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!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
get low, low, low
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…
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…
Saturday, January 16, 2010
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!
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