IntelliDANCE

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. We are going to start 2008 with a lesson that I really love. I call it Just Up. I have drawn the movement from a series of Awareness Through Movement® lessons that involve the use of oscillations.I like this lesson for dancers for many reasons. I especially like the way it helps dancers to experience the feeling of being pulled up, without triggering unnecessary tension in the body.I like it for another reason as well—I think it helps to generate a feeling of optimism. I can think of no better way to begin the New Year. Enjoy!IntelliDANCE Podcast 6: Just Up© Andrea Higgins 2008.

Last week’s blog post and Podcast lesson were inspired by a lecture that Moshe Feldenkrais once gave, in which he discussed Nijinsky. We received a wonderful follow-up post from Daniel Gesmer. If you have not yet read Daniel’s comments, please go to the post titled “Jump Thoughts,” (Nov. 2007) and click the "comments link" at the end of the article.Daniel’s post got me thinking about the use of imagination in the Feldenkrais Method®. Specifically, how Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) lessons can help to develop the ability to imagine not only the visual image of movement, but also the kinesthetic sensations associated with it. After experiencing how effective imagining was at bringing about remarkable changes in my own organization and functioning, I began to utilize imagining more and more in my teaching practice, and in life generally. This week’s Podcast lesson will introduce you to the process. Enjoy! IntelliDANCE Podcast 5: Imagining© Andrea Higgins 2007.

I have been working with the ideas and movement explorations in this week’s Podcast lesson for a number of years. I would like to share the background, for it has to do with a story I once heard about Nijinsky.When I was training to become a Feldenkrais® practitioner, the Educational Director of my program, David Zemach-Bersin, showed a video of a lecture given by Moshe Feldenkrais on Nijinsky. I was not able to obtain a transcript of the lecture, as it was under copyright, so I contacted David afterward to see if he might be able to provide further information. He was only able to provide some basic context, the essence of which, is that Moshe was introduced to a family member of Nijinsky, who let Moshe look at Nijinsky’s private journals.In his lecture, I recall Moshe talking about how Nijinsky was able to “fly out the window.” He never clarified this point further; I assume he was referring to a moment in a specific ballet, but as I am not a Nijinsky scholar (and have never studied his journals), I am not sure what he was referring to exactly. The more important part of Moshe’s lecture had to do with how Nijinsky prepared to “fly out the window.”Moshe said that Nijinsky would sit quietly in a chair and gently lift his feet off the ground. He would do this for some time. Then, he would get up and “fly out the window.” What interested me about this story was not the part about flying out the window. It was the part about sitting in a chair and gently lifting his feet. It was the glimpse into Nijinsky’s process. Much of what we do in dance is an extension of what we do in daily life. It is a more exaggerated, dynamic, faster and stylized extension of daily activities. As learners and teachers we forget that underlying the most complicated or virtuosic dance combinations are some very basic movement and body organization patterns.Think about what a jump—out the window or otherwise—really is for a moment. It is an extension of standing up. For a very young child it is often a very joyful extension of standing up. In dance we limit the expression of those basic patterns according to stylistic requirements, but by returning to the basic functional patterns from time to time, we can help to reorganize ourselves in such a way that our dance patterns improve.In this week’s Podcast lesson we will see if we can figure out what Nijinsky seemed to intuitively understand. How, by sitting quietly in a chair and lifting our feet, we can improve our jumps. Enjoy!IntelliDANCE Podcast 4: Jump Thoughts© Andrea Higgins 2007

I have a confession to make. Back in my pre-Feldenkrais® days, when I first started teaching dance, I worked primarily with children. One ballet class stands out in my memory, for it was one of those classes in which a number of the children just didn’t know how to focus. They were constantly talking or fooling around between combinations.One day, feeling totally exasperated and ready to loose patience, I said, “Ok, let's see who can hold their breath the longest.” Suddenly—there was silence. As I watched those angelic little faces turning various shades of red, I was stunned—they were suddenly completely committed and focused. The really interesting thing was that even after they let go of their breath and returned to dancing, they remained pretty focused—at least for the rest of that class. I must admit that I used that trick on a number of occasions, with similar results.I have noticed that there seems to be more and more children these days exhibiting the behavior that I witnessed in that class. I suppose some would call it Attention Deficit Disorder; others might blame it on poor dietary habits. Whatever you call it and whatever the cause, these children simply have no means available (other than medication) to quiet themselves.Learning to quiet oneself is a skill worth developing for all children. Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) lessons are one way to develop this skill, for they teach us to bring our awareness inward. They also teach us how to quiet our system. Although any ATM lesson can help, I have found breathing lessons to be especially effective for my students. Not only does it quiet them down, it has the added bonus of getting them into a state where they are much more receptive to learning.This week’s lesson incorporates breathing and the use of imagination. I have used it with children as young as eight with great success. The next time you have an unruly class on your hands, give it a try.IntelliDANCE Podcast: Lesson 3

Hi Everyone,I am re-posting the podcast link for the October 8 lesson, Scoliosis and Supporting the Pattern, because for some reason it did not transmit to our iTunes subscribers. We are officially listed in the iTunes Directory, but may not show up in searches for a couple of weeks. You can access our link by clicking here. If you do go to the iTunes Store to subscribe, please consider posting a review!Here it is again:IntelliDANCE Podcast: Lesson 2

In dance, we have a constant companion—our reflection. Many of us are taught (both implicitly and explicitly) to evaluate our performance in class by what we see in the mirror. Over time, this visually oriented process instills an outside-in model for evaluating alignment—or placement—as it is more commonly referred to in dance class. In order to be effective, this model relies on informed seeing. Informed seeing requires knowledge of human anatomy and the ability to identify skeletal landmarks on the body, which help to determine if the body is aligned properly.So, what do we mean by “proper” alignment. (This was a word that virtually every one of my dance teachers used when referring to issues of placement.) I found the following definition in my Encarta® World English Dictionary (© Microsoft Corp.):prop·er adj 1. Appropriate or correct. 2. Fulfilling all expectations or criteria. 3. Behaving in a respectable or socially acceptable way. 4. Characteristic of or belonging exclusively to somebody or something. 5. Strictly identified and distinguished from something else.Think of the history of ballet and you come to realize that proper alignment may have had less to do with potentiating movement than it did with social mores back in the court of Louis the XIV. Perhaps a better word to use in the dance classrooms of today when talking about alignment or placement would be optimal.Optimal alignment suggests the most advantageous alignment—that placement in which the body is free to move in any way, in any direction, without first needing a readjustment of some sort. Are the eyes the best and most reliable way to assess this?Our eyes can only offer an objective (outside-in) evaluation of the body’s preparedness to move. It is bodily/kinesthetic sensation that offers a subjective and immediate sense of the moment that occurs between thought and action—the moment from which our movement potential unfolds. By training dancers to be more aware of their bodily/ kinesthetic sensations, we can help them to find the individual nuances necessary for their own body to be optimally prepared for movement in class. This leads to an inside-out understanding of alignment, in which alignment serves movement rather than serving as a purely aesthetic criteria.The Feldenkrais Method® is one means for helping dancers to deepen their bodily kinesthetic awareness. Especially effective is the learning process developed by Moshe Feldenkrais called Awareness Through Movement® (ATM). ATM lessons generally last about 45 minutes, making it neither possible nor practical to include a complete ATM lesson during a typical dance class. But, it can be helpful to have a few simple and quick Feldenkrais-inspired exercises up your sleeve that will bring about positive results within just a few minutes. These can be done as part of a dancer’s pre-class warm-up, or at the beginning of class to facilitate an inside-out experience of alignment—even in very young students.Lesson One: The Spine, Turnout & the Inside-Out PrincipleThe spine has a series of natural front to back (or sagital plane) curves, which are necessary for balancing in an upright stance. The segmented structure of the spinal vertebrae allows for the constant adjustments necessary for balance, while the lumbar, thoracic and cervical curves enable the vertebrae to efficiently bear the weight from above. When dance students—especially those who do not possess 180 degrees of natural turnout ability in the hips—come into a turned out stance, there is often a compensatory increase in the degree of curvature in the lumbar spine. Why does this happen? Because, the spine and the hips have something in common—the pelvis. If a student forces turnout from the hip, or fails to engage the hip rotators while turning out, the pelvis will help to compensate by tipping forward, thus increasing the lumbar curve.In ballet class, it is common practice to take a turned-out stance, and then correct the spinal compensations by pulling in, pulling up and so forth. In the lesson we are going to do today, we will take a Feldenkrais-inspired approach to placement at the barre, by first observing the effect of turnout on the spine, and then working with the pelvis and spine to bring about positive improvement of placement in turnout.A special note to teachers: this lesson runs approximately 23 minutes. I have made this recorded lesson it a little longer than would be practical for use in a typical technique class to allow for explanations that will help you as a teacher. But, keep in mind that once you become familiar with the lesson structure and ATM process, you can shorten the lesson to suit your own purposes. I have shortened it to just three minutes with remarkable results! So, on to the lesson…Click Here for IntelliDANCE Podcast: Lesson 1© Andrea Higgins 2007.

Hold on to your iPods—the IntelliDANCE Podcast has arrived! I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time, but hadn’t really decided when or how. Then, when I was working on the previously promised recap of my presentation at the DanceLife Teacher Conference, it all came together.Since the presentation included two Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) lessons on alignment, and since ATM is best experienced by following verbal instruction (as opposed to written instruction), I realized that I needed a way to talk you through the lessons. In the two articles that follow, you can read a summary of the ideas covered in the lecture portion of my DanceLife presentation, but you can try the lessons by subscribing to the Podcast.Click below to listen to the introductory episode, which provides some general background information. You will find Lesson 1, which addresses alignment while standing in turnout, at the end of the next article. Lesson 2, which will address scoliosis, will be coming next week.Enjoy!Click Here for Podcast