, an essential skill is how to recover from a “mistake” - how quickly can you clear thejavascript:void(0) slate, get past any judgment about your performance, and stay present in the dance?

Spiral and Unfurl

2010-05-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

Session 4, Day 2
Today we got a little deeper into the floor exercise. Trying to find a sense of relaxation when in contact with the floor is essential to being grounded when standing or flying. So we laid on our backs with our limbs out in a large X and slowly peeled the fingers of the right hand off the floor. Keeping with the sensation in our fingertips, we followed the initiation of the fingers across the body, past the left hand, and so far that our torso and pelvis spiral and fold over. Taking a moment to rest in this folded position, we allowed the gentle crease in the hip flexors and let the head rest to the floor. To unwind, we reached down and out with the toes of the right foot - the only effort being in the tips of the toes, so that the rest of the body can simply follow the flow of energy. Do not skip any steps, especially at the pelvis and torso. Allow each part of the spiraling body to be pulled by only the toes. You may feel a gentle stretch at the waist and shoulder blades. We repeat the same cycle on the left side. And then we do a similar pattern but winding up from our toes. Reach the right toes across the body and as it travels up, through the pelvis and torso, the arms drag on the floor and eventually circle over-head. It’s important to keep the connection of the fingertips to the floor, so that we’re not lifting any part of our body up from the floor. To unwind, we reach the right fingertips over our heads, on the floor and back to a high diagonal, unfurling the pelvis and eventually our thighs, knees and feet. As you unwind through the legs, allow your hips to find the turnout to facilitate the spiral in the lower body. Often, dancers stop the unfurling short at the thighs and end up doing too much work to bring the leg back to our starting X position. We must really be honest about which part of our body is initiating the movement – in this case, either the fingertips or toes – in order for your body to calibrate a sense of connectedness among body parts. We’ll keep working on this exercise some more, and see how images come into play in making this exercise feel more natural in your body.

Spring cleaning!

2010-05-08T09:18:00.000-07:00

Session 4, Day 1
Welcome ladies! So lovely to have new faces and returning dancers in the same workshop. What a great group. The first day is always challenging because everyone is just getting their feet wet. Just know that we’re all on this ride together. So the best thing you can do right now, is to jump right in and sink your teeth into the material. I’ve realized that what so many dancers want from this workshop is more confidence in their practice. The first step to this, I believe, is being able to identify your weaknesses so that you can then overcome them (-let’s all be honest here!). That’s another reason why the beginning is always challenging. We are faced to look at the things that we tend to push away. But meeting fear head on is ultimately what makes us courageous. And remember, to a certain extent, confidence naturally comes with time. So coming to class everyday, and mere presence in class is key to your success…We started off lying on the floor. From an X position, we took either a finger or a toe to lead the rest of the body into a spiral. People tend to do too much in this exercise. Remember to allow the body to relax and melt into the floor, and then we can be clear about which part of the body is active at any given moment. Movement coordination is all about timing. So in every exercise, as dancers, we are constantly tracking our body moving in time. The more articulate and accurate you can be about this, the more awareness you bring to your practice. What often happens is that there is no space for this kind of mind-body awareness because the mind is cluttered with other worries – the ex-boyfriend, the grocery list, the report due at work, etc. So a huge task at hand whenever we’re in dance class, is to free the mind from these extraneous thoughts so that we may focus on connecting the presence of mind with the presence of body…Next time we’ll continue to hash out these concepts, because for some of you it might be a new way of thinking about your physical practice. And we’ll continue to practice traveling patterns across the floor and our center pliés exercise, of course.

The challenge

2010-05-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

Session 3, Day 8
Wow! 8 weeks went by so quickly! Congratulations, you all have come so far. You can surely see how much your confidence has improved. I hope you can feel that in your bodies as well. At the end of class we did a lot of rounds just running the combination. It was a big test in stamina. For me building stamina is so much about relaxing the mind. Our bodies are amazingly capable of a lot, and can build strength and change form very quickly. I think the challenge is always the mental blocks that tell us that it’s not possible. So when our bodies feel challenged, that’s the time to kick into gear the tools of the mind to get you through. Now, we don’t want to over-exert ourselves to the point where we are hurting our bodies. So it takes careful listening to know when the sensations of fatigue are from panic or actual, physical pain. Again, I must say, you have all grown so much stronger in these 8 weeks. Your bodies are a lot more open. And it’s always after opening, do our bodies then have the opportunity to change.
So next session starts next week. I hope a lot of you take the workshop again. It would be great if we keep pushing the pace and challenging ourselves. And repetition is always good. They say that the most advanced student is the one who can take a beginner class and still feel challenged.

What are your hands saying?

2010-05-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

Session 3, Day 7
This session we introduced some floorwork into our repertoire. First we must start with the idea that the floor is our friend, and let go of any fears we may have about meeting the floor with a loud thud. Imagine the floor as something soft and pliable, able to give and receive weight. When we are lying on the floor, let your body melt and feel every bit of surface area of your body come in contact with the floor. Become especially aware of your hands and fingers and how they help the rest of your body to move through the floor. Really utilize the sense of touch through the hands. Your hands are able to receive and give a lot of information. When we moved to standing we practiced this connection through the hands with a partner. We placed a hand on our partners back and took a walk across the room with them. This exercise really opens up the senses to connecting through the hands. We also added a new inversion exercise across the floor. We took the energy from the hands in a large circle above the head and sent it to the floor in a slight inversion: hands on the floor with legs swinging, hanging form the hips. I was really happy with how brave everyone was with the floorwork. You’ve come a long way.

Break on through to the other side...

2010-04-23T18:44:00.000-07:00

Session 3, Day 6
So Day 6 was quite the break-through class. While going across-the-floor we talked about 100 vs 300 percent in terms of, I guess, energetic output. And while, yes, it is a worthy exercise to do the movement at 300% for the sake of feeling your edge. I encourage you to work at this 300 level all the time. That’s not to say, be careless and throw or push your body past its limitations. But everyone in the class tends toward the side of playing it safe. So right now, I think it’s best to explore the danger zone a bit more. I think we’re all responsible enough for ourselves to not get too carried away. And if I saw someone getting carried away I would definitely step in. But in my opinion, no one is there. I mentioned that I feel like we’re waiting for someone to give us permission to go all out, go 300%. When in actuality, when it comes to really performing and giving it your all, no one other than yourself can open that door. Sometimes it helps, to just accept the fact that you will look like a fool every once in a while. But the more you live through embarrassment like that, the more you realize that it’s not a big deal. And when you can laugh at yourself and pick yourself right on up, you’re actually congratulating yourself for being brave enough to just go for it all. When I was younger, I participated in this “audition” for a dance conference scholarship that took place on stage, in front of about 1,500 people, at the closing event after a week-long dance convention. I danced my heart out. So much that I totally lost my grounded-ness and ended up on all fours in the middle of the combination. I absolutely had no recollection of how it all happened. One minute I’m feelin so good and the next, my nose is inches from the floor. Needless to say, I didn’t get the scholarship. But falling on stage in front of so many people was worth all the compliments I received from my colleagues, the people who have seen me dance over the years, and who know me beyond a 2 minute audition. My point is, accomplishments don’t always come in the form of awards or scholarships. It’s really you that determines whether you’ve met your goals or not. I, as teacher, am nothing more than a friendly, sometimes harsh if need be, reminder of the reality that everything you need in order to be successful is already in you. And remember, time in the studio is for no one else but yourself. So let this place be the one place, if nowhere else, where you can experiment, fall and really test your will.

Sumo

2010-04-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

Session 3, Day 5
So we’re past the half-way mark in the workshop. And everyone is making leaps and bounds in their skill level. You may not think that the way you dance is drastically different, but it shows in your openness and your ability to take on new tasks with more and more courage. It really showed today in the Budo exercise where we did the connection exercise in a circle, and worked on finding each other’s center quickly. This is good practice in fully committing to the task and leaving no time for doubt – which is essential when dancing. When we dance we’re constantly calibrating and re-calibrating where our weight is. So we practice a deep awareness of our bodies in relationship to space and other people. When we did our center pliés exercise, I had you imagine yourself as a hug sumo wrestler to try to get you to take up more space and allow yourself to expand width-wise. This image helps to use the support of the space and stretch beyond your kinesphere. If our sense of ourselves is flimsy and narrow, then we in a sense limit the relationship we have with our surroundings…We also continued to drill the choreography we already know, and then we added a few more steps. I had you count out loud while running the routine, and that seemed to help connect the mind and the body a bit more. If, without speaking, your mind seems cluttered with other thoughts unrelated to the choreography, then counting in your head and tracking your body with your eyes, is a way to quiet and focus the mind. It’s amazing how much the mind and body conflict, and it’s as if, the heart of the dance practice, is more of a mental exercise in stilling the mind. It’s a really complex negotiation between the two. And in dance class, we should explore how much of our “thinking” and decision-making we can locate in our felt/physical bodies, instead of in our mind-body that we so often use in every-day interactions. More to come…

Your time to shine

2010-04-03T09:28:00.001-07:00

Session 3, Day 4
The usual to begin: warm-up from the floor to standing. When we are lying in our X on the floor and spiraling from the initiation of either our feet or our fingers, remember to let the rest of the body melt and just follow the initiation. Allow yourself to just rest into the movement. We, of course, did our pliés, and this time I would step out to give you a chance to figure out the routine yourself. Everyone was really timid at first, but once you let go of some of the pressure, you realized that your body wasn’t so lost and was able to really shine. All the information is already there. It’s sometimes more about clearing the mind to allow the body memory to emerge. We went on to do the connection exercise and tried it from our partner’s back. It’s amazing how much you can feel without seeing. Sometimes the feeling is so much more powerful because you don’t have the distraction of sight. We get a lot of information from our eyes, and sometimes that information can take your focus away from what you’re working on in your body (while your dancing). So learning to shut off that critical voice and the fixated gaze can really open up your movement. We started working on our combination. It begins with a large spiraling of the right arm and upper torso. The footwork is a variation on triple steps (similar to our across the floor exercises). Now that we’re beginning to take on a lot more movement each day, it is critical for everyone to stay open and positive. Practice, practice, practice too! Once a week is not enough. So if retaining the material from class to class is a challenge, then you have to practice it at home and on your own time. Remind yourself again of the goals you set out to achieve at the beginning of the workshop. And ask yourself what steps you’ve taken in the last few weeks to accomplish those goals.

Head over thoughts

2010-03-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

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!

Baby are you down down down down down

2010-03-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

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!

Off to a great start - again!

2010-03-13T09:17:00.000-08:00

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.

It doesn't stop here

2010-03-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

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!

Connection and Nina Simone!

2010-02-28T22:31:00.001-08:00

I love this class so much and can't wait for the next round! I truly feel so much more aware of how I move through the world, both good and bad (inflexibility! ack!). I was totally feeling like a kettle of water about to boil yesterday too (in terms of emotions built up from the week), and it's amazing how scary it can be to confront emotions and to find a way to move through them, as you were saying. The improv exercise was really hard for me, because I felt like it asked me to do something I never have to do in a given day, which is to not only connect with people but also invent with them. I felt a bit like a kindergartener learning how to read as I was trying to improv! I felt like I was learning a whole new language, even different from the language we've been learning in the class so far. It also made me realize how less fun it is when you are only aware of yourself moving. When we did across-the-floor exercises all together, I really began to understand what it feels like when you really use your whole body to connect (not just your eyes) with a group, when you sense each other moving. It is so cool -- it made me feel stronger or more grounded! I'd love to push myself to be braver in connection exercises. Last week, when we did our combination facing the opposite wall, I was completely discombobulated. But I think if I used the group more instead of the room, I wouldn't get so lost. Lastly, I LOVE it when we dance our combination to different songs and experiment with different emotions and contexts. It's just so fun to try to tell a story on top of it all. I'm learning how to sing right now too, and it's amazing how similar the challenges in dancing are to those in singing. Sometimes I catch myself being so concerned with technique and am-I-doing-it-right, and my singing teacher constantly has to remind me to have fun, tell a story, let go, relax! This class makes it really easy to try all of those things at once. Thank you so much!

Sarah

already always perfect

2010-02-27T09:19:00.000-08:00

Session 2, Day 7
We did a bit of a shortened warm-up so that we can get right down to moving big. We revisited our exercises across the floor and did our center “barre” exercises. We also did our basic connection exercise. This time we tried to connect quickly. That helped to take out some of the uncertainty and hesitation. Almost deciding to just be there already…already always there…already always perfect…We then spent a lot of time just running the dance. We added a few more steps to the end of the phrase. And we danced to different types of music to see how that affected/influenced our movement. I don’t know about you, but it was an emotional day for me. I mentioned in class that the energy in the room felt like something was simmering and just about to come to a boil, bursting out of the pot. Wow, great! Hopefully, we can channel this energy through our bodies and out to the world when we dance. Having the courage to feel confident when you feel out of control is what I believe, allows you to truly fly, with two feet on the ground, especially while dancing. Give it a try! – next week perhaps, or maybe even now. There is a lot of power in deciding that now is the time.

thoughts for naught...or not?

2010-02-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

Session 2, Day 6
I presented the same question to the group as last time: what are you working on; what part of dancing do you want to improve? And it seemed like across the board, everyone wanted to think less and feel more, get out of our own heads when dancing, and more importantly…connect the mind and body when dancing so that you don’t get stuck in all the thoughts. This is a great goal to have and a huge challenge at hand. No matter what level your dancing technique is, all dancers are working on this. So don’t get discouraged if it seems like you’re not making progress. Because I can assure you that if you’re working on your dancing, attending class regularly, and are mindful about your goals, then you are definitely making headway on your path. We added some new exercises to our daily routine…After pliés and tendus, we learned rond de jambes – my favorite ballet exercise. I love the roundness and fullness of the movement as the leg makes half circles on the floor. I stressed the importance of keeping weight centered on both feet at all times. And even when the gesturing leg rising off the floor, I still have this feeling like I’m connected and support by the floor through the foot. So in general, when a part of my body leaves the floor, it never feels like it’s taking off into space. In rond de jambes, I also feel the opposition in my body, moving through my center, as I reach my arms forward when my leg reaches away. My arms, in this exercise, are essential to stability. Remembering to engage in the traps/back, reaching through the ring fingers, and a slight press downward (connecting to the floor once again) as if I’m resting my arms on a tabletop. We also added more to our connection exercises. We took this idea of connection and moved with our partners. This requires a lot of letting go and moving into (your partner) which sometimes becomes a very emotional task. Don’t’ worry. This is part of the process. But not necessarily what’s at stake. That is to say, let the emotions arise but let them go just as easily. The practice is just that – practice. Everyone in the class is doing an amazing job of staying open and positive. I recognize that this work sometimes requires a lot of deep self-evaluation and that can be scary at times. But I hope you all recognize how much fun that journey to self-discovery is, and how valuable that feeling of vulnerability is when you experience the sense of freedom on the other end…Moving on…we added some more movement to our phrase. It’s really coming along now. Everyone’s dancing looks more connected and people are dancing with more courage. It’s really great to watch the transformation. We’ll keep refining this phrase some more and dance a little for one another in class for the next time.

Help spread the word!

2010-02-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Early registration deadline for the next session (immediately following Session 2) has been extended to February 17. Sign-up now and take advantage of this great deal! Ask the front desk at Lines Dance Center for more details. First class in on March 6.

out of the ground...

2010-02-13T09:03:00.000-08:00

Session 2, Day 5
We began by asking ourselves what are our goals were for the workshop; what are we working on? This is something that you should be asking yourself in some form or another, every time you take class. Give yourself a daily goal or thing to focus on, as well as a long-term goal with your dancing. We began moving by our normal warm-up. I often went around the room to assist with alignment, etc. We also did the basic connection exercise and added a new Hino task: we learned to find our partners momentum by trying to catch and move their swinging arm. This exercise was a good lead-in to our assisted drag step. Finding the swing of the arm allowed us to find the momentum in the whole body of our partner as she stepped into the long drag that is in the combination. We shifted gears from our normal routine a bit, and went straight into our combination. No new material, but everyone is really starting to feel confident in the movement. This is definitely where we want to be. We drilled the first few steps of the left side (we’ll elaborate on this more next class). And then we did a few of the traveling exercises across the floor to close the class. I mentioned at the end that the pace that we were moving through the across the floor exercises is the pace that we should be doing them all the time by now. Meaning the next group should be coming in about every two counts of eight. We’re at the point where we’ve got a lot of information under our belt, so we should be working towards mastery of those things and adding more to our repertoire. Awesome!

walk this way

2010-02-05T16:37:00.000-08:00

Session 2, Day 4

We began the session talking about the connection in our legs, specifically towards the backs of our legs, and looking at the anatomy of our feet as well. We should try to connect our sitz bones to our heels at all times and bring our weight over our heels, without necessarily “leaning back” and taking the shoulders too far backwards. During our warm-up exercises, we tried to feel this alignment in motion as we shifted our weight in small circles over our feet. It was amazing how we felt more grounded and centered after taking some time to be “off center”. Moving across the floor, we added a little pivot or half-turn step to our simple, 2-count walks forward – in anticipation for full turns later on in the workshop. The lawyer in her power suit seemed to help get you ladies in the spirit of this one. And then at the end of the class we worked on the side drag step that was added to the combination last week. We took a partner to assist us in feeling comfortable with the falling motion in this move. Everyone was really brave in this exercise; really lived up to the Superman image. It’s a big feat to learn how to fall, and to learn how to be carried (by a partner). So great job, dancers! We did a lot of hard work. So I think the next installation will be lots of review of all the material we’ve covered thus far. Reiterating some of the principles with regards to alignment and anatomy, and spending extra time on the movements that are more challenging – like this falling stuff. See you next time!

drop it like it's hot

2010-01-28T21:39:00.000-08:00

Session 2, Day 3
We started off the session with my favorite topic…the pelvis! We talked about the classic image of a bowl for the pelvis, but I clarified that it’s more like those asymmetrical dip bowls that you buy at Crate and Barrel. Anyway, point being, the pelvis is a dynamic part of the body and many factors go into finding its correct alignment. We want to connect the base of the pelvis, the perineum, with the floor of the room – being careful not to tip the “bowl” of the pelvis too far forward, arching the low back, or too far back, tucking the tailbone under. I then introduced the class to a simple connection exercise borrowed from the Budo master, Akira Hino, by way of Amy Raymond (choreographer and former Ballet Frankfurt dancer). The basic rules of the game are: stand about an arms length away from your partner and find their center by feeling. Be cautious not to approach this exercise by using your mind to “calculate” their centerline. Instead, navigate by way of feeling. The right spot is a feeling. And you’ll find it so satisfying this feeling of knowing. We continued the class with our usual warm-up and pliés. We added another section to our tendus that worked the rotation of our leg at the hip socket. Even through an exercise of the legs such as this, we are practicing movement and articulation in the pelvis. Remember that the pelvis halves can move independently of one another. We repeated many of the same traveling exercises across the floor, remembering to get the heels down whenever possible, as soon as possible, and shifting the weight through the soles of the feet. We added legs swings to our repertoire. Stay loose in the hips and the supporting leg should be strong yet pliant. We worked on the combination and tweaked a few of the moves, adding a long leg and an off-center drag here and there. We’ll keep plugging away at all this material next week and start working towards some basic turns. ‘Til next time!

get low, low, low

2010-01-23T09:10:00.000-08:00

Session 2, Day 2
We started off this session with a little discussion about the differences between what we’re focusing on in this class, in terms of alignment and placement, and perhaps what you may be learning elsewhere. Because, surely, there’s no one way of doing things! But it sounds like many of you are catching on that I’m all about keeping your weight back on your heels and opening up the back body. Great! Something else we added to this idea is reaching through your ring fingers to engage your traps or your back when carrying your arms (in second position for example). This should feel slightly different than reaching through your index fingers – which, for me, seems to engage my pecs and the front body. We continued with our usual warm-up, working from the floor to standing. And repeated our pliés and tendus exercises. We added a little “coda” to the tendus exercise we already knew, which consists of a lunge to second position, taking the torso to one side and then reversing the circular motion back to first. Across the floor we practiced getting low, low, low in some of our traveling steps. We even turned to face the mirror to observe our forms and to encourage the continuous charge forward in our steps. Take each step with conviction! It really makes a difference when dancing. When we move it reveals so much of ourselves, so dancing is half a practice of the body and half a practice of our being – hopefully, well-being. Meaning that whatever is going on inside - in the head or in the heart – always shows through in your movement. So if change is going to happen on the outside, it also has to happen on the inside. I’ve also mentioned in class, this idea of the smoke and mirrors when dancing. Performance can be very presentational. But like a magician, the work occurs in the places that aren’t always seen by the audience. For instance, in a tendu, we present the extending foot and show off our pointed toes. However, so much of the work happens in the standing leg and in the hamstring and heel of the gesturing leg…We ended the class by working on our combination that will carry on through the course of the workshop. More to come…

another beginning, but new just the same

2010-01-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

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!

What's your story?

2009-11-29T21:23:00.000-08:00

Day 8
The last session was mostly review of old movement and material. However, we focused more on intention and adding a storyline on top of the dance. We did the combination/routine multiple times, to different pieces of music. And noticed how that affected the quality of the dance. Perhaps each of you noticed what type of music felt better in your body, or what you can relate to. I mentioned that having just one story or one feeling for the entirety of the dance was not enough. That each movement, each phrase, each step, needed to have its own feeling and its own character, almost, in the story. This is how dynamics in a dance can be achieved. Now that the movement, in the combination and in the exercises alike, were more familiar, everyone was really able to get deeper into the quality of the movement. Now everyone was dancing! Congratulations on sticking through the entire 8 weeks and for truly opening up in your dancing. It was such a pleasure to witness.
Unfortunately, we were not able to revisit the improv exercise we did the week prior. But there's always next time! We are currently working on the schedule for next year, and the next workshop. So please stay tuned for that. If people are interested in getting together to do some of the Hino connection exercises, I can also set up a special class for that as well. Hope the holidays have been wonderful so far. Talk soon...

getting to the good stuff

2009-11-14T08:14:00.000-08:00

Day 7
Today we got a little deeper in movement we’ve already done before. We did the connection exercise while walking with a partner, and noticed how keeping things simple helped to stay connected – when the walker was able to maintain a single direction (forward forward instead of up and down or side to side) then the partner was able to follow more easily. We began lying on the floor in our X and initiating with our finger or toes to bring us into a gentle spiral of the spine. Then moved up to sitting for some stretches. We revisited our pliés and tendus, really trying to fill up all the music by coordinating the arrival of the arms and legs. It’s nice to see everyone’s progress in the workshop by repeating these earlier exercises. Definitely more confidence as everyone danced through the material more, now that the movements are more familiar. Across the floor, we practiced being clear with our direction, opening the heart center as you move forward. We reviewed the combination, and when running the dance, we listened to our fellow dancers on their timing so that we can stay together as a group. To open our awareness to listening to others, we did a short group improv in groups of 3. The premise of the improv being that everyone moves together on a pulse, changing positions in the room, while maintaining awareness of the others and their position in the room in relation to you own. We went a second round on the group improv and added that you can choose to follow the movements of someone in your view, or choose to be a leader during any time. This developed into some very interesting relationships among the dancers in the improv, as some fell into unison or a solo emerged. Amazing job, dancers, with the openness and willingness to jump right into improvisation. It was really beautiful. We’ll get to do a little more next time!

back at one

2009-11-05T23:03:00.000-08:00

Day 6

So I’m realizing this week that we’ve covered lots of ground as it is, and repetition of some concepts and lots of review is what is needed most. So this session we started on the floor and went over some things that we did the previous week. We practiced our basic roll across the floor - always remember to keep the pelvis as low to the ground as possible. Also finding the spiral in the forearm is really key in positioning your palm on the floor to help push you up or across. Step out to step up, so that you’re not having to push straight up with the legs. The more we can utilize the horizontal movement of energy and weight, the easier we can approach the floor, the softer we can come in contact with the floor. The pathway to the floor is just one large undercurve, so the shallower the curve, the less force I have to control the fall to the floor. We revisited our plies, which we hadn’t done in a while. It was nice to see everyone filling up the music more, and coordinating the timing of the upper and lower halves of the body…meaning, the arms arrive, the same time the legs do. We worked on some basic chainee turns across the floor. And leading up to it we practiced a walking pattern with two pivots. Remember that a pivot step is basically the same as a half turn. And then on to the combo. We didn’t add any new material, and simply reviewed the new stuff from last week. Next week, I think we’ll continue on this path of remembering. Perhaps learning the left side but not adding any new choreography to the routine. Keep up the excellent work, dancers! I hope you’re having fun.

BFF

2009-10-31T09:05:00.000-07:00

Day 5

This class was all about making nice with the floor. The floor is our friend. And what better way to feel this than to get close to the floor and do some floorwork. We did our basic roll across the floor and had our partner follow us and push our bodies down. This allowed us to drop our weight and pelvis to the floor. Sometimes floorwork is counterintuitive for some dancers because we train so much in lifting up off the floor, and strive to jump high. But floorwork requires the exact opposite. We want to melt our bodies into the floor and continuously drop the pelvis. We improvised a little bit on getting up from the floor and moving down to the floor. Remember to roll down on the front of the foot and when getting up, take a big step out and connect the sitz bones to the heels. With floorwork, you also want to activate the meaty part in the legs and in the arms. Meaning when you are rolling on the floor, feel the spirals in the limbs that allow you to rest on the shoulders, forearms, shins and butt, so as to avoid the hard surfaces of the bones. Also, thinking about lateral and horizontal movement instead of vertical, so that we are not using only our quadriceps to move up and down from the floor. We added a little bit to the combination – just two rolls on the floor. We will review these and do a few more turning exercises in the next session. See you then!

Movement in Stillness

2009-10-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

Day 4
So last sesh, we talked about balances/extensions/alignment…that sort of thing. One important thing to remember with extensions is to not get caught up in this idea of “getting your leg up”, instead you want to remember to stay grounded all the more. We did some standing exercises with a partner, where our friend patted us down and pulled on our heels. Automatically you can feel how your body must adapt to this different placement in weight. We also did a few minutes of standing meditation in tree pose. In this position, remember to feel the spirals through the legs and arms and to bend the knees and keep the weight in the heels, bringing the belly-button to the spine. We skipped the pliés so that we can spend more time stretching. This was perfect considering the weather was pretty warm out. A few things to remember: keep the knee above the ankle in lunge, and always feel the limbs radiating from the belly-button, even in forward folds – trying to make space in between the joints in the pelvis area (scooping out the belly helps with this as well). After a few across-the-floor exercises, we concentrated the rest of the time reviewing the routine. Great job with helping each other out and working without me to remember the dance. This kind of work is really important to practice in dance, because it requires openness and trust that your body remembers. So good job in thinking without your heads! …So as requested, I’m trying to get a video of the routine up on the blog. However, I’m not that technically proficient with things like this, so if anyone wants to help, then let me know. That would be awesome. Ok until next time…We’re going to get to do some floorwork - woohoo my fave!

Sparkling Eyes and Pelvis

2009-10-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

sparkling eyes...
and pelvis...

movin on up!

2009-10-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

Day 3

Sorry dancers. I’m totally behind on my blogging. A long long time ago, it seems, we focused on our upper body and our arms. The one image that I found helpful that day was an eyeball on the front of each shoulder. So when we think of our posture, it’s less about pushing our shoulders back, which often causes us to splay open our ribs. Instead this image helps us to think of simply opening our “eyes”, opening the front of the chest. In general, we always want to think of expansiveness, openness, three-dimensionality. And here we’re already multi-tasking…reaching our arms from our back, especially our latissimus dorsi muscles, all the while, still keeping our pelvis and tailbone dropped like how we practiced the previous week. Ugh, yes, I know so much to think about. But luckily the exercises we did across the floor, and the combination/routine we’ve been working on were very much the same as last week. Only this time we brought our attention to our upper half. However, we did do a few arms exercises in center: opening to second and closing to first position, shoulder and arm circles, etc. – that got a few people huffing and puffing! But hopefully the healthy burn made you more aware of some back muscles that you may have neglected in the past. Anyway, this week concluded our sessions that were focused on certain parts of the body and a little bit of functional anatomy. The following session, touches on balances and extensions…meaning lots of stretching! I’ll also try posting pics and hopefully some video soon…

the pelvis

2009-10-01T22:10:00.000-07:00

Day 2

So we moved it on down to the pelvis today. We started by looking at some illustrations of the lower body and took some time to appropriate the images to our own bodies. We then revisited the connection exercise and added another similar exercise to our repertoire: we took a partner, got connected, and then one person put their hands on the other’s upper arms, while the other person repeated “Right, Left…”. And then we observed how the connection may take us somewhere. After some warm-up exercises and stretches, pliés and tendus, with our awareness on our pelvis and lower halves, we borrowed the “Right, Left” exercise for our across-the-floor moves. With our partners hands on our hips we took a low, low, low walk forwards then backwards. This allowed us to observe the challenges of moving with a partner and also the mechanics of the pelvis. With all this new info, we tried a few more across-the-floor exercises including variations on a triple step with under and over curves, triple steps with the pelvis in one plane (all in a deep plié) and some leg swings. We got through our first few counts of eight in our choreography, and really got our hips and pelvis movin. Next time, we’ll continue with this movement and add on, and focus more on our arms and back.

getting to know you...

2009-09-27T17:02:00.000-07:00

Day 1

The theme of the first class was "getting to know you... (music plays)". We began by flipping through the pages of Albinus on Anatomy – a book introduced to me by Lisa Wymore. We looked at the illustrations of the full skeletal system and the many layers of muscles. We then observed these systems in our own bodies. Using our hands and our minds eye, we moved from the toes to the head, feeling our bones, then the thick sinewy muscles, and the skin. We then found our energetic bodies through a basic connection exercise (borrowed from Budo master Akira Hino, via Amy Raymond), where we stood in front of our partner, connecting to each other’s (energetic) “center”. This seemed to be a great ice-breaker and got the whole group talking. We then returned to the floor for some warm-up exercises, with our attention and intention on moving from our bones. As we moved to standing, we discussed alignment: keeping the floor of the pelvis parallel to the floor of the room, scooping the belly to open and support the sacrum and low back, and keeping the tailbone down and the weight towards the heels. During pliés, we discussed whether our legs in parallel or turned-out position was easier on each of our own bodies. During tendus, we practiced shifting weight from on foot to two feet, remembering to keep the heels always moving towards the floor and energetically connected to one another, even in the stretched position. We clarified some key terms regarding directions and movement planes: undercurve, overcurve, horizontal and vertical plane. And we put these ideas to practice through simple step combinations across the floor.

Whew! That was a lot of info to cover in the first day. Next time, we'll continue to practice these new skills and focus a little more of our awareness on the pelvis.

before the beginning

2009-09-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

Janine Trinidad’s Dance Fundamentals Workshop is an 8-week introductory course designed to give an overview of basic principles in movement and modern dance. The workshop will cover exercises to prepare the dancer for floor-work, jumps, changes in direction and beginner turns, spatial awareness, balance and flexibility, performance presence, and improvisation. No prior dance training is required. The workshop is intended to provide a safe forum for experimentation, inquiry, and discovery of the dancing spirit and embodied energy in every individual. Questions are encouraged, an open mind necessary, and a good time inevitable!