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Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance
392 Pages
Renowned master teacher Eric Franklin has thoroughly updated his classic text, Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance, providing dancers and dance educators with a deep understanding of how they can use imagery to improve their dancing and artistic expression in class and in performance.
These features are new to this edition:
•Two chapters include background, history, theory, and uses of imagery.
•294 exercises offer dancers and dance educators greater opportunities to experience how imagery can enhance technique and performance.
•133 illustrations facilitate the use of imagery to improve technique, artistic expression, and performance.
•Four exercises taught by Franklin and available on HK’s website help dancers with essential rest and relaxation techniques.
Franklin provides hundreds of imagery exercises to refine improvisation, technique, and choreography. The 295 illustrations cover the major topics in the book, showing exercises to use in technique, artistic expression, and performance. In addition, Franklin supplies imagery exercises that can restore and regenerate the body through massage, touch, and stretching. And he offers guidance in using imagery to convey information about a dancer’s steps and to clarify the intent and content of movement.
This new edition of Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance can be used with Franklin’s Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery, Second Edition, or on its own. Either way, readers will learn how to combine technical expertise with imagery skills to enrich their performance, and they will discover methods they can use to explore how imagery connects with dance improvisation and technique.
Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance uses improvisation exercises to help readers investigate new inner landscapes to create and communicate various movement qualities, provides guidelines for applying imagery in the dance class, and helps dancers expand their repertoire of expressiveness in technique and performance across ballet, modern, and contemporary dance.
This expanded edition of Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance supplies imagery tools for enhancing or preparing for performance, and it introduces the importance of imagery in dancing and teaching dance. Franklin’s method of using imagery in dance is displayed throughout this lavishly illustrated book, and the research from scientific and dance literature that supports Franklin’s method is detailed.
The text, exercises, and illustrations make this book a practical resource for dancers and dance educators alike.
Part I. Art and Science of Imagery
Chapter 1. History, Theory, and Uses of Imagery
Defining Imagery
Historical Perspectives
Emerging Theories on Imagery
Benefits of Using Imagery in Dance
Summary
Chapter 2. Types and Effectiveness of Imagery
Direct Imagery
Types of Imagery
Imagery Strings
Making Imagery Effective
Summary
Part II. Discovering and Exploring Imagery
Chapter 3. Discovering Imagery
Nature
Movies
Literary Arts
Music
Visual Arts
Propensity Toward Imagery
Summary
Chapter 4. Basic Movement Imagery and Exercises
Intention
Whole-Body Sensation
Space
Weight
Music and Rhythm
Connections Through the Body
Breath and Flow
Summary
Chapter 5. Imagery in Dance Improvisation
Improvisation and Dance Technique
Improvisation With Children
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
Contact Improvisation and Imagery
Butoh
Summary
Part III. Imagery in Dance Technique Classes
Chapter 6. Teaching Dance With Imagery
Elements of Making Progress
Function and Anatomy
Effort and Tension
Alignment Paradox
Guidelines for Teachers
Guidelines for Students
Summary
Chapter 7. Floorwork, Walking, and Running
Floorwork
Pelvis as a Strong Sitting Base
Upper-Body Motion While Sitting
Falls to the Floor
Rolls on the Ground
Floor Barre
Stillness and Slow Movement
The Foot
Walking and Running
Summary
Chapter 8. Plié
Force Absorption in Plié
Imagery for Plié
Summary
Chapter 9. Tendu-Based Movements
Battement Tendu/Dégagé (Jeté)
Rond de Jambe à Terre
Battement Fondu (Demi-Plié on One Leg)
Battement Frappé
Summary
Chapter 10. Développé and Other Extensions
Creating Smooth Action in the Hip Joint
Extensions to the Back
Releasing Tension, Embodying Fascia
Summary
Chapter 11. Arabesque, Attitude, and Grand Battement
Research on Imagery for the Plié Arabesque
Art and Science of Balance
Grand Battement
Summary
Chapter 12. Swings, Arches, and Spirals
Swings and Arches
Spirals
Summary
Chapter 13. Upper-Body Gestures
Port de Bras (Arm Gestures)
Hands
Face
Eyes
Neck
Summary
Chapter 14. Turns
From Crawls to Pirouettes
Natural Turners
What You Can Learn From a Spinning Top
Turning With the Whole Body
Angular Motion
Phases of Turning in Pirouettes
Summary
Chapter 15. Jumps
Speed and Leverage
Anatomical Considerations
The Foot in Jumping
Elastic Leaps and Rhythmic Rebound
Traveling Leaps and Turning Leaps
Breathing Before Jumping
Arms and Leaping
Floors and Soft Landings
The Sky Is the Limit
Summary
Chapter 16. Partnering
Requirements for Partnering
Connecting With Your Partner
Using Imagery in Partnering
Summary
Part IV. Imagery in Choreography, Rest, and Regeneration
Chapter 17. Imagery and Performance Quality
Expressivity
Authenticity
Endowment
Magical Outfit
Performance Environment
Relationship With the Audience
Your History
Stepping Onstage
Summary
Chapter 18. Rest and Regeneration
Using Your Hands
Releasing Touch
Constructive Rest
Guided Imagery
Summary
Eric Franklin is director and founder of the Institute for Franklin Method in Wetzikon, Switzerland. He has more than 35 years of experience as a dancer and choreographer, and he has shared imagery techniques in his teaching since 1986.
Franklin has taught extensively throughout the United States and Europe at the Julliard School in New York, Royal Ballet School in London, Danish Ballet in Copenhagen, Dance Academy of Rome, and Institute for Psychomotor Therapy in Zurich. He was also a guest lecturer at the University of Vienna. He has provided training to Olympic and world-champion athletes and professional dance troupes such as Cirque du Soleil and the Forum de Dance in Monte Carlo. Franklin earned a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a BS from the University of Zurich. He has been on the faculty of the American Dance Festival since 1991.
Franklin is coauthor of the best-selling book Breakdance, which received a New York City Public Library Prize in 1984, and author of 100 Ideen für Beweglichkeit and Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance (both books about imagery in dance and movement). He is a member of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science.
Franklin lives near Zurich, Switzerland.
The Franklin method has proved invaluable to our students at the Juilliard School in New York City for the past several years. Learning how to use mental imagery and functional anatomy for dance augments our training program beautifully because it is clear, precise, and useful in every way for any dancer. The students have found it revelatory!
Lawrence Rhodes--Director of the Dance Division, The Juilliard School
Improve imagery improvisations with these exercises
Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space.
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
The following exercises are separated by categories, but these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. An image that produces dynamic changes requires initiation. An image that changes the surface of the body reverberates out into space. When working with a group, it is a good idea to watch each other improvise. It may be interesting not to let the observers know what image you are working on to see if they can recognize it. If you imagined yourself as a robot and everybody says that you looked like a jellyfish, you know that you need to work on that image. After you finish an improvisation session, write down your experiences in a notebook. Even extraneous thoughts and images that entered your mind while improvising are of interest. Which images were most compelling to you? Which ones did you dislike? What parts of your body are more difficult to access with a specific image? To begin the improvisation you can be standing, sitting, lying on the floor, or in any preferred position. Let the image sink in before you begin. At the end of an improvisation exercise it is valuable for the members of the group to communicate their experience with each other. These discussions are often rich sources of information on the relationship between imagery and movement.
Spatial Path
The number of spatial paths is infinite. Think of all the spatial paths you have taken in your life as lines drawn on an immense canvas. Imagine that your fast movements have made thick lines and your slow movements thin ones, and behold a design of stupendous proportions. Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space. Inspiration for spatial paths is everywhere - in a jumble of sticks by the road or even in a bowl of spaghetti. I once laid my head down in a hotel the day before teaching a workshop in Germany and discovered an interesting spatial path in the form of a curtain (figure 5.11).
Spatial path created by a curtain.
Exercises for Creating a Spatial Path
- Explain the path: This exercise is appropriate for children from age 4, and it is equally valuable for adults in fostering the ability to visualize spatial paths. The exercise is done with a partner and music. Decide who will be person A and who will be B. Person A creates a path through space as long as the music plays (not too long to start). When A returns to B, B must explain to A what spatial path A took. To do this, B must be able to visualize the spatial path. Reverse roles and replay the music as person B finds a path through space. (Adapted from Werner Hushka, a German children's pedagogue.)
- The path ahead of you: Begin standing. Visualize a path in space, such as a long, meandering arrow. Move along the path to the end of the arrow. Then visualize the continuation of the spatial path, and move along that path to its end. Do not go farther than you can visualize. See how far you can extend your path and still remember it once you have started on your way.
- The path behind you: Imagine that you leave a trace wherever you go, like an airplane's jet stream. How long can you maintain the image of your trace?
- Space slide:If you have ever gone on one of those long, winding children's slides, you know what it is like to let your body be guided. As you move, see yourself being guided through space by an imaginary slide with perfect depth and width (figure 5.12). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453792_ebook_Main.jpg
Space slide. - Roller coaster: As you move, imagine that you are on a roller coaster. Similar to the space slide, your movement is being guided. However, the roller coaster adds loops, turns, spirals, and even revolutions around a horizontal axis.
- Energy current: Imagine energy currents like powerful ocean currents pulling or guiding you along pathways in space. Feel the interaction between stronger and weaker currents. Experiment with different shapes of currents: linear, circular, scalloped, or spiraled.
Initiation
You can initiate movement from anywhere in the body. In certain movements, you want to initiate equally from the whole body. In others, you initiate from a specific place, such as the string attached to the finger pulling into space. The inside of the body can move the surface, such as a bag of helium-filled balloons pushing up into the sky (figure 5.13a), or the surface can move the inside, such as a bag dragging balls along the floor (figure 5.13b).
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453800_ebook_Main.jpg
(a) The contents can move the container, or (b) the container can move its contents.
Exercises for Initiation
- Windy weather:
- Gust of wind with a partner: Your partner initiates the movement in your body by giving you a gentle push as if a gust of wind were blowing at a specific area.
- Gust of wind without a partner: Once you have gained some experience with a partner, you can do the exercise alone: Imagine the wind pushing against a body part to make you move. (Adapted from Body Weather practices.)
- Storm and lulls:Imagine wind blowing through you. Imagine your central axis to be a rope with fluttering flags. The wind blows through you and moves your body from your center line (figure 5.14). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453802_ebook_Main.jpg
Center line with fluttering flags. - Rolling ball:Imagine a ball rolling around inside your body. The ball's movement imitates and shapes your movement. Vary the size of the ball, and experiment with the number of balls initiating your movement (figure 5.15). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453805_ebook_Main.jpg
A ball rolling inside the body. - Puppet: Imagine strings attached to the top of your head, knees, feet, elbows, and hands. Let these strings motivate your movement. Add additional strings. Be a fancy marionette with very loose joints. Sometimes this effect is used in choreography, as seen in this excerpt of a review of Le Sacre du printemps: "One seems to be looking at marionettes . . . and many of the movements seem to be the result of some stern and invisible hand moving the puppets by an inexorable decree, the purport of which is known to the owner of the hand, but has only at certain moments been declared to others" (as quoted in Buckle 1971).
Enhance your partnering experience using imagery
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner.
Using Imagery in Partnering
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner. Discuss what imagery you both like and see if you can enhance your partnering experience by synchronizing visualization. What happens, for example, if you both imagine a forceful geyser gushing up from the ground and helping with an overhead lift? On the other hand, each dancer may need to discover the imagery that works for him or her. Imagery that may be unfamiliar at first sometimes turns into one's favorite, too. New York-based dancer June Balish recalls learning a dance with many unfamiliar lifts from dancer Mayra Rodriguez of the Frankfurt Ballet. While June was hoping for technical, even mechanical instruction, she was only told, "You just fly." This advice left her feeling frustrated and inadequate. Eventually, she mastered the mechanics of the lifts, and after several performances of the work she realized that the lifts really did work best when she just flew. Once she had the feeling of flying, the lifts were never a problem.
For technical partnering, the images in the Contact Improvisation and Imagery section of chapter 5 are helpful. For example, breathing as a unit and connecting center to center are useful in all types of partner work.
Exercises for Partnering
- Mental rehearsal: Mentally rehearse your lifts with your partner. Imagine all the elements of the movement vividly: initiation, direction, force, timing, connection, space, and emotion. Notice blank spots or areas of fuzzy imagery. Focus especially on clarifying these moments.
- Self-talk for lifts: Talk through the lifts with your partner. Each dancer quietly speaks his or her actions at the same time or one shortly after the other. Speak rhythmically in the speed with which you will actually be performing the lifts. Mark the movements with your body as you speak. Notice inner resistance to performing certain movements, and develop mental confidence using self-talk and mood words. Keep at it to eliminate doubt and resistance without becoming careless. Think such thoughts as That was easy, It feels effortless, Beautiful timing, I love to fly, I am in sync with my partner, and We are one. Invent ideas and words that make sense to you and inspire you. Write them on a board where you can see them daily. Keep reading them until you fully believe them.
- Motion of your partner: As you dance, feel the motion of your partner. Imagine that your motions come from the same source and that they are motivated by the same intention.
- Light partner: As you are being lifted, see yourself as very light. You may prefer a metaphor, such as light as a feather, a cloud, or a floating leaf.
- Think, Jumping : The person being lifted up imagines the feeling of jumping up into the air, even if her partner is lifting her.
- Magnet on the ceiling: Both partners imagine the ceiling magnetically attracting the person who is being lifted. The ceiling pulls the dancer up and releases him or her at the right moment.
- COG over BOS to create balance: When helping your partner to balance or turn en pointe, imagine his or her COG perfectly aligned over the BOS.
- COG alignment in overhead lift:In an overhead lift, visualize your COG and your partner's COG aligned perpendicularly on top of each other (figure 16.2). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454909_ebook_Main.jpg
COG alignment. - Illuminating your partner: Imagine that you are a shining rod of light that illuminates your partner. As your partner moves and turns, your glow illuminates various sides of his or her body.
- Breathing styles: Practice a variety of breathing styles to find out what suits you. First use your breath consciously as you lift to create more force. Ideally you could make a brief sound as you exhale, such as "Ha," but not always during a performance. Then see if you can just let yourself breathe freely with the flow of your movement. Notice if you tend to hold your breath, which adds tension to your movement. Practice consciously observing your breathing during rehearsals. Try emphasizing the exhalation or inhalation at certain movements, and notice what works for you. As a next step, practice breathing with your partner - first just by observing each other, then in movement. Also, discuss with your partner how breathing has helped him or her previously.
- Exhalation: Imagine that the force of your exhalation helps lift your partner. Coordinate the timing of your breath with the timing of your lift. Mentally rehearse this action before you perform it. The person being lifted can also practice exhaling and imagine that the exhalation helps them to take flight.
- One sculpture:Think of yourself and your partner as one sculpture, made from one piece of material. Imagine the weight and volume of sculpture, its three dimensionality, how it is interesting to observe from all angles. What would an observer experience if they would see the sculpture composed by you and your partner (figure 16.3)? http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454910_ebook_Main.jpg
Partners form sculpture.Courtesy of Steven Speliotis
- Connections: Imagine many invisible connections exist between you and your partner. These could be invisible threads of energies, sound waves bouncing off your partner, or simple elastic bands creating a springy connection.
- Reflections: Imagine that you are each other's reflection. You are following each other's movements closely, but less with a sense of imitation than an effortless fleeting image on a mirror.
- Sculpting your partner (improvisation): Imagine that one of you is the sculptor while the other is the material. You can also be both sculptor and material simultaneously. Be an evolving sculpture that never exists in a fixed shape.
- Assorted sky hooks: The person being lifted can imagine an assortment of strings or sky hooks attaching to his or her body and gently lifting him or her into the desired position and shape. In Rejoyce by the Pilobolus Dance Theater, one dancer actually partners with another who floats above the stage, suspended by ropes and pulleys. Such flying actions are also commonly seen in performances by Cirque de Soleil.
- Creature: Perform improvisational movement to imagine merging with your partner to form one creature (figure 16.4).
Partners form a creature.
Improve imagery improvisations with these exercises
Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space.
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
The following exercises are separated by categories, but these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. An image that produces dynamic changes requires initiation. An image that changes the surface of the body reverberates out into space. When working with a group, it is a good idea to watch each other improvise. It may be interesting not to let the observers know what image you are working on to see if they can recognize it. If you imagined yourself as a robot and everybody says that you looked like a jellyfish, you know that you need to work on that image. After you finish an improvisation session, write down your experiences in a notebook. Even extraneous thoughts and images that entered your mind while improvising are of interest. Which images were most compelling to you? Which ones did you dislike? What parts of your body are more difficult to access with a specific image? To begin the improvisation you can be standing, sitting, lying on the floor, or in any preferred position. Let the image sink in before you begin. At the end of an improvisation exercise it is valuable for the members of the group to communicate their experience with each other. These discussions are often rich sources of information on the relationship between imagery and movement.
Spatial Path
The number of spatial paths is infinite. Think of all the spatial paths you have taken in your life as lines drawn on an immense canvas. Imagine that your fast movements have made thick lines and your slow movements thin ones, and behold a design of stupendous proportions. Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space. Inspiration for spatial paths is everywhere - in a jumble of sticks by the road or even in a bowl of spaghetti. I once laid my head down in a hotel the day before teaching a workshop in Germany and discovered an interesting spatial path in the form of a curtain (figure 5.11).
Spatial path created by a curtain.
Exercises for Creating a Spatial Path
- Explain the path: This exercise is appropriate for children from age 4, and it is equally valuable for adults in fostering the ability to visualize spatial paths. The exercise is done with a partner and music. Decide who will be person A and who will be B. Person A creates a path through space as long as the music plays (not too long to start). When A returns to B, B must explain to A what spatial path A took. To do this, B must be able to visualize the spatial path. Reverse roles and replay the music as person B finds a path through space. (Adapted from Werner Hushka, a German children's pedagogue.)
- The path ahead of you: Begin standing. Visualize a path in space, such as a long, meandering arrow. Move along the path to the end of the arrow. Then visualize the continuation of the spatial path, and move along that path to its end. Do not go farther than you can visualize. See how far you can extend your path and still remember it once you have started on your way.
- The path behind you: Imagine that you leave a trace wherever you go, like an airplane's jet stream. How long can you maintain the image of your trace?
- Space slide:If you have ever gone on one of those long, winding children's slides, you know what it is like to let your body be guided. As you move, see yourself being guided through space by an imaginary slide with perfect depth and width (figure 5.12). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453792_ebook_Main.jpg
Space slide. - Roller coaster: As you move, imagine that you are on a roller coaster. Similar to the space slide, your movement is being guided. However, the roller coaster adds loops, turns, spirals, and even revolutions around a horizontal axis.
- Energy current: Imagine energy currents like powerful ocean currents pulling or guiding you along pathways in space. Feel the interaction between stronger and weaker currents. Experiment with different shapes of currents: linear, circular, scalloped, or spiraled.
Initiation
You can initiate movement from anywhere in the body. In certain movements, you want to initiate equally from the whole body. In others, you initiate from a specific place, such as the string attached to the finger pulling into space. The inside of the body can move the surface, such as a bag of helium-filled balloons pushing up into the sky (figure 5.13a), or the surface can move the inside, such as a bag dragging balls along the floor (figure 5.13b).
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453800_ebook_Main.jpg
(a) The contents can move the container, or (b) the container can move its contents.
Exercises for Initiation
- Windy weather:
- Gust of wind with a partner: Your partner initiates the movement in your body by giving you a gentle push as if a gust of wind were blowing at a specific area.
- Gust of wind without a partner: Once you have gained some experience with a partner, you can do the exercise alone: Imagine the wind pushing against a body part to make you move. (Adapted from Body Weather practices.)
- Storm and lulls:Imagine wind blowing through you. Imagine your central axis to be a rope with fluttering flags. The wind blows through you and moves your body from your center line (figure 5.14). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453802_ebook_Main.jpg
Center line with fluttering flags. - Rolling ball:Imagine a ball rolling around inside your body. The ball's movement imitates and shapes your movement. Vary the size of the ball, and experiment with the number of balls initiating your movement (figure 5.15). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453805_ebook_Main.jpg
A ball rolling inside the body. - Puppet: Imagine strings attached to the top of your head, knees, feet, elbows, and hands. Let these strings motivate your movement. Add additional strings. Be a fancy marionette with very loose joints. Sometimes this effect is used in choreography, as seen in this excerpt of a review of Le Sacre du printemps: "One seems to be looking at marionettes . . . and many of the movements seem to be the result of some stern and invisible hand moving the puppets by an inexorable decree, the purport of which is known to the owner of the hand, but has only at certain moments been declared to others" (as quoted in Buckle 1971).
Enhance your partnering experience using imagery
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner.
Using Imagery in Partnering
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner. Discuss what imagery you both like and see if you can enhance your partnering experience by synchronizing visualization. What happens, for example, if you both imagine a forceful geyser gushing up from the ground and helping with an overhead lift? On the other hand, each dancer may need to discover the imagery that works for him or her. Imagery that may be unfamiliar at first sometimes turns into one's favorite, too. New York-based dancer June Balish recalls learning a dance with many unfamiliar lifts from dancer Mayra Rodriguez of the Frankfurt Ballet. While June was hoping for technical, even mechanical instruction, she was only told, "You just fly." This advice left her feeling frustrated and inadequate. Eventually, she mastered the mechanics of the lifts, and after several performances of the work she realized that the lifts really did work best when she just flew. Once she had the feeling of flying, the lifts were never a problem.
For technical partnering, the images in the Contact Improvisation and Imagery section of chapter 5 are helpful. For example, breathing as a unit and connecting center to center are useful in all types of partner work.
Exercises for Partnering
- Mental rehearsal: Mentally rehearse your lifts with your partner. Imagine all the elements of the movement vividly: initiation, direction, force, timing, connection, space, and emotion. Notice blank spots or areas of fuzzy imagery. Focus especially on clarifying these moments.
- Self-talk for lifts: Talk through the lifts with your partner. Each dancer quietly speaks his or her actions at the same time or one shortly after the other. Speak rhythmically in the speed with which you will actually be performing the lifts. Mark the movements with your body as you speak. Notice inner resistance to performing certain movements, and develop mental confidence using self-talk and mood words. Keep at it to eliminate doubt and resistance without becoming careless. Think such thoughts as That was easy, It feels effortless, Beautiful timing, I love to fly, I am in sync with my partner, and We are one. Invent ideas and words that make sense to you and inspire you. Write them on a board where you can see them daily. Keep reading them until you fully believe them.
- Motion of your partner: As you dance, feel the motion of your partner. Imagine that your motions come from the same source and that they are motivated by the same intention.
- Light partner: As you are being lifted, see yourself as very light. You may prefer a metaphor, such as light as a feather, a cloud, or a floating leaf.
- Think, Jumping : The person being lifted up imagines the feeling of jumping up into the air, even if her partner is lifting her.
- Magnet on the ceiling: Both partners imagine the ceiling magnetically attracting the person who is being lifted. The ceiling pulls the dancer up and releases him or her at the right moment.
- COG over BOS to create balance: When helping your partner to balance or turn en pointe, imagine his or her COG perfectly aligned over the BOS.
- COG alignment in overhead lift:In an overhead lift, visualize your COG and your partner's COG aligned perpendicularly on top of each other (figure 16.2). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454909_ebook_Main.jpg
COG alignment. - Illuminating your partner: Imagine that you are a shining rod of light that illuminates your partner. As your partner moves and turns, your glow illuminates various sides of his or her body.
- Breathing styles: Practice a variety of breathing styles to find out what suits you. First use your breath consciously as you lift to create more force. Ideally you could make a brief sound as you exhale, such as "Ha," but not always during a performance. Then see if you can just let yourself breathe freely with the flow of your movement. Notice if you tend to hold your breath, which adds tension to your movement. Practice consciously observing your breathing during rehearsals. Try emphasizing the exhalation or inhalation at certain movements, and notice what works for you. As a next step, practice breathing with your partner - first just by observing each other, then in movement. Also, discuss with your partner how breathing has helped him or her previously.
- Exhalation: Imagine that the force of your exhalation helps lift your partner. Coordinate the timing of your breath with the timing of your lift. Mentally rehearse this action before you perform it. The person being lifted can also practice exhaling and imagine that the exhalation helps them to take flight.
- One sculpture:Think of yourself and your partner as one sculpture, made from one piece of material. Imagine the weight and volume of sculpture, its three dimensionality, how it is interesting to observe from all angles. What would an observer experience if they would see the sculpture composed by you and your partner (figure 16.3)? http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454910_ebook_Main.jpg
Partners form sculpture.Courtesy of Steven Speliotis
- Connections: Imagine many invisible connections exist between you and your partner. These could be invisible threads of energies, sound waves bouncing off your partner, or simple elastic bands creating a springy connection.
- Reflections: Imagine that you are each other's reflection. You are following each other's movements closely, but less with a sense of imitation than an effortless fleeting image on a mirror.
- Sculpting your partner (improvisation): Imagine that one of you is the sculptor while the other is the material. You can also be both sculptor and material simultaneously. Be an evolving sculpture that never exists in a fixed shape.
- Assorted sky hooks: The person being lifted can imagine an assortment of strings or sky hooks attaching to his or her body and gently lifting him or her into the desired position and shape. In Rejoyce by the Pilobolus Dance Theater, one dancer actually partners with another who floats above the stage, suspended by ropes and pulleys. Such flying actions are also commonly seen in performances by Cirque de Soleil.
- Creature: Perform improvisational movement to imagine merging with your partner to form one creature (figure 16.4).
Partners form a creature.
Improve imagery improvisations with these exercises
Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space.
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
The following exercises are separated by categories, but these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. An image that produces dynamic changes requires initiation. An image that changes the surface of the body reverberates out into space. When working with a group, it is a good idea to watch each other improvise. It may be interesting not to let the observers know what image you are working on to see if they can recognize it. If you imagined yourself as a robot and everybody says that you looked like a jellyfish, you know that you need to work on that image. After you finish an improvisation session, write down your experiences in a notebook. Even extraneous thoughts and images that entered your mind while improvising are of interest. Which images were most compelling to you? Which ones did you dislike? What parts of your body are more difficult to access with a specific image? To begin the improvisation you can be standing, sitting, lying on the floor, or in any preferred position. Let the image sink in before you begin. At the end of an improvisation exercise it is valuable for the members of the group to communicate their experience with each other. These discussions are often rich sources of information on the relationship between imagery and movement.
Spatial Path
The number of spatial paths is infinite. Think of all the spatial paths you have taken in your life as lines drawn on an immense canvas. Imagine that your fast movements have made thick lines and your slow movements thin ones, and behold a design of stupendous proportions. Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space. Inspiration for spatial paths is everywhere - in a jumble of sticks by the road or even in a bowl of spaghetti. I once laid my head down in a hotel the day before teaching a workshop in Germany and discovered an interesting spatial path in the form of a curtain (figure 5.11).
Spatial path created by a curtain.
Exercises for Creating a Spatial Path
- Explain the path: This exercise is appropriate for children from age 4, and it is equally valuable for adults in fostering the ability to visualize spatial paths. The exercise is done with a partner and music. Decide who will be person A and who will be B. Person A creates a path through space as long as the music plays (not too long to start). When A returns to B, B must explain to A what spatial path A took. To do this, B must be able to visualize the spatial path. Reverse roles and replay the music as person B finds a path through space. (Adapted from Werner Hushka, a German children's pedagogue.)
- The path ahead of you: Begin standing. Visualize a path in space, such as a long, meandering arrow. Move along the path to the end of the arrow. Then visualize the continuation of the spatial path, and move along that path to its end. Do not go farther than you can visualize. See how far you can extend your path and still remember it once you have started on your way.
- The path behind you: Imagine that you leave a trace wherever you go, like an airplane's jet stream. How long can you maintain the image of your trace?
- Space slide:If you have ever gone on one of those long, winding children's slides, you know what it is like to let your body be guided. As you move, see yourself being guided through space by an imaginary slide with perfect depth and width (figure 5.12). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453792_ebook_Main.jpg
Space slide. - Roller coaster: As you move, imagine that you are on a roller coaster. Similar to the space slide, your movement is being guided. However, the roller coaster adds loops, turns, spirals, and even revolutions around a horizontal axis.
- Energy current: Imagine energy currents like powerful ocean currents pulling or guiding you along pathways in space. Feel the interaction between stronger and weaker currents. Experiment with different shapes of currents: linear, circular, scalloped, or spiraled.
Initiation
You can initiate movement from anywhere in the body. In certain movements, you want to initiate equally from the whole body. In others, you initiate from a specific place, such as the string attached to the finger pulling into space. The inside of the body can move the surface, such as a bag of helium-filled balloons pushing up into the sky (figure 5.13a), or the surface can move the inside, such as a bag dragging balls along the floor (figure 5.13b).
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453800_ebook_Main.jpg
(a) The contents can move the container, or (b) the container can move its contents.
Exercises for Initiation
- Windy weather:
- Gust of wind with a partner: Your partner initiates the movement in your body by giving you a gentle push as if a gust of wind were blowing at a specific area.
- Gust of wind without a partner: Once you have gained some experience with a partner, you can do the exercise alone: Imagine the wind pushing against a body part to make you move. (Adapted from Body Weather practices.)
- Storm and lulls:Imagine wind blowing through you. Imagine your central axis to be a rope with fluttering flags. The wind blows through you and moves your body from your center line (figure 5.14). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453802_ebook_Main.jpg
Center line with fluttering flags. - Rolling ball:Imagine a ball rolling around inside your body. The ball's movement imitates and shapes your movement. Vary the size of the ball, and experiment with the number of balls initiating your movement (figure 5.15). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453805_ebook_Main.jpg
A ball rolling inside the body. - Puppet: Imagine strings attached to the top of your head, knees, feet, elbows, and hands. Let these strings motivate your movement. Add additional strings. Be a fancy marionette with very loose joints. Sometimes this effect is used in choreography, as seen in this excerpt of a review of Le Sacre du printemps: "One seems to be looking at marionettes . . . and many of the movements seem to be the result of some stern and invisible hand moving the puppets by an inexorable decree, the purport of which is known to the owner of the hand, but has only at certain moments been declared to others" (as quoted in Buckle 1971).
Enhance your partnering experience using imagery
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner.
Using Imagery in Partnering
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner. Discuss what imagery you both like and see if you can enhance your partnering experience by synchronizing visualization. What happens, for example, if you both imagine a forceful geyser gushing up from the ground and helping with an overhead lift? On the other hand, each dancer may need to discover the imagery that works for him or her. Imagery that may be unfamiliar at first sometimes turns into one's favorite, too. New York-based dancer June Balish recalls learning a dance with many unfamiliar lifts from dancer Mayra Rodriguez of the Frankfurt Ballet. While June was hoping for technical, even mechanical instruction, she was only told, "You just fly." This advice left her feeling frustrated and inadequate. Eventually, she mastered the mechanics of the lifts, and after several performances of the work she realized that the lifts really did work best when she just flew. Once she had the feeling of flying, the lifts were never a problem.
For technical partnering, the images in the Contact Improvisation and Imagery section of chapter 5 are helpful. For example, breathing as a unit and connecting center to center are useful in all types of partner work.
Exercises for Partnering
- Mental rehearsal: Mentally rehearse your lifts with your partner. Imagine all the elements of the movement vividly: initiation, direction, force, timing, connection, space, and emotion. Notice blank spots or areas of fuzzy imagery. Focus especially on clarifying these moments.
- Self-talk for lifts: Talk through the lifts with your partner. Each dancer quietly speaks his or her actions at the same time or one shortly after the other. Speak rhythmically in the speed with which you will actually be performing the lifts. Mark the movements with your body as you speak. Notice inner resistance to performing certain movements, and develop mental confidence using self-talk and mood words. Keep at it to eliminate doubt and resistance without becoming careless. Think such thoughts as That was easy, It feels effortless, Beautiful timing, I love to fly, I am in sync with my partner, and We are one. Invent ideas and words that make sense to you and inspire you. Write them on a board where you can see them daily. Keep reading them until you fully believe them.
- Motion of your partner: As you dance, feel the motion of your partner. Imagine that your motions come from the same source and that they are motivated by the same intention.
- Light partner: As you are being lifted, see yourself as very light. You may prefer a metaphor, such as light as a feather, a cloud, or a floating leaf.
- Think, Jumping : The person being lifted up imagines the feeling of jumping up into the air, even if her partner is lifting her.
- Magnet on the ceiling: Both partners imagine the ceiling magnetically attracting the person who is being lifted. The ceiling pulls the dancer up and releases him or her at the right moment.
- COG over BOS to create balance: When helping your partner to balance or turn en pointe, imagine his or her COG perfectly aligned over the BOS.
- COG alignment in overhead lift:In an overhead lift, visualize your COG and your partner's COG aligned perpendicularly on top of each other (figure 16.2). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454909_ebook_Main.jpg
COG alignment. - Illuminating your partner: Imagine that you are a shining rod of light that illuminates your partner. As your partner moves and turns, your glow illuminates various sides of his or her body.
- Breathing styles: Practice a variety of breathing styles to find out what suits you. First use your breath consciously as you lift to create more force. Ideally you could make a brief sound as you exhale, such as "Ha," but not always during a performance. Then see if you can just let yourself breathe freely with the flow of your movement. Notice if you tend to hold your breath, which adds tension to your movement. Practice consciously observing your breathing during rehearsals. Try emphasizing the exhalation or inhalation at certain movements, and notice what works for you. As a next step, practice breathing with your partner - first just by observing each other, then in movement. Also, discuss with your partner how breathing has helped him or her previously.
- Exhalation: Imagine that the force of your exhalation helps lift your partner. Coordinate the timing of your breath with the timing of your lift. Mentally rehearse this action before you perform it. The person being lifted can also practice exhaling and imagine that the exhalation helps them to take flight.
- One sculpture:Think of yourself and your partner as one sculpture, made from one piece of material. Imagine the weight and volume of sculpture, its three dimensionality, how it is interesting to observe from all angles. What would an observer experience if they would see the sculpture composed by you and your partner (figure 16.3)? http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454910_ebook_Main.jpg
Partners form sculpture.Courtesy of Steven Speliotis
- Connections: Imagine many invisible connections exist between you and your partner. These could be invisible threads of energies, sound waves bouncing off your partner, or simple elastic bands creating a springy connection.
- Reflections: Imagine that you are each other's reflection. You are following each other's movements closely, but less with a sense of imitation than an effortless fleeting image on a mirror.
- Sculpting your partner (improvisation): Imagine that one of you is the sculptor while the other is the material. You can also be both sculptor and material simultaneously. Be an evolving sculpture that never exists in a fixed shape.
- Assorted sky hooks: The person being lifted can imagine an assortment of strings or sky hooks attaching to his or her body and gently lifting him or her into the desired position and shape. In Rejoyce by the Pilobolus Dance Theater, one dancer actually partners with another who floats above the stage, suspended by ropes and pulleys. Such flying actions are also commonly seen in performances by Cirque de Soleil.
- Creature: Perform improvisational movement to imagine merging with your partner to form one creature (figure 16.4).
Partners form a creature.
Improve imagery improvisations with these exercises
Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space.
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
The following exercises are separated by categories, but these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. An image that produces dynamic changes requires initiation. An image that changes the surface of the body reverberates out into space. When working with a group, it is a good idea to watch each other improvise. It may be interesting not to let the observers know what image you are working on to see if they can recognize it. If you imagined yourself as a robot and everybody says that you looked like a jellyfish, you know that you need to work on that image. After you finish an improvisation session, write down your experiences in a notebook. Even extraneous thoughts and images that entered your mind while improvising are of interest. Which images were most compelling to you? Which ones did you dislike? What parts of your body are more difficult to access with a specific image? To begin the improvisation you can be standing, sitting, lying on the floor, or in any preferred position. Let the image sink in before you begin. At the end of an improvisation exercise it is valuable for the members of the group to communicate their experience with each other. These discussions are often rich sources of information on the relationship between imagery and movement.
Spatial Path
The number of spatial paths is infinite. Think of all the spatial paths you have taken in your life as lines drawn on an immense canvas. Imagine that your fast movements have made thick lines and your slow movements thin ones, and behold a design of stupendous proportions. Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space. Inspiration for spatial paths is everywhere - in a jumble of sticks by the road or even in a bowl of spaghetti. I once laid my head down in a hotel the day before teaching a workshop in Germany and discovered an interesting spatial path in the form of a curtain (figure 5.11).
Spatial path created by a curtain.
Exercises for Creating a Spatial Path
- Explain the path: This exercise is appropriate for children from age 4, and it is equally valuable for adults in fostering the ability to visualize spatial paths. The exercise is done with a partner and music. Decide who will be person A and who will be B. Person A creates a path through space as long as the music plays (not too long to start). When A returns to B, B must explain to A what spatial path A took. To do this, B must be able to visualize the spatial path. Reverse roles and replay the music as person B finds a path through space. (Adapted from Werner Hushka, a German children's pedagogue.)
- The path ahead of you: Begin standing. Visualize a path in space, such as a long, meandering arrow. Move along the path to the end of the arrow. Then visualize the continuation of the spatial path, and move along that path to its end. Do not go farther than you can visualize. See how far you can extend your path and still remember it once you have started on your way.
- The path behind you: Imagine that you leave a trace wherever you go, like an airplane's jet stream. How long can you maintain the image of your trace?
- Space slide:If you have ever gone on one of those long, winding children's slides, you know what it is like to let your body be guided. As you move, see yourself being guided through space by an imaginary slide with perfect depth and width (figure 5.12). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453792_ebook_Main.jpg
Space slide. - Roller coaster: As you move, imagine that you are on a roller coaster. Similar to the space slide, your movement is being guided. However, the roller coaster adds loops, turns, spirals, and even revolutions around a horizontal axis.
- Energy current: Imagine energy currents like powerful ocean currents pulling or guiding you along pathways in space. Feel the interaction between stronger and weaker currents. Experiment with different shapes of currents: linear, circular, scalloped, or spiraled.
Initiation
You can initiate movement from anywhere in the body. In certain movements, you want to initiate equally from the whole body. In others, you initiate from a specific place, such as the string attached to the finger pulling into space. The inside of the body can move the surface, such as a bag of helium-filled balloons pushing up into the sky (figure 5.13a), or the surface can move the inside, such as a bag dragging balls along the floor (figure 5.13b).
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453800_ebook_Main.jpg
(a) The contents can move the container, or (b) the container can move its contents.
Exercises for Initiation
- Windy weather:
- Gust of wind with a partner: Your partner initiates the movement in your body by giving you a gentle push as if a gust of wind were blowing at a specific area.
- Gust of wind without a partner: Once you have gained some experience with a partner, you can do the exercise alone: Imagine the wind pushing against a body part to make you move. (Adapted from Body Weather practices.)
- Storm and lulls:Imagine wind blowing through you. Imagine your central axis to be a rope with fluttering flags. The wind blows through you and moves your body from your center line (figure 5.14). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453802_ebook_Main.jpg
Center line with fluttering flags. - Rolling ball:Imagine a ball rolling around inside your body. The ball's movement imitates and shapes your movement. Vary the size of the ball, and experiment with the number of balls initiating your movement (figure 5.15). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453805_ebook_Main.jpg
A ball rolling inside the body. - Puppet: Imagine strings attached to the top of your head, knees, feet, elbows, and hands. Let these strings motivate your movement. Add additional strings. Be a fancy marionette with very loose joints. Sometimes this effect is used in choreography, as seen in this excerpt of a review of Le Sacre du printemps: "One seems to be looking at marionettes . . . and many of the movements seem to be the result of some stern and invisible hand moving the puppets by an inexorable decree, the purport of which is known to the owner of the hand, but has only at certain moments been declared to others" (as quoted in Buckle 1971).
Enhance your partnering experience using imagery
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner.
Using Imagery in Partnering
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner. Discuss what imagery you both like and see if you can enhance your partnering experience by synchronizing visualization. What happens, for example, if you both imagine a forceful geyser gushing up from the ground and helping with an overhead lift? On the other hand, each dancer may need to discover the imagery that works for him or her. Imagery that may be unfamiliar at first sometimes turns into one's favorite, too. New York-based dancer June Balish recalls learning a dance with many unfamiliar lifts from dancer Mayra Rodriguez of the Frankfurt Ballet. While June was hoping for technical, even mechanical instruction, she was only told, "You just fly." This advice left her feeling frustrated and inadequate. Eventually, she mastered the mechanics of the lifts, and after several performances of the work she realized that the lifts really did work best when she just flew. Once she had the feeling of flying, the lifts were never a problem.
For technical partnering, the images in the Contact Improvisation and Imagery section of chapter 5 are helpful. For example, breathing as a unit and connecting center to center are useful in all types of partner work.
Exercises for Partnering
- Mental rehearsal: Mentally rehearse your lifts with your partner. Imagine all the elements of the movement vividly: initiation, direction, force, timing, connection, space, and emotion. Notice blank spots or areas of fuzzy imagery. Focus especially on clarifying these moments.
- Self-talk for lifts: Talk through the lifts with your partner. Each dancer quietly speaks his or her actions at the same time or one shortly after the other. Speak rhythmically in the speed with which you will actually be performing the lifts. Mark the movements with your body as you speak. Notice inner resistance to performing certain movements, and develop mental confidence using self-talk and mood words. Keep at it to eliminate doubt and resistance without becoming careless. Think such thoughts as That was easy, It feels effortless, Beautiful timing, I love to fly, I am in sync with my partner, and We are one. Invent ideas and words that make sense to you and inspire you. Write them on a board where you can see them daily. Keep reading them until you fully believe them.
- Motion of your partner: As you dance, feel the motion of your partner. Imagine that your motions come from the same source and that they are motivated by the same intention.
- Light partner: As you are being lifted, see yourself as very light. You may prefer a metaphor, such as light as a feather, a cloud, or a floating leaf.
- Think, Jumping : The person being lifted up imagines the feeling of jumping up into the air, even if her partner is lifting her.
- Magnet on the ceiling: Both partners imagine the ceiling magnetically attracting the person who is being lifted. The ceiling pulls the dancer up and releases him or her at the right moment.
- COG over BOS to create balance: When helping your partner to balance or turn en pointe, imagine his or her COG perfectly aligned over the BOS.
- COG alignment in overhead lift:In an overhead lift, visualize your COG and your partner's COG aligned perpendicularly on top of each other (figure 16.2). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454909_ebook_Main.jpg
COG alignment. - Illuminating your partner: Imagine that you are a shining rod of light that illuminates your partner. As your partner moves and turns, your glow illuminates various sides of his or her body.
- Breathing styles: Practice a variety of breathing styles to find out what suits you. First use your breath consciously as you lift to create more force. Ideally you could make a brief sound as you exhale, such as "Ha," but not always during a performance. Then see if you can just let yourself breathe freely with the flow of your movement. Notice if you tend to hold your breath, which adds tension to your movement. Practice consciously observing your breathing during rehearsals. Try emphasizing the exhalation or inhalation at certain movements, and notice what works for you. As a next step, practice breathing with your partner - first just by observing each other, then in movement. Also, discuss with your partner how breathing has helped him or her previously.
- Exhalation: Imagine that the force of your exhalation helps lift your partner. Coordinate the timing of your breath with the timing of your lift. Mentally rehearse this action before you perform it. The person being lifted can also practice exhaling and imagine that the exhalation helps them to take flight.
- One sculpture:Think of yourself and your partner as one sculpture, made from one piece of material. Imagine the weight and volume of sculpture, its three dimensionality, how it is interesting to observe from all angles. What would an observer experience if they would see the sculpture composed by you and your partner (figure 16.3)? http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454910_ebook_Main.jpg
Partners form sculpture.Courtesy of Steven Speliotis
- Connections: Imagine many invisible connections exist between you and your partner. These could be invisible threads of energies, sound waves bouncing off your partner, or simple elastic bands creating a springy connection.
- Reflections: Imagine that you are each other's reflection. You are following each other's movements closely, but less with a sense of imitation than an effortless fleeting image on a mirror.
- Sculpting your partner (improvisation): Imagine that one of you is the sculptor while the other is the material. You can also be both sculptor and material simultaneously. Be an evolving sculpture that never exists in a fixed shape.
- Assorted sky hooks: The person being lifted can imagine an assortment of strings or sky hooks attaching to his or her body and gently lifting him or her into the desired position and shape. In Rejoyce by the Pilobolus Dance Theater, one dancer actually partners with another who floats above the stage, suspended by ropes and pulleys. Such flying actions are also commonly seen in performances by Cirque de Soleil.
- Creature: Perform improvisational movement to imagine merging with your partner to form one creature (figure 16.4).
Partners form a creature.
Improve imagery improvisations with these exercises
Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space.
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
The following exercises are separated by categories, but these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. An image that produces dynamic changes requires initiation. An image that changes the surface of the body reverberates out into space. When working with a group, it is a good idea to watch each other improvise. It may be interesting not to let the observers know what image you are working on to see if they can recognize it. If you imagined yourself as a robot and everybody says that you looked like a jellyfish, you know that you need to work on that image. After you finish an improvisation session, write down your experiences in a notebook. Even extraneous thoughts and images that entered your mind while improvising are of interest. Which images were most compelling to you? Which ones did you dislike? What parts of your body are more difficult to access with a specific image? To begin the improvisation you can be standing, sitting, lying on the floor, or in any preferred position. Let the image sink in before you begin. At the end of an improvisation exercise it is valuable for the members of the group to communicate their experience with each other. These discussions are often rich sources of information on the relationship between imagery and movement.
Spatial Path
The number of spatial paths is infinite. Think of all the spatial paths you have taken in your life as lines drawn on an immense canvas. Imagine that your fast movements have made thick lines and your slow movements thin ones, and behold a design of stupendous proportions. Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space. Inspiration for spatial paths is everywhere - in a jumble of sticks by the road or even in a bowl of spaghetti. I once laid my head down in a hotel the day before teaching a workshop in Germany and discovered an interesting spatial path in the form of a curtain (figure 5.11).
Spatial path created by a curtain.
Exercises for Creating a Spatial Path
- Explain the path: This exercise is appropriate for children from age 4, and it is equally valuable for adults in fostering the ability to visualize spatial paths. The exercise is done with a partner and music. Decide who will be person A and who will be B. Person A creates a path through space as long as the music plays (not too long to start). When A returns to B, B must explain to A what spatial path A took. To do this, B must be able to visualize the spatial path. Reverse roles and replay the music as person B finds a path through space. (Adapted from Werner Hushka, a German children's pedagogue.)
- The path ahead of you: Begin standing. Visualize a path in space, such as a long, meandering arrow. Move along the path to the end of the arrow. Then visualize the continuation of the spatial path, and move along that path to its end. Do not go farther than you can visualize. See how far you can extend your path and still remember it once you have started on your way.
- The path behind you: Imagine that you leave a trace wherever you go, like an airplane's jet stream. How long can you maintain the image of your trace?
- Space slide:If you have ever gone on one of those long, winding children's slides, you know what it is like to let your body be guided. As you move, see yourself being guided through space by an imaginary slide with perfect depth and width (figure 5.12). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453792_ebook_Main.jpg
Space slide. - Roller coaster: As you move, imagine that you are on a roller coaster. Similar to the space slide, your movement is being guided. However, the roller coaster adds loops, turns, spirals, and even revolutions around a horizontal axis.
- Energy current: Imagine energy currents like powerful ocean currents pulling or guiding you along pathways in space. Feel the interaction between stronger and weaker currents. Experiment with different shapes of currents: linear, circular, scalloped, or spiraled.
Initiation
You can initiate movement from anywhere in the body. In certain movements, you want to initiate equally from the whole body. In others, you initiate from a specific place, such as the string attached to the finger pulling into space. The inside of the body can move the surface, such as a bag of helium-filled balloons pushing up into the sky (figure 5.13a), or the surface can move the inside, such as a bag dragging balls along the floor (figure 5.13b).
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453800_ebook_Main.jpg
(a) The contents can move the container, or (b) the container can move its contents.
Exercises for Initiation
- Windy weather:
- Gust of wind with a partner: Your partner initiates the movement in your body by giving you a gentle push as if a gust of wind were blowing at a specific area.
- Gust of wind without a partner: Once you have gained some experience with a partner, you can do the exercise alone: Imagine the wind pushing against a body part to make you move. (Adapted from Body Weather practices.)
- Storm and lulls:Imagine wind blowing through you. Imagine your central axis to be a rope with fluttering flags. The wind blows through you and moves your body from your center line (figure 5.14). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453802_ebook_Main.jpg
Center line with fluttering flags. - Rolling ball:Imagine a ball rolling around inside your body. The ball's movement imitates and shapes your movement. Vary the size of the ball, and experiment with the number of balls initiating your movement (figure 5.15). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453805_ebook_Main.jpg
A ball rolling inside the body. - Puppet: Imagine strings attached to the top of your head, knees, feet, elbows, and hands. Let these strings motivate your movement. Add additional strings. Be a fancy marionette with very loose joints. Sometimes this effect is used in choreography, as seen in this excerpt of a review of Le Sacre du printemps: "One seems to be looking at marionettes . . . and many of the movements seem to be the result of some stern and invisible hand moving the puppets by an inexorable decree, the purport of which is known to the owner of the hand, but has only at certain moments been declared to others" (as quoted in Buckle 1971).
Enhance your partnering experience using imagery
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner.
Using Imagery in Partnering
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner. Discuss what imagery you both like and see if you can enhance your partnering experience by synchronizing visualization. What happens, for example, if you both imagine a forceful geyser gushing up from the ground and helping with an overhead lift? On the other hand, each dancer may need to discover the imagery that works for him or her. Imagery that may be unfamiliar at first sometimes turns into one's favorite, too. New York-based dancer June Balish recalls learning a dance with many unfamiliar lifts from dancer Mayra Rodriguez of the Frankfurt Ballet. While June was hoping for technical, even mechanical instruction, she was only told, "You just fly." This advice left her feeling frustrated and inadequate. Eventually, she mastered the mechanics of the lifts, and after several performances of the work she realized that the lifts really did work best when she just flew. Once she had the feeling of flying, the lifts were never a problem.
For technical partnering, the images in the Contact Improvisation and Imagery section of chapter 5 are helpful. For example, breathing as a unit and connecting center to center are useful in all types of partner work.
Exercises for Partnering
- Mental rehearsal: Mentally rehearse your lifts with your partner. Imagine all the elements of the movement vividly: initiation, direction, force, timing, connection, space, and emotion. Notice blank spots or areas of fuzzy imagery. Focus especially on clarifying these moments.
- Self-talk for lifts: Talk through the lifts with your partner. Each dancer quietly speaks his or her actions at the same time or one shortly after the other. Speak rhythmically in the speed with which you will actually be performing the lifts. Mark the movements with your body as you speak. Notice inner resistance to performing certain movements, and develop mental confidence using self-talk and mood words. Keep at it to eliminate doubt and resistance without becoming careless. Think such thoughts as That was easy, It feels effortless, Beautiful timing, I love to fly, I am in sync with my partner, and We are one. Invent ideas and words that make sense to you and inspire you. Write them on a board where you can see them daily. Keep reading them until you fully believe them.
- Motion of your partner: As you dance, feel the motion of your partner. Imagine that your motions come from the same source and that they are motivated by the same intention.
- Light partner: As you are being lifted, see yourself as very light. You may prefer a metaphor, such as light as a feather, a cloud, or a floating leaf.
- Think, Jumping : The person being lifted up imagines the feeling of jumping up into the air, even if her partner is lifting her.
- Magnet on the ceiling: Both partners imagine the ceiling magnetically attracting the person who is being lifted. The ceiling pulls the dancer up and releases him or her at the right moment.
- COG over BOS to create balance: When helping your partner to balance or turn en pointe, imagine his or her COG perfectly aligned over the BOS.
- COG alignment in overhead lift:In an overhead lift, visualize your COG and your partner's COG aligned perpendicularly on top of each other (figure 16.2). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454909_ebook_Main.jpg
COG alignment. - Illuminating your partner: Imagine that you are a shining rod of light that illuminates your partner. As your partner moves and turns, your glow illuminates various sides of his or her body.
- Breathing styles: Practice a variety of breathing styles to find out what suits you. First use your breath consciously as you lift to create more force. Ideally you could make a brief sound as you exhale, such as "Ha," but not always during a performance. Then see if you can just let yourself breathe freely with the flow of your movement. Notice if you tend to hold your breath, which adds tension to your movement. Practice consciously observing your breathing during rehearsals. Try emphasizing the exhalation or inhalation at certain movements, and notice what works for you. As a next step, practice breathing with your partner - first just by observing each other, then in movement. Also, discuss with your partner how breathing has helped him or her previously.
- Exhalation: Imagine that the force of your exhalation helps lift your partner. Coordinate the timing of your breath with the timing of your lift. Mentally rehearse this action before you perform it. The person being lifted can also practice exhaling and imagine that the exhalation helps them to take flight.
- One sculpture:Think of yourself and your partner as one sculpture, made from one piece of material. Imagine the weight and volume of sculpture, its three dimensionality, how it is interesting to observe from all angles. What would an observer experience if they would see the sculpture composed by you and your partner (figure 16.3)? http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454910_ebook_Main.jpg
Partners form sculpture.Courtesy of Steven Speliotis
- Connections: Imagine many invisible connections exist between you and your partner. These could be invisible threads of energies, sound waves bouncing off your partner, or simple elastic bands creating a springy connection.
- Reflections: Imagine that you are each other's reflection. You are following each other's movements closely, but less with a sense of imitation than an effortless fleeting image on a mirror.
- Sculpting your partner (improvisation): Imagine that one of you is the sculptor while the other is the material. You can also be both sculptor and material simultaneously. Be an evolving sculpture that never exists in a fixed shape.
- Assorted sky hooks: The person being lifted can imagine an assortment of strings or sky hooks attaching to his or her body and gently lifting him or her into the desired position and shape. In Rejoyce by the Pilobolus Dance Theater, one dancer actually partners with another who floats above the stage, suspended by ropes and pulleys. Such flying actions are also commonly seen in performances by Cirque de Soleil.
- Creature: Perform improvisational movement to imagine merging with your partner to form one creature (figure 16.4).
Partners form a creature.
Improve imagery improvisations with these exercises
Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space.
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
The following exercises are separated by categories, but these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. An image that produces dynamic changes requires initiation. An image that changes the surface of the body reverberates out into space. When working with a group, it is a good idea to watch each other improvise. It may be interesting not to let the observers know what image you are working on to see if they can recognize it. If you imagined yourself as a robot and everybody says that you looked like a jellyfish, you know that you need to work on that image. After you finish an improvisation session, write down your experiences in a notebook. Even extraneous thoughts and images that entered your mind while improvising are of interest. Which images were most compelling to you? Which ones did you dislike? What parts of your body are more difficult to access with a specific image? To begin the improvisation you can be standing, sitting, lying on the floor, or in any preferred position. Let the image sink in before you begin. At the end of an improvisation exercise it is valuable for the members of the group to communicate their experience with each other. These discussions are often rich sources of information on the relationship between imagery and movement.
Spatial Path
The number of spatial paths is infinite. Think of all the spatial paths you have taken in your life as lines drawn on an immense canvas. Imagine that your fast movements have made thick lines and your slow movements thin ones, and behold a design of stupendous proportions. Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space. Inspiration for spatial paths is everywhere - in a jumble of sticks by the road or even in a bowl of spaghetti. I once laid my head down in a hotel the day before teaching a workshop in Germany and discovered an interesting spatial path in the form of a curtain (figure 5.11).
Spatial path created by a curtain.
Exercises for Creating a Spatial Path
- Explain the path: This exercise is appropriate for children from age 4, and it is equally valuable for adults in fostering the ability to visualize spatial paths. The exercise is done with a partner and music. Decide who will be person A and who will be B. Person A creates a path through space as long as the music plays (not too long to start). When A returns to B, B must explain to A what spatial path A took. To do this, B must be able to visualize the spatial path. Reverse roles and replay the music as person B finds a path through space. (Adapted from Werner Hushka, a German children's pedagogue.)
- The path ahead of you: Begin standing. Visualize a path in space, such as a long, meandering arrow. Move along the path to the end of the arrow. Then visualize the continuation of the spatial path, and move along that path to its end. Do not go farther than you can visualize. See how far you can extend your path and still remember it once you have started on your way.
- The path behind you: Imagine that you leave a trace wherever you go, like an airplane's jet stream. How long can you maintain the image of your trace?
- Space slide:If you have ever gone on one of those long, winding children's slides, you know what it is like to let your body be guided. As you move, see yourself being guided through space by an imaginary slide with perfect depth and width (figure 5.12). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453792_ebook_Main.jpg
Space slide. - Roller coaster: As you move, imagine that you are on a roller coaster. Similar to the space slide, your movement is being guided. However, the roller coaster adds loops, turns, spirals, and even revolutions around a horizontal axis.
- Energy current: Imagine energy currents like powerful ocean currents pulling or guiding you along pathways in space. Feel the interaction between stronger and weaker currents. Experiment with different shapes of currents: linear, circular, scalloped, or spiraled.
Initiation
You can initiate movement from anywhere in the body. In certain movements, you want to initiate equally from the whole body. In others, you initiate from a specific place, such as the string attached to the finger pulling into space. The inside of the body can move the surface, such as a bag of helium-filled balloons pushing up into the sky (figure 5.13a), or the surface can move the inside, such as a bag dragging balls along the floor (figure 5.13b).
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453800_ebook_Main.jpg
(a) The contents can move the container, or (b) the container can move its contents.
Exercises for Initiation
- Windy weather:
- Gust of wind with a partner: Your partner initiates the movement in your body by giving you a gentle push as if a gust of wind were blowing at a specific area.
- Gust of wind without a partner: Once you have gained some experience with a partner, you can do the exercise alone: Imagine the wind pushing against a body part to make you move. (Adapted from Body Weather practices.)
- Storm and lulls:Imagine wind blowing through you. Imagine your central axis to be a rope with fluttering flags. The wind blows through you and moves your body from your center line (figure 5.14). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453802_ebook_Main.jpg
Center line with fluttering flags. - Rolling ball:Imagine a ball rolling around inside your body. The ball's movement imitates and shapes your movement. Vary the size of the ball, and experiment with the number of balls initiating your movement (figure 5.15). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453805_ebook_Main.jpg
A ball rolling inside the body. - Puppet: Imagine strings attached to the top of your head, knees, feet, elbows, and hands. Let these strings motivate your movement. Add additional strings. Be a fancy marionette with very loose joints. Sometimes this effect is used in choreography, as seen in this excerpt of a review of Le Sacre du printemps: "One seems to be looking at marionettes . . . and many of the movements seem to be the result of some stern and invisible hand moving the puppets by an inexorable decree, the purport of which is known to the owner of the hand, but has only at certain moments been declared to others" (as quoted in Buckle 1971).
Enhance your partnering experience using imagery
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner.
Using Imagery in Partnering
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner. Discuss what imagery you both like and see if you can enhance your partnering experience by synchronizing visualization. What happens, for example, if you both imagine a forceful geyser gushing up from the ground and helping with an overhead lift? On the other hand, each dancer may need to discover the imagery that works for him or her. Imagery that may be unfamiliar at first sometimes turns into one's favorite, too. New York-based dancer June Balish recalls learning a dance with many unfamiliar lifts from dancer Mayra Rodriguez of the Frankfurt Ballet. While June was hoping for technical, even mechanical instruction, she was only told, "You just fly." This advice left her feeling frustrated and inadequate. Eventually, she mastered the mechanics of the lifts, and after several performances of the work she realized that the lifts really did work best when she just flew. Once she had the feeling of flying, the lifts were never a problem.
For technical partnering, the images in the Contact Improvisation and Imagery section of chapter 5 are helpful. For example, breathing as a unit and connecting center to center are useful in all types of partner work.
Exercises for Partnering
- Mental rehearsal: Mentally rehearse your lifts with your partner. Imagine all the elements of the movement vividly: initiation, direction, force, timing, connection, space, and emotion. Notice blank spots or areas of fuzzy imagery. Focus especially on clarifying these moments.
- Self-talk for lifts: Talk through the lifts with your partner. Each dancer quietly speaks his or her actions at the same time or one shortly after the other. Speak rhythmically in the speed with which you will actually be performing the lifts. Mark the movements with your body as you speak. Notice inner resistance to performing certain movements, and develop mental confidence using self-talk and mood words. Keep at it to eliminate doubt and resistance without becoming careless. Think such thoughts as That was easy, It feels effortless, Beautiful timing, I love to fly, I am in sync with my partner, and We are one. Invent ideas and words that make sense to you and inspire you. Write them on a board where you can see them daily. Keep reading them until you fully believe them.
- Motion of your partner: As you dance, feel the motion of your partner. Imagine that your motions come from the same source and that they are motivated by the same intention.
- Light partner: As you are being lifted, see yourself as very light. You may prefer a metaphor, such as light as a feather, a cloud, or a floating leaf.
- Think, Jumping : The person being lifted up imagines the feeling of jumping up into the air, even if her partner is lifting her.
- Magnet on the ceiling: Both partners imagine the ceiling magnetically attracting the person who is being lifted. The ceiling pulls the dancer up and releases him or her at the right moment.
- COG over BOS to create balance: When helping your partner to balance or turn en pointe, imagine his or her COG perfectly aligned over the BOS.
- COG alignment in overhead lift:In an overhead lift, visualize your COG and your partner's COG aligned perpendicularly on top of each other (figure 16.2). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454909_ebook_Main.jpg
COG alignment. - Illuminating your partner: Imagine that you are a shining rod of light that illuminates your partner. As your partner moves and turns, your glow illuminates various sides of his or her body.
- Breathing styles: Practice a variety of breathing styles to find out what suits you. First use your breath consciously as you lift to create more force. Ideally you could make a brief sound as you exhale, such as "Ha," but not always during a performance. Then see if you can just let yourself breathe freely with the flow of your movement. Notice if you tend to hold your breath, which adds tension to your movement. Practice consciously observing your breathing during rehearsals. Try emphasizing the exhalation or inhalation at certain movements, and notice what works for you. As a next step, practice breathing with your partner - first just by observing each other, then in movement. Also, discuss with your partner how breathing has helped him or her previously.
- Exhalation: Imagine that the force of your exhalation helps lift your partner. Coordinate the timing of your breath with the timing of your lift. Mentally rehearse this action before you perform it. The person being lifted can also practice exhaling and imagine that the exhalation helps them to take flight.
- One sculpture:Think of yourself and your partner as one sculpture, made from one piece of material. Imagine the weight and volume of sculpture, its three dimensionality, how it is interesting to observe from all angles. What would an observer experience if they would see the sculpture composed by you and your partner (figure 16.3)? http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454910_ebook_Main.jpg
Partners form sculpture.Courtesy of Steven Speliotis
- Connections: Imagine many invisible connections exist between you and your partner. These could be invisible threads of energies, sound waves bouncing off your partner, or simple elastic bands creating a springy connection.
- Reflections: Imagine that you are each other's reflection. You are following each other's movements closely, but less with a sense of imitation than an effortless fleeting image on a mirror.
- Sculpting your partner (improvisation): Imagine that one of you is the sculptor while the other is the material. You can also be both sculptor and material simultaneously. Be an evolving sculpture that never exists in a fixed shape.
- Assorted sky hooks: The person being lifted can imagine an assortment of strings or sky hooks attaching to his or her body and gently lifting him or her into the desired position and shape. In Rejoyce by the Pilobolus Dance Theater, one dancer actually partners with another who floats above the stage, suspended by ropes and pulleys. Such flying actions are also commonly seen in performances by Cirque de Soleil.
- Creature: Perform improvisational movement to imagine merging with your partner to form one creature (figure 16.4).
Partners form a creature.
Improve imagery improvisations with these exercises
Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space.
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
The following exercises are separated by categories, but these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. An image that produces dynamic changes requires initiation. An image that changes the surface of the body reverberates out into space. When working with a group, it is a good idea to watch each other improvise. It may be interesting not to let the observers know what image you are working on to see if they can recognize it. If you imagined yourself as a robot and everybody says that you looked like a jellyfish, you know that you need to work on that image. After you finish an improvisation session, write down your experiences in a notebook. Even extraneous thoughts and images that entered your mind while improvising are of interest. Which images were most compelling to you? Which ones did you dislike? What parts of your body are more difficult to access with a specific image? To begin the improvisation you can be standing, sitting, lying on the floor, or in any preferred position. Let the image sink in before you begin. At the end of an improvisation exercise it is valuable for the members of the group to communicate their experience with each other. These discussions are often rich sources of information on the relationship between imagery and movement.
Spatial Path
The number of spatial paths is infinite. Think of all the spatial paths you have taken in your life as lines drawn on an immense canvas. Imagine that your fast movements have made thick lines and your slow movements thin ones, and behold a design of stupendous proportions. Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space. Inspiration for spatial paths is everywhere - in a jumble of sticks by the road or even in a bowl of spaghetti. I once laid my head down in a hotel the day before teaching a workshop in Germany and discovered an interesting spatial path in the form of a curtain (figure 5.11).
Spatial path created by a curtain.
Exercises for Creating a Spatial Path
- Explain the path: This exercise is appropriate for children from age 4, and it is equally valuable for adults in fostering the ability to visualize spatial paths. The exercise is done with a partner and music. Decide who will be person A and who will be B. Person A creates a path through space as long as the music plays (not too long to start). When A returns to B, B must explain to A what spatial path A took. To do this, B must be able to visualize the spatial path. Reverse roles and replay the music as person B finds a path through space. (Adapted from Werner Hushka, a German children's pedagogue.)
- The path ahead of you: Begin standing. Visualize a path in space, such as a long, meandering arrow. Move along the path to the end of the arrow. Then visualize the continuation of the spatial path, and move along that path to its end. Do not go farther than you can visualize. See how far you can extend your path and still remember it once you have started on your way.
- The path behind you: Imagine that you leave a trace wherever you go, like an airplane's jet stream. How long can you maintain the image of your trace?
- Space slide:If you have ever gone on one of those long, winding children's slides, you know what it is like to let your body be guided. As you move, see yourself being guided through space by an imaginary slide with perfect depth and width (figure 5.12). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453792_ebook_Main.jpg
Space slide. - Roller coaster: As you move, imagine that you are on a roller coaster. Similar to the space slide, your movement is being guided. However, the roller coaster adds loops, turns, spirals, and even revolutions around a horizontal axis.
- Energy current: Imagine energy currents like powerful ocean currents pulling or guiding you along pathways in space. Feel the interaction between stronger and weaker currents. Experiment with different shapes of currents: linear, circular, scalloped, or spiraled.
Initiation
You can initiate movement from anywhere in the body. In certain movements, you want to initiate equally from the whole body. In others, you initiate from a specific place, such as the string attached to the finger pulling into space. The inside of the body can move the surface, such as a bag of helium-filled balloons pushing up into the sky (figure 5.13a), or the surface can move the inside, such as a bag dragging balls along the floor (figure 5.13b).
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453800_ebook_Main.jpg
(a) The contents can move the container, or (b) the container can move its contents.
Exercises for Initiation
- Windy weather:
- Gust of wind with a partner: Your partner initiates the movement in your body by giving you a gentle push as if a gust of wind were blowing at a specific area.
- Gust of wind without a partner: Once you have gained some experience with a partner, you can do the exercise alone: Imagine the wind pushing against a body part to make you move. (Adapted from Body Weather practices.)
- Storm and lulls:Imagine wind blowing through you. Imagine your central axis to be a rope with fluttering flags. The wind blows through you and moves your body from your center line (figure 5.14). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453802_ebook_Main.jpg
Center line with fluttering flags. - Rolling ball:Imagine a ball rolling around inside your body. The ball's movement imitates and shapes your movement. Vary the size of the ball, and experiment with the number of balls initiating your movement (figure 5.15). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453805_ebook_Main.jpg
A ball rolling inside the body. - Puppet: Imagine strings attached to the top of your head, knees, feet, elbows, and hands. Let these strings motivate your movement. Add additional strings. Be a fancy marionette with very loose joints. Sometimes this effect is used in choreography, as seen in this excerpt of a review of Le Sacre du printemps: "One seems to be looking at marionettes . . . and many of the movements seem to be the result of some stern and invisible hand moving the puppets by an inexorable decree, the purport of which is known to the owner of the hand, but has only at certain moments been declared to others" (as quoted in Buckle 1971).
Enhance your partnering experience using imagery
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner.
Using Imagery in Partnering
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner. Discuss what imagery you both like and see if you can enhance your partnering experience by synchronizing visualization. What happens, for example, if you both imagine a forceful geyser gushing up from the ground and helping with an overhead lift? On the other hand, each dancer may need to discover the imagery that works for him or her. Imagery that may be unfamiliar at first sometimes turns into one's favorite, too. New York-based dancer June Balish recalls learning a dance with many unfamiliar lifts from dancer Mayra Rodriguez of the Frankfurt Ballet. While June was hoping for technical, even mechanical instruction, she was only told, "You just fly." This advice left her feeling frustrated and inadequate. Eventually, she mastered the mechanics of the lifts, and after several performances of the work she realized that the lifts really did work best when she just flew. Once she had the feeling of flying, the lifts were never a problem.
For technical partnering, the images in the Contact Improvisation and Imagery section of chapter 5 are helpful. For example, breathing as a unit and connecting center to center are useful in all types of partner work.
Exercises for Partnering
- Mental rehearsal: Mentally rehearse your lifts with your partner. Imagine all the elements of the movement vividly: initiation, direction, force, timing, connection, space, and emotion. Notice blank spots or areas of fuzzy imagery. Focus especially on clarifying these moments.
- Self-talk for lifts: Talk through the lifts with your partner. Each dancer quietly speaks his or her actions at the same time or one shortly after the other. Speak rhythmically in the speed with which you will actually be performing the lifts. Mark the movements with your body as you speak. Notice inner resistance to performing certain movements, and develop mental confidence using self-talk and mood words. Keep at it to eliminate doubt and resistance without becoming careless. Think such thoughts as That was easy, It feels effortless, Beautiful timing, I love to fly, I am in sync with my partner, and We are one. Invent ideas and words that make sense to you and inspire you. Write them on a board where you can see them daily. Keep reading them until you fully believe them.
- Motion of your partner: As you dance, feel the motion of your partner. Imagine that your motions come from the same source and that they are motivated by the same intention.
- Light partner: As you are being lifted, see yourself as very light. You may prefer a metaphor, such as light as a feather, a cloud, or a floating leaf.
- Think, Jumping : The person being lifted up imagines the feeling of jumping up into the air, even if her partner is lifting her.
- Magnet on the ceiling: Both partners imagine the ceiling magnetically attracting the person who is being lifted. The ceiling pulls the dancer up and releases him or her at the right moment.
- COG over BOS to create balance: When helping your partner to balance or turn en pointe, imagine his or her COG perfectly aligned over the BOS.
- COG alignment in overhead lift:In an overhead lift, visualize your COG and your partner's COG aligned perpendicularly on top of each other (figure 16.2). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454909_ebook_Main.jpg
COG alignment. - Illuminating your partner: Imagine that you are a shining rod of light that illuminates your partner. As your partner moves and turns, your glow illuminates various sides of his or her body.
- Breathing styles: Practice a variety of breathing styles to find out what suits you. First use your breath consciously as you lift to create more force. Ideally you could make a brief sound as you exhale, such as "Ha," but not always during a performance. Then see if you can just let yourself breathe freely with the flow of your movement. Notice if you tend to hold your breath, which adds tension to your movement. Practice consciously observing your breathing during rehearsals. Try emphasizing the exhalation or inhalation at certain movements, and notice what works for you. As a next step, practice breathing with your partner - first just by observing each other, then in movement. Also, discuss with your partner how breathing has helped him or her previously.
- Exhalation: Imagine that the force of your exhalation helps lift your partner. Coordinate the timing of your breath with the timing of your lift. Mentally rehearse this action before you perform it. The person being lifted can also practice exhaling and imagine that the exhalation helps them to take flight.
- One sculpture:Think of yourself and your partner as one sculpture, made from one piece of material. Imagine the weight and volume of sculpture, its three dimensionality, how it is interesting to observe from all angles. What would an observer experience if they would see the sculpture composed by you and your partner (figure 16.3)? http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454910_ebook_Main.jpg
Partners form sculpture.Courtesy of Steven Speliotis
- Connections: Imagine many invisible connections exist between you and your partner. These could be invisible threads of energies, sound waves bouncing off your partner, or simple elastic bands creating a springy connection.
- Reflections: Imagine that you are each other's reflection. You are following each other's movements closely, but less with a sense of imitation than an effortless fleeting image on a mirror.
- Sculpting your partner (improvisation): Imagine that one of you is the sculptor while the other is the material. You can also be both sculptor and material simultaneously. Be an evolving sculpture that never exists in a fixed shape.
- Assorted sky hooks: The person being lifted can imagine an assortment of strings or sky hooks attaching to his or her body and gently lifting him or her into the desired position and shape. In Rejoyce by the Pilobolus Dance Theater, one dancer actually partners with another who floats above the stage, suspended by ropes and pulleys. Such flying actions are also commonly seen in performances by Cirque de Soleil.
- Creature: Perform improvisational movement to imagine merging with your partner to form one creature (figure 16.4).
Partners form a creature.
Improve imagery improvisations with these exercises
Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space.
Imagery Improvisation Exercises
The following exercises are separated by categories, but these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. An image that produces dynamic changes requires initiation. An image that changes the surface of the body reverberates out into space. When working with a group, it is a good idea to watch each other improvise. It may be interesting not to let the observers know what image you are working on to see if they can recognize it. If you imagined yourself as a robot and everybody says that you looked like a jellyfish, you know that you need to work on that image. After you finish an improvisation session, write down your experiences in a notebook. Even extraneous thoughts and images that entered your mind while improvising are of interest. Which images were most compelling to you? Which ones did you dislike? What parts of your body are more difficult to access with a specific image? To begin the improvisation you can be standing, sitting, lying on the floor, or in any preferred position. Let the image sink in before you begin. At the end of an improvisation exercise it is valuable for the members of the group to communicate their experience with each other. These discussions are often rich sources of information on the relationship between imagery and movement.
Spatial Path
The number of spatial paths is infinite. Think of all the spatial paths you have taken in your life as lines drawn on an immense canvas. Imagine that your fast movements have made thick lines and your slow movements thin ones, and behold a design of stupendous proportions. Explore spatial paths by drawing lines on a piece of paper and then transposing them into space. Inspiration for spatial paths is everywhere - in a jumble of sticks by the road or even in a bowl of spaghetti. I once laid my head down in a hotel the day before teaching a workshop in Germany and discovered an interesting spatial path in the form of a curtain (figure 5.11).
Spatial path created by a curtain.
Exercises for Creating a Spatial Path
- Explain the path: This exercise is appropriate for children from age 4, and it is equally valuable for adults in fostering the ability to visualize spatial paths. The exercise is done with a partner and music. Decide who will be person A and who will be B. Person A creates a path through space as long as the music plays (not too long to start). When A returns to B, B must explain to A what spatial path A took. To do this, B must be able to visualize the spatial path. Reverse roles and replay the music as person B finds a path through space. (Adapted from Werner Hushka, a German children's pedagogue.)
- The path ahead of you: Begin standing. Visualize a path in space, such as a long, meandering arrow. Move along the path to the end of the arrow. Then visualize the continuation of the spatial path, and move along that path to its end. Do not go farther than you can visualize. See how far you can extend your path and still remember it once you have started on your way.
- The path behind you: Imagine that you leave a trace wherever you go, like an airplane's jet stream. How long can you maintain the image of your trace?
- Space slide:If you have ever gone on one of those long, winding children's slides, you know what it is like to let your body be guided. As you move, see yourself being guided through space by an imaginary slide with perfect depth and width (figure 5.12). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453792_ebook_Main.jpg
Space slide. - Roller coaster: As you move, imagine that you are on a roller coaster. Similar to the space slide, your movement is being guided. However, the roller coaster adds loops, turns, spirals, and even revolutions around a horizontal axis.
- Energy current: Imagine energy currents like powerful ocean currents pulling or guiding you along pathways in space. Feel the interaction between stronger and weaker currents. Experiment with different shapes of currents: linear, circular, scalloped, or spiraled.
Initiation
You can initiate movement from anywhere in the body. In certain movements, you want to initiate equally from the whole body. In others, you initiate from a specific place, such as the string attached to the finger pulling into space. The inside of the body can move the surface, such as a bag of helium-filled balloons pushing up into the sky (figure 5.13a), or the surface can move the inside, such as a bag dragging balls along the floor (figure 5.13b).
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453800_ebook_Main.jpg
(a) The contents can move the container, or (b) the container can move its contents.
Exercises for Initiation
- Windy weather:
- Gust of wind with a partner: Your partner initiates the movement in your body by giving you a gentle push as if a gust of wind were blowing at a specific area.
- Gust of wind without a partner: Once you have gained some experience with a partner, you can do the exercise alone: Imagine the wind pushing against a body part to make you move. (Adapted from Body Weather practices.)
- Storm and lulls:Imagine wind blowing through you. Imagine your central axis to be a rope with fluttering flags. The wind blows through you and moves your body from your center line (figure 5.14). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453802_ebook_Main.jpg
Center line with fluttering flags. - Rolling ball:Imagine a ball rolling around inside your body. The ball's movement imitates and shapes your movement. Vary the size of the ball, and experiment with the number of balls initiating your movement (figure 5.15). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_453805_ebook_Main.jpg
A ball rolling inside the body. - Puppet: Imagine strings attached to the top of your head, knees, feet, elbows, and hands. Let these strings motivate your movement. Add additional strings. Be a fancy marionette with very loose joints. Sometimes this effect is used in choreography, as seen in this excerpt of a review of Le Sacre du printemps: "One seems to be looking at marionettes . . . and many of the movements seem to be the result of some stern and invisible hand moving the puppets by an inexorable decree, the purport of which is known to the owner of the hand, but has only at certain moments been declared to others" (as quoted in Buckle 1971).
Enhance your partnering experience using imagery
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner.
Using Imagery in Partnering
Finding a good image for partnering may happen through dialogue with your partner. Discuss what imagery you both like and see if you can enhance your partnering experience by synchronizing visualization. What happens, for example, if you both imagine a forceful geyser gushing up from the ground and helping with an overhead lift? On the other hand, each dancer may need to discover the imagery that works for him or her. Imagery that may be unfamiliar at first sometimes turns into one's favorite, too. New York-based dancer June Balish recalls learning a dance with many unfamiliar lifts from dancer Mayra Rodriguez of the Frankfurt Ballet. While June was hoping for technical, even mechanical instruction, she was only told, "You just fly." This advice left her feeling frustrated and inadequate. Eventually, she mastered the mechanics of the lifts, and after several performances of the work she realized that the lifts really did work best when she just flew. Once she had the feeling of flying, the lifts were never a problem.
For technical partnering, the images in the Contact Improvisation and Imagery section of chapter 5 are helpful. For example, breathing as a unit and connecting center to center are useful in all types of partner work.
Exercises for Partnering
- Mental rehearsal: Mentally rehearse your lifts with your partner. Imagine all the elements of the movement vividly: initiation, direction, force, timing, connection, space, and emotion. Notice blank spots or areas of fuzzy imagery. Focus especially on clarifying these moments.
- Self-talk for lifts: Talk through the lifts with your partner. Each dancer quietly speaks his or her actions at the same time or one shortly after the other. Speak rhythmically in the speed with which you will actually be performing the lifts. Mark the movements with your body as you speak. Notice inner resistance to performing certain movements, and develop mental confidence using self-talk and mood words. Keep at it to eliminate doubt and resistance without becoming careless. Think such thoughts as That was easy, It feels effortless, Beautiful timing, I love to fly, I am in sync with my partner, and We are one. Invent ideas and words that make sense to you and inspire you. Write them on a board where you can see them daily. Keep reading them until you fully believe them.
- Motion of your partner: As you dance, feel the motion of your partner. Imagine that your motions come from the same source and that they are motivated by the same intention.
- Light partner: As you are being lifted, see yourself as very light. You may prefer a metaphor, such as light as a feather, a cloud, or a floating leaf.
- Think, Jumping : The person being lifted up imagines the feeling of jumping up into the air, even if her partner is lifting her.
- Magnet on the ceiling: Both partners imagine the ceiling magnetically attracting the person who is being lifted. The ceiling pulls the dancer up and releases him or her at the right moment.
- COG over BOS to create balance: When helping your partner to balance or turn en pointe, imagine his or her COG perfectly aligned over the BOS.
- COG alignment in overhead lift:In an overhead lift, visualize your COG and your partner's COG aligned perpendicularly on top of each other (figure 16.2). http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454909_ebook_Main.jpg
COG alignment. - Illuminating your partner: Imagine that you are a shining rod of light that illuminates your partner. As your partner moves and turns, your glow illuminates various sides of his or her body.
- Breathing styles: Practice a variety of breathing styles to find out what suits you. First use your breath consciously as you lift to create more force. Ideally you could make a brief sound as you exhale, such as "Ha," but not always during a performance. Then see if you can just let yourself breathe freely with the flow of your movement. Notice if you tend to hold your breath, which adds tension to your movement. Practice consciously observing your breathing during rehearsals. Try emphasizing the exhalation or inhalation at certain movements, and notice what works for you. As a next step, practice breathing with your partner - first just by observing each other, then in movement. Also, discuss with your partner how breathing has helped him or her previously.
- Exhalation: Imagine that the force of your exhalation helps lift your partner. Coordinate the timing of your breath with the timing of your lift. Mentally rehearse this action before you perform it. The person being lifted can also practice exhaling and imagine that the exhalation helps them to take flight.
- One sculpture:Think of yourself and your partner as one sculpture, made from one piece of material. Imagine the weight and volume of sculpture, its three dimensionality, how it is interesting to observe from all angles. What would an observer experience if they would see the sculpture composed by you and your partner (figure 16.3)? http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/099/E4013_454910_ebook_Main.jpg
Partners form sculpture.Courtesy of Steven Speliotis
- Connections: Imagine many invisible connections exist between you and your partner. These could be invisible threads of energies, sound waves bouncing off your partner, or simple elastic bands creating a springy connection.
- Reflections: Imagine that you are each other's reflection. You are following each other's movements closely, but less with a sense of imitation than an effortless fleeting image on a mirror.
- Sculpting your partner (improvisation): Imagine that one of you is the sculptor while the other is the material. You can also be both sculptor and material simultaneously. Be an evolving sculpture that never exists in a fixed shape.
- Assorted sky hooks: The person being lifted can imagine an assortment of strings or sky hooks attaching to his or her body and gently lifting him or her into the desired position and shape. In Rejoyce by the Pilobolus Dance Theater, one dancer actually partners with another who floats above the stage, suspended by ropes and pulleys. Such flying actions are also commonly seen in performances by Cirque de Soleil.
- Creature: Perform improvisational movement to imagine merging with your partner to form one creature (figure 16.4).
Partners form a creature.
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