Blog | Bourgeon - Part 112

Dance, Awareness, and The Feldenkrais Method® by Daniel Burkholder

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December 15, 2006

Dance, Awareness, and The Feldenkrais Method® by Daniel Burkholder

In 2001, after studying, teaching and creating dance for 20-odd years I was ready to find a new direction for my exploration of movement. I was suffering from chronic injuries, dissatisfaction with traditional technique classes, and I wanted to expand my understanding of how the body organized for movement. I was interested in how the brain and the nervous system coordinated the muscles to operate in a systematic and efficient manner. I was intrigued by how different people coordinate in ways that organize the body for more or less efficient movement. I began to explore numerous somatic modalities, including The Alexander Technique, Body Mind Centering and Laban Movement Analysis. But, one day while I was lying on a mat, doing the articulate movements of The Feldenkrais Method®, I found the technique that I needed to explore. Through its subtle and powerful movements I found relief from discomfort, a dynamic way to expand my movement skills and tangible, practical information on the functional organization of the body.

Developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, the method, unlike traditional movement techniques, doesn’t teach specific movements to learn and master. Instead, it offers dancers a method for increasing their awareness and efficiency while moving. Most dancers have habitual tendencies when moving – it may be unconsciously lifting the chin, unnecessarily contracting muscles, or tucking the pelvis. For example, I had a tendency to clench my jaw which led to chronic discomfort in my neck and shoulders. Through The Feldenkrais Method®’s approach I explored the different movements of the jaw, head and neck and I found ways to re-pattern my movement. As a result, I no longer get neck and shoulder pain and have more freedom in my upper torso. Developing increased awareness led me to understand how I was organizing movement and then allow new movement patterns to emerge. As Dr. Feldenkrais stated, “You can’t do what you want to do until you know what you are doing.”

Increasing awareness is also a key to improving and expanding a dancer’s technical facility. As the dancer becomes more aware of how she is organizing her body she is able to accomplish technical feats with more ease and control. For example, a dancer may wish to increase her proficiency in turning – to turn more times, or more consistently, but she always shortens her left side as she lifts her right leg into passé. This unevenness in the torso throws her off balance and she is stuck only doing one or two turns through brute force. Her teacher can tell her over and over again to lengthen her left side, but if she can’t feel it, it won’t change. If the dancer had more precise awareness of herself, she would be conscious of her imbalance and easily lengthen the left side. By working with The Feldenkrais Method®, dancers develop more awareness so that they can approach and practice movement with more clarity.

By practicing The Feldenkrais Method® dancers will also find that they suffer from less frequent and less severe injuries. Much of the pain that dancers live with comes from ineffective technical habits repeated over and over for many years. Dancers who are suffering from these ongoing discomforts often assume that “that’s just the way it is”. But, once these habits are recognized, more efficient patters become available for the dancer, and their discomfort easily fades away.

To study The Feldenkrais Method® the dancer has two choices; to study one-on-one with a practitioner or, to study in a group class setting. Which way the dancer approaches the method depends on his personality, needs and opportunities. Ideally, to get the best results, students should study in both the individual and group settings.

Dr. Feldenkrais first developed one-on-one sessions, Functional Integration®, in which a practitioner meets privately with a student to design lessons that address the individual’s goals. The Feldenkrais® practitioner will work with the student, who is often lying on a low padded table, by gently touching and guiding him through movement. The practitioner will help the student increase his range of motion, release unnecessary tension, as well as integrating the different parts of the body into an efficient whole. Through this process The Feldenkrais Method® reorganizes the body so that unnecessary movements disappear. The practitioner will work with the student lying on his back, as well as on his side, in sitting and in standing. Changing the student’s position assists the student in finding clarity in his organization. Functional Integration® is ideal for those individuals who have specific issues or discomfort that they would like to examine.

Out of his work with individuals, Dr. Feldenkrais created Awareness Through Movement® lessons that are taught in group sessions. These classes are lead by a teacher who verbally guides students through a sequence of gentle movements that are unique and easy to learn. By doing unusual movement patterns in class students can discover their unique movement habits and simultaneously find more efficient ways of moving. Dr. Feldenkrais designed over 1,000 lessons to address every joint, muscle and function of the body. The 30-60 minute lessons take place in an open room with carpet or on soft mats. Often the classes are taught in a series that address specific topics, such as posture or walking, areas of the body, such as the spine or hip joints, or populations, such as dancers or seniors.

The Feldenkrais Method offers dancers the opportunity to fine-tune their bodies, heighten consciousness and awareness by eliminating unnecessary habitual patterns before they become major problems. The method allows dancers to avoid common repetitive types of injuries, recover from traumatic injuries, expand their technical proficiency, and find greater ease in their movement. The method has been invaluable to me as a dancer and my body feels better now, at 38, than it did 10 years ago. While it doesn’t replace taking dance class or working out, it does make all of these activities easier, more beneficial and more enjoyable.

Daniel Burkholder is the Director of The PlayGround, Co-Director of Improv Arts and is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner(cm). For further information about his dancing projects go to http://improvarts.alkem.org, and for further information about his Feldenkrais practice go to www.integrated-body.com.

originally published in the Focus Section “Technique” – Bourgeon Vol. 2 #3

The Horton Technique by Diana Dinerman

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December 15, 2006

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Modern Dance innovator Lester Horton (1906-1953) pioneered dance in Los Angeles from 1928-1953. Today, Horton’s technique is taught in varying versions at numerous institutions in the United States and Overseas. By the 1950s, the Horton technique had evolved through several phases into a massive body of movement vocabulary that included exercises for every part of the body, even the eyes and tongue. Horton was at the height of his creativity in the early 50s when he re-codified his dance technique (after 15 years of collaboration with Bella Lewitzky). He used the students and their diverse physiologies, rather than his own, to develop a technique that works to broaden a dancer’s range of movement and expression, not define or limit it. “The technique strengthens and increases the expressive range of every body, not just classically proportioned ones,” said Milton Myers, Director of the Modern Program at Jacob’s Pillow. Lester Horton’s aim was to endow dancers with strength, extension, lyricism, fluidity and, most importantly, versatility.

The Horton technique can be separated into six movement categories. For each category Horton developed detailed exercises, that he called “studies.” Projections are studies that deal with varied and specific qualities of movement, for example, ‘Leg Slices’ and ‘Hip Pushes’. Locomotions are traveling steps (walking, running, leaping, jumping, gliding, skipping, etc.), for example, ‘Accented Runs’ and ‘Arch Springs.’ Preludes are short phrases of movement designed to quickly stimulate and tone the psycho-physical instrument. Rhythms are music dance patterns, rhythms of work and play, plus emotional manifestations of rhythmic consequences. Improvisations are used to awaken the students own movement sensibilities. Fortifications are long combinations of phrases designed to ensure protection and maximum efficiency of the body’s capabilities, for example the Hinge and Balance Studies.

The fortifications are considered the core of Horton technique. They establish a framework of movement mechanics, of muscular development and coordination, elasticity and range, rhythm and timing of phrasing, and movement quality. Horton’s intent was to make the whole body dance so he developed a system of facility, not a style. “A well trained dancer shouldn’t look trained,” said Kristina Berger, Horton instructor at Marymount Manhattan College. Horton wanted to see the dance, not the effort behind it. As a result, many of the studies, when put in combination present like etudes full of dynamic contrasts and broad, sweeping movements, such as Spiral Falls, where a dancer moves from standing to the floor in one fluid spiraling motion. The technique is not separate from the act of dancing. In order to execute the technique properly, you must dance it. Therefore, his technique addresses every possible movement that a choreographer might want a dancer to perform.

What most people have not experienced about the Horton Technique is the circular, lyric and fluid motions it insists on. Everything stays connected unless it’s meant to be percussive or staccato, such as the ‘Percussive Stroke Studies.’ Regardless of how we view the Horton technique today, it is neither a geometry class nor a series of poses and positions. It is a force of communication where the body is the sole medium of articulation.
The Horton technique should never be studied just for its strengthening or limbering effects. To truly embrace its inventions, a dancer must use each exercise to explore its expressive qualities. For Horton, learning to dance was not about the execution of a step but how the step spoke. This idea also manifests itself clearly in the naming devices of the Horton Studies, such as ‘Torso Language’ and ‘Deep Floor Vocabulary.’

The Horton Technique is a figurative and literal oak of organic growth and exposition that stems directly from the mighty trunk of Dimensional Tonus (yawn stretch.) This study begins with intake of breath, then proceeds to reach for every dimension and possibility of bodily extension. Its movements constantly balance freedom and control. Horton’s inclusion of Native American forms such as the ‘Figure Four’ and ‘Smiling Figure’, as well as Caribbean, Balinese, Javanese, African, and Afro-Brazilian influences create a massive range of movement vocabulary. His ‘Isolations’, in particular, from the percussive to the sensual, include many of the dynamics that we encounter today in the study of traditional ethnic dances.

Horton’s technique, like the ballet barre, moves from simple to more complex exercises – it is progressive. “It begins with roll downs and flat backs. It culminates with fortification studies, many of which teach students to transition from the floor to knees to standing,” said Ana Marie Forsythe, Horton Director at the Fordham Ailey Dance Program. One of the most recognized aspects of Horton training, Flat backs, are meant to engage and warm up the abdominals and hamstrings at the beginning of class. They are not meant to be used as strengthening exercises before the body is even warm. “Horton Technique is the literal opposite of those who insist on technique as an end, those who subscribe to the acrobatics rather than the spirit of dance,” said Frank Eng, Horton’s long-time business partner. “Lester Horton’s lifelong and career-long exposition and development of a dancer’s alpha and omega… of the possibilities of the human skeletal musculature body as an instrument of movement in space and time transcends mere technique, and, as such, very much embodies the very essence of “art” itself.” It is this alpha and omega of expression that Horton was looking for and created his technique to help us find.

Diana Dinerman is a D.C. based dance scholar, and the Director of The Horton Summit.

Dear Ludwig, by Diana Dinerman

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December 15, 2006

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Please permit me to enter into this conversation unannounced. I agree with you completely. Form is not outside of ideology. And this is not a new thought. Walter Benjamin told us this in 1936, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” There is ideological content in form. I think Rob is making a case that because form is an abstraction, it is neutral. Unfortunately, he is wrong.

Ballet is the most collectively oppressive form of art as it maps compulsory heterosexuality and whiteness, and uses the body as its sole instrument for this message.

While dancers of ‘other’ (other meaning non-white, non-hetero) genders or races may experience a thrust of personal agency because he appears on stage and may express himself, he is making himself a spectacle for someone else’s pleasure. And even if that exchange is pleasureable to him, which is not wrong in itself, (one does choose to perform, after all, one is not forced) he is still catering to a dominant ideology. Even happy dancers have felt like chattle or prostitutes at least once in their performing career. Spectacle is objectification, we can’t get around that. As long as art remains commodity and operates with in the consumer market, this is a dynamic we must accept and, I hope, whose power we can redeploy.

It should be said that Ballet is not the only genre of dance that is oppressive. Many forms of dance do the same thing and through various means. Commercialized Hip Hop stages a live auction/brothel for us every time we turn on the television-bling and bootie around every corner. It is also the prime example of capitalism’s excesses. Even Common, a hip hop artist I used to enjoy, has succumbed: “Peace, Love and Gap,” he raps in his most recent commercials. Is he crazy?! I’ll state the obvious in case we’ve lost site: Social Justice and Slim Fit Stone-washed are not synonymous. But back to the subject…

The most difficult part of the ideological debate over Ballet for me is that it undermines the hard work of so many people. Their talents and sacrifices get swept under the rug when I dismiss Ballet as oppressive. Ballet is part of the dance community and the people it employs are our fellow artists who deserve our respect and our love. It is with deep contemplation and a little regret that I express to them that their practice, the reason for living to some, is wholly useless and destructive as a contemporary mode of expression. I have not been able to reconcile these conflicting feelings as I respect the creativity and spirit with which dance is made and performed. I’d like to think I do this in all its genres, but maybe I can’t.

I know that some people are thinking, “What’s wrong with appreciating beauty, can’t I just take pleasure in prettiness, why do we have to ruin it by getting deep?” First, there is no such thing as ‘just beauty.’ Beauty is not outside the discourse of oppression or ideology. And no, we can’t stop getting deep. Getting deep is the only thing we’ve got going for us. Furthermore, thinking does not render something un-beautiful. Thinking does not destroy art or artfulness. In order for creativity to survive, it must be cultivated. Cultivation requires critical, by that I mean ‘deep,’ thought. So it is not a good idea to stop ‘getting deep.’

Form is ideology, ideology is culturally embedded. Ideology guides and constructs the means by which we express. The means can not be separate from the ends in this instance.

When means are separate from ends we run into a new conflict: We don’t recognize what we see and because we don’t recognize it, we do not assign the same cultural value to it. Ed Tyler’s work is the perfect example of what happens when an artist refuses to participate in the oppressive discourse that is classical Ballet. Audience’s expectations of dance are uprooted so thoroughly that they don’t know what they are looking at. Part of the reason Ed’s work received so many different and confused responses, is because he uproots our expectations of concert dance at almost every level: costume, narrative, movement vocabulary, partnering, casting. He does this in favor of imagining an alternative way of being in the world, an inclusive space, which nurtures some unknown, and therefore, frightening, possibilities of human experience. As a community, we simultaneously court and tame this kind of innovation. We want things to be new and different, but not so different that it disrupts our value system. This is where we need to stop and think about what we need/desire most for our art. Do we want to move forward or do we want to live in 18th Century Europe?

I’ve never seen Ballet that doesn’t racialize, engender, classify and stratify. The kind of cultural work Ballet does is bad for us. But to conclude more diplomatically, I do not know the solution to these problems. I want to continue discussing it because I think the ideological/form issue is one of many that maintains concert dance as a marginalized art form.

Diana Dinerman is a Washington, DC-based writer and Founder of the Horton Summit. For more information on the Lester Horton Dance Theater Foundation, Inc., please visit www.hortonsummit.org

originally published in the Focus Section “Technique” – Bourgeon Vol. 2 #3

Open Reply to Loren Ludwig by Rob Bettmann

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December 15, 2006

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Open Reply to Loren Ludwig by Rob Bettmann

originally published in the Focus Section “Technique” – Bourgeon Vol. 2 #3

Dear Loren,

Technique is not ideology. Technique is options. Any technique simply gives you options. Technique allows you to make choices.

A poet could say that the English language is the language of oppression, the language of Columbus, Nixon, Bush, Rumsfeld and whatever that guys name is on Fox News. But you could equally say that English is the language of Audre Lorde, Nina Simone, and Bell Hooks.

I understand that there are aspects of our culture that one wishes to run away from. That one wishes were not a part of history, and of the present. But our only choice is the present. And in the present, the English Language, the Ballet Language, the Language of Classical Music – these things can be oppressive, but are not necessarily so. I understand the desire to run away. To start something, or work with something, that does not have baggage. At the same time, if performing is a gift, is for the audience – might it not be a terrible thing to express to them in a language they already are familiar with? Especially if expressing new ideas?

Technique gives you choices. Perhaps if one chooses ballet technique, one is then burdened to dance in a way that counters the past. But perhaps all technique gives you choices for today, and every individual, and every audience has a different relationship to any technique. We probably don’t read Shakespeare – as individuals or as an audience the way they did two hundred years ago. Does that matter?

Ballet is inherently connected to nothing but the individual who practices it.

Rob Bettmann is a freelance dancer and writer based in Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Day Eight – the host organization for this journal. Examples of his non-dance writing can be seen at www.dayeight.org. He continues to train in ballet with Roudolf Kharatian.

An Open Letter to Rob Bettmann by Loren Ludwig

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December 15, 2006

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An Open Letter to Rob Bettmann by Loren Ludwig

We’ve been ’round and ’round about this, my friend, but I’d like to put my side of our dialogue down on paper, where we can see it and where, perhaps, it’ll seem more convincing.

Technique is ideology.

There it is. Technique, by which I mean the set of skills with which a person orients herself and upon which she draws in the performance of an expressive act, always embodies and expresses a certain relationship to the world. This relationship may or may not be compatible with the creative intentions of, say, the dancer that employs the technique, but the technical vocabulary itself always bears its own meaning alongside the expressive utterance it is used to convey.

That is why some techniques are better suited than others to express certain specific ideas or to traverse certain expressive terrain. The most successful pairings of technical vocabularies with expressive content come about when the former bursts forth from the imperatives of the latter. Punk and bebop both exhibited this explosive development of a technical vocabulary as a creative response to social and political ferment. Something new had to be said, and a language was forged to say it.

But the processes of their creation also indelibly marked those techniques. Charlie Parker’s heroin-fueled conflagrations, or Bad Brains’ walls of noise, wouldn’t work to express, say, Joni Mitchell’s countercultural yearnings, or the swaggering Afrocentricity of funk.

That technique is ideological is not in and of itself problematic. Every human practice or body of knowledge can be argued to be expressive of some ideology, to encode certain relationships to the world in which it develops. In fact, it is only because technique is a vector of ideology that art can do the cultural work which we depend on it to do.

You claim that the ballet technique which you continue to work so hard to acquire is ideologically neutral. That good ballet technique simply allows a dancer to make a wider range of expressive choices than, perhaps, other techniques. That ballet technique is a strong foundation upon which any expressive edifice can be securely built. Further, you argue that ballet is constantly evolving in response to the changing expressive demands of its practitioners.

If you’ve followed my argument this far, you will see why I disagree with these statements. Ballet was created in response to specific historical and social imperatives. It is a technical vocabulary that encodes very particular ideologies about the body, about an individual’s relationship to other individuals, about the relationship between performers and the audience, about gender, and about the nature of time and space and man’s place in them. To those committed to the claim that ballet technique is ideologically neutral, and simply constitutes ‘good physical training’, this may sound critical, but that is not the spirit in which I write it (isn’t it funny, though, how the central myth of the Classical arts is their ‘naturalness’, their absence of ideology).*

So, if I claim to be unconcerned with the fact that ballet technique is ideological (aside from the simple assertion that it is, in fact, ideological), and I claim to withhold judgment about what I understand to be the content of its ideology, why go to all this trouble?

Because I perceive a dissonance between your expressive intentions as I see them and the language you’ve chosen to articulate them. You seem to have become so convinced that ballet is a vocabulary that you must first master in order to say anything that you have allowed it to dictate what it is you wish to say. My remedy is to try to convince you that ballet, like punk or bebop, can only effectively say certain things, and that those things are not really the things that you want to say. Find yourself a language that suits you better, as a person, as a mover, and as a creator. Don’t fetishize a technique that will only, in the end, prove incompatible with your creative intentions even as it silently subjugates those intentions to its own.

* Brief disclaimer: I am aware that meanings change over time, and that different people make different meanings from the technical resources available to them. Camp is a classic example of these processes. Nonetheless, a residue of the original ideology always remains. This is true in ballet particularly, especially considering the ‘high-culture’ use to which most modern audiences (and, arguably, dancers) still put the form.

Loren Ludwig is currently completing his PhD in Music History at UVA, focusing on 17th Century Consort Music, and Hip-Hop. He performs nationally and internationally on the Viola da Gamba, and is on faculty at the Amherst Early Music Festival.

originally published in the Focus Section on “Technique”, Bourgeon Vol. 2 #3

To read Rob Bettmann’s reply to Loren Ludwig, click here.