After the summer break up we are back to University, developing our artistic abilities through dance practice and research. Movement Studies 3 - the main set of sessions supporting us this last year at University consists of various practice methods. Most of them consists of or strongly relates to Somatic Practices, such as Skinner Releasing Technique, Feldenkrais, Body-Mind Centering, improving theoretical/intellectual and practical understanding and deepening our knowledge about such practices, covering general understanding of Somatic Practice field. So far it is offering improvisational based work as well as set phrase work, often also related to composition and choreography along with technique improvement. All the practices are strongly informed by theoretical research and discussions in class.
Personally for me it really feels as ongoing work continuing from last two years. I very often catch myself recalling my previous experiences in such work, which, in my opinion, helps me to develop my own dance practice even further. For example, I also relate feedback that I got previously, which helps me to persistently work on things that my dancing body needs particularly, and in complex with new material and emphasis, only after few weeks I can already feel the results.
Experiential Anatomy seminars and practices firstly reminded me what I already knew about my body systems, awakening the awareness in my body of particular ones, such as muscles, skeleton, nervous system, etc. deepening it by layering them - bringing it all together in the light one by one, which is my perception. Narrowing it down a bit, depending on the day and class, I am currently focusing on these things:
- Spine; especially how to keep it soft, flexible as well as noticing the shape and form in order to keep the spaces open and use it in the most possible released state and ways that do not create any pressure or damage on it.
An interesting thing that influenced my moving and knowledge, was looking at pictures and drawings of animal skeletons, and the videos I have watched of moving animals, as their movements contain the least effort and are so smooth, the way they keep their postures at all times is incredible. Cat family species left particular impression.
Another thing that I was particularly focusing on, which are also bones - ribs. However, what interests me, is what is called QUIET RIBS. I noticed that focusing on this idea really takes away a lot of tension and pressure off upper body, rather making a sense of lightness and easiness as well as even grace. This is especially noticeable doing phrases on Tuesday sessions.
-Next thing I am working on at the moment is related to feedback that I got last year in technique class is Momentum. This idea of letting things flow, letting go of thinking too much seem to be really beneficial already, as I find myself embodying and even remembering the material much quicker somehow. Makes me wonder, where this might lead and what more this could unfold in my practice?
I also tend to focus on my inner experiences so deep that it often affects my relation to outer world and this can really affect the relation with my audience in the future, so EYE LEVEL, idea of seeing and being seen when moving is something I try to focus more and more hoping to inhabit the outer awareness.
I strongly believe, that intellectual information that we get has a massive impact in my improvement. For example, articles about Somatics and Perception that we've been given to read as one of the tasks, informed me by giving different perspective on how I perceive, and gave such a deep understanding about my body that I become physically aware about in my dance practice as well as general well-being. The visual information - videos I have watched in particularly, that explained so much about living body from cell to development of systems and senses , and, therefore, perception, were about babies and their development, cells itself, and a few about animal behavior and systems their bodies contain in comparison to human's.
The information gathered from those videos informed me as a human, as a woman as much as a dancer.
One,particularly interested me, I watched on Youtube, called "Inside the living body" which explained and shown in very detail about all I have mentioned above. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBIYwiktPsQ
Summarizing, I think this module is really supporting my practice in intellectual and practical way so far, as well as supporting my expectations of what I intend to improve this year, which is flexibility, expanding my kinesthetic awareness and broadening the range of my perception and explore somatic practices even more, as this is the emphasis of my current interest in dance practice, highly supporting my dissertation research.
