Objective

This independent study will explore dance education for a variety of purposes and goals. The open course title leaves space to allow for study of dance education in technique, creative dance, somatics, using a variety of teaching structures including structured class, creative dance class, workshop etc…. The main goal is to realize the role of the teacher to establish a safe, positive, and focused environment for meaningful learning in a dance studio setting. A secondary focus of this study will explore how dance educators integrate somatic principles in their classes to build a student’s sense of self, self-awareness, self-confidence.

Preparation

Application

Lesson 1

The focus of this first workshop was exploring an awareness of the physical contents of the body. We opened with a simple exercise that only required the participants to walk around the room. In my reflection of this class, I explain the this intention further saying,

I explained that I use walking through the space as a means to clear my physical and mental state of being. Such a routine action, for me, clears the slate from the pressures of the day. Then I asked them to catalogue a list of the substance of their bodies. They had the choice to focus on substances like blood, water, their dinner, or to focus on major systems, organs, or bone. I asked them to pick one item from their list and consider it qualitatively and invite those qualities into their movement. After this opening we had a conversation and shared what we had thought about. 

In watching the workshop participants I was surprised how easily I could identify what it was some had chosen. For example one chose to focus on the blood and the tempo of his movement quickened. He began doing vertical movements that rose and fell through different levels of the space and began each new rise with a slightly renewed surge of energy embodying his own heart beat.

We then looked at some images from David Gorman’s The Body Moveable to talk about bone. I think Gorman’s images really illustrate the shape, texture, density, and function of bones throughout the body.

 

After looking at images like these we went out into space to explore through movement a list of “bone-body” qualities we had brainstormed. We came back to a discussion that bones, on a physical and metaphorical level, can represent many different and sometimes conflicting images of self. One participant wrote,

Bones help to stabilize, yet are brittle in their own substance, bones are strong yet yielding, bones are your structure, your shape, but without muscles would be completely subject to the will of gravity.

Bones in the foot: All work together to serve one purpose. Bones, on a macro level, work in relationship to one other, in similar ways to the network of their own structure. Space between allows even a substance as dense as bone to yield.

Lesson 2 & 3

Due to such low attendance in the second week, I combined lesson plans in the third week. I first read a passage from Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine.

“My left shoelace had snapped just before lunch… my foot had sensed its potential freedom and slipped out of the sauna of black cordovan to sooth itself with rhythmic movements over an area of wall-to-wall carpeting under my desk, which unlike the tamped-down areas of public traffic, was still almost as soft and fibrous as it had been when first installed…. Since the pervasion of carpeting all you hear when people walk by are their own noises, the flap of their raincoats, the jingle of their change, the squeak of their shoes, the efficient little sniffs they make to signal us and to themselves that they are busy and walking somewhere for a very good reason, as well as the sonic whoosh of receptionists’ staggering and misguided perfumes…. I realize when you slide a socked foot over a carpeted surface, the fibers of sock and carpet mesh and lock so that you think you are enjoying the texture of the carpeting, you are really enjoying the slippage of the inner surface of the sock against the underside of your foot, something you normally get to experience only in the morning when you first pull the sock on….” Chapter One

What amazes me about this passage is the incredible sensory detail. The attention to sensation in this desk-worker’s foot is almost anal-retentive in its effort to capture everything. That was my next task for the group, I had them take a walk around the building paying such maximal attention to one sense. They were encouraged to remove any sensory filter and try to soak it all in. When we reconvened we discussed our experiences. Many remarked at how much sensation they do not notice throughout their daily lives and that they noticed by tuning in fully to one sense, other senses were dulled. Some expressed, for example, by listening so absolutely, the saw fewer details of the building as they walked through the building.

After this outer-sensation experience, we learned a simple movement phrase and repeated it with our eyes closed, paying attention to the sensation of our inner substance. On participant reflected,

When we did it with our eyes closed I was so aware of the little tiny movements our body makes without our instruction in order to keep us balanced. 

After this discussion we switched gears and watched the following video.

We also looked at the images in this blog post.

Both the video and the images were meant to illustrate full integration of sensation, intention, and action. Especially in the animal images, intention is so clear because the choices they make literally pertain to daily survival. We dived into a brief lesson about the chakras and returned to our movement phrase from earlier and applied energetic intentions of the different chakras at the dancer’s choice.

Lesson 4

The final workshop was meant to show how quickly our self-concepts are manifested in our physical mannerisms. In part, this is what a “somatic lifestyle” means to me. We started with another walking exercise where I asked the participants to put on different senses of self than they normally would. Sometimes embodying what you are not can clarify who you think you are. One of the prompts was to walk through the space as you think others perceive you followed by a prompt to walk through the space as you perceive yourself. This sequence was the most present in our discussion as we discussed how we could know what others think of us, whether or not those perceptions represent a truth, and whether or not one or the other is more comfortable to embody.

It was hard to walk like others perceive me. I feel that I walk like that too often. How much more fun, easy, natural and carefree was the walk to amplify who I really am! This makes me wonder why I don’t walk like that all the time?! I think it is because of 1. being socially aware, and 2. practicality. But, my work and day would be so much better were I to walk like my true self.

I think part of adopting a philosophy as a lifestyle is recognizing your relationship to the environment you life in. For this section we went outside and repeated a part of the previous walking exercise, but before we left to go outside I referenced themes from the previous workshop by reading this highly sensory passage from David Abram’s, Becoming Animal. 

“The self begins as an extension of the breathing flesh of the world, and the things around us, in turn originate as reverberations echoing the pains and pleasures of our body… only much later, as the child is drawn into the whirling vortex of verbal language, is that child liable to learn that neither the bird nor the storm are really aware, that the wind is no more willful than the sky is awake, and indeed that human persons alone are the carriers of consciousness in this world. Such a lesson amounts to a denial of much of the child’s felt experience and commonly precipitates a rupture between her speaking self and he rest of her sensitive and sentient body, but the breathing body, this ferociously attentive animal, still remembers. The foot as it feels the ground pressing up against it remembers. The skin of the face remembers turning to meet the myriad facets or faces of the world. the tips of the fingers remember… The ears listening know that all things speak, our chest rising and falling knows that the strange verb “to be” means more simply to “breathe.”” Becoming Animal, David Abram

When we returned we had a brief discussion about the differences between doing the walking exercise inside versus outside, comparing in particular the prompt to move about this space as an animal.

Concluding Reflections