IADMS New York 2002   [back to the Category]

What Is Kinesiologically Wrong Yet Kinesthetically Right In Dance Training?   [read the french version]

Author :   Pamela Geber, MFA, BFA

What Is Kinesiologically Wrong Yet
Kinesthetically Right In Dance Training?
The Science Meets The Imagery


Pamela Geber, MFA, BFA
Department of Modern Dance, University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA


Student dancers integrate information from a variety of sources in order to improve their technique. Sources include internal proprioceptive sensations, visual cues and directions or feedback from teachers. Teachers’ directions and feedback are often given in the form of images they have found to be effective in producing technical accuracy. These images may be kinesiologically/anatomically incorrect even though they are kinesthetically correct. It is not unusual for student dancers attending university programs to have studied dance science more intensively than their technique teachers. Teachers depend on their own kinesthetic sensation of accurate technique to design learning opportunities and give directions and feedback on student performance. The danger is such that if the image is kinesiologically/anatomically wrong, a student may prematurely disregard it.

There are numerous examples from both ballet and modern dance vocabularies in which kinesiological evidence seems to disagree with kinesthetic sensation. In this presentation, I will cite examples of this. In a battement to the front that requires a stable pelvis, the hip flexors concentrically contract. However, a dancer focusing on the action of hip flexion may “hike” the gesturing leg’s hip. This is true because muscles pull equally on both ends. In this scenario, stabilizing the front rim of the pelvis, contracting the psoas minor and possibly the pyramidalis and rectus abdominus, allows the power of the hip flexors to translate into the moving lever. Additionally, the hip extensors need to stretch. Teachers who understand this kinesthetically may describe battement as coming from the back of the gesture leg.

As dance students are acquiring more kinesiological knowledge alongside their studio practice, it is increasingly important that they understand the seemingly paradoxical relationship between kinesiological evidence and kinesthetic sensation. Dancers are both athletes and artists and their bodies’ expressive clarity as well as physical longevity rely upon a blending of both quantifiable and qualitative findings.