IADMS Miami 2000   [back to the Category]

From Functional to Athletic: Modern Dance Class with Feldenkrais® Based Warm-up   [read the french version]

Author :   Jane King, M.A.

Author: Jane King, M.A., eba Dance Theatre/Maude Baum & Company, Albany, NY, USA

This movement session will offer participants an example of how somatic techniques such as the Feldenkrais® Method can be applied directly to dance education and even form the basis of the dance class.
We will progress from the functional to the aesthetic, from the sensate to the visual, and from the introspective to the expressive in this alternative to the traditional dance class model.
Many challenging elements of dance vocabulary are highly stylized versions of basic patterns of human movement. The functional aspects of these basic movements are eclipsed by aesthetic and expressive qualities in dance technique. Typically, dance technique is taught by external visual teaching model, with the student attempting to imitate her instructor more exactly with repetition.
In this dance class, the traditional warm-up will be replaced by Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement sequences. In these sequences, dancers will be guided to use sensing and internal cues to improve their ability to organize the basic movement patterns that inform the most challenging elements in the succeeding dance combinations.
We will then take the information gleaned in the first part of the class and use it in traditional modern dance combinations. While the earlier part of the class will be slow and small to facilitate sensing and learning, the second part of class will emphasize stylized, expressive movement that extends beyond personal kinesphere and demands an awareness of line and external visual models.

This is the abstract of a paper presented at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science, held 27-29 October 2000 in Miami, Florida, USA. All rights are reserved by the individual author(s).