Thoughts on Dance .

Gravity.

Being conscious and aware of the pull of gravity is key in knowing your instrument . Tension in the body hinders the ability to feel . Without sensing inwardly, it is much harder if not impossible to built a dance technique . Aligning your spinal column, gathering and centralizing your weight cannot be done without tuning-in to your physical sensations. The trick here is to free the body of tension and allow the body’s intelligence to guide you.

Placement ,Alignment and Axial extension.

The spine has three curves: The Cervical, the Thoracic and the lumbar spine . Tension that creates elongation and uprightness in the spine is called Axial extension .

The right amount of tension and mobility between the three bows work together to achieve balance and stability . The conditioning and coordination so that the bows and arches can work together through the strings that coordinate them allows for longevity and performance.

A dancer is made aware of the importance of aligning the spine with sentences like ”straighten your back”or “put your torso on top of your turnout”, Axial Extension allow for a deeper , less superficial understanding of how the spinal column can begin to balance itself. Now all one needs to do is to place the spinal column over the feet and learn to move with it, controlling and stabilizing it (balance) by centering the weight inward in all directions.

Moving with your placement require the understanding of over-curves. One has to literally lead with the placement of the back as one steps forward and eventually catch the balance with the toes connecting to the floor.

Planting your feet on the ground.

When you press your toes and toes knuckles down, it activates the Plantar muscle and turn’s on the arch which creates stability all the way to the ankle and throughout the body. Sending the flow of energy down creates a powerful relationship with the floor. The analogy here is to be rooted like a tree. While doing a tendu that relationship is used by pushing the floor away on the out movement and resisting the floor on the in movement. The downward flow of energy or movement from the gluts down to the toes, add to our ability to hold less stress in the spine and rib case and therefore achieving freedom of technic and authentic artistic expression.

Arms and balance.

Port de bras in french means carry of the arms and one could understand it has: feeling the weight of your arms. The arms serves has a pendulum to create balance the way a bird uses his wing to balance on air. When a dancer finds a balance in a passe position, he or she is constantly adjusting to maintain the equilibrium even thought movement is not perceivable . The arms are the expression and will guide the dancer’s movement as they initiate the coordination of the body as a whole. The elbows play an important role as they originate the movement of the arm and support them . Not enough is mentioned of the use of the arms in dance today, the way they support the torso and the entirety of the movement and give life to the dancer s expression .

DANCE