Strength & Alignment – Beginning to find new ways of working

By Sophie

By the end of our second residency we had developed a framework of approaches and activities we were going to explore and develop as part of our sessions with our dancers. We’d divided (while acknowledging everything is intertwined of course) strength and alignment into sections:

• Body awareness – tactile cues (self given such as rubbing, brushing etc)
• Imagery for alignment – given verbally, visually through picture and real objects
• Floor work (strength) – specific movements to include
• Upper body standing (alignment)
• Lower body (strength and alignment) – sitting, lying and standing with a focus on ankle strength

Each of us works in a different way with our dancers. Not only in terms of the number of sessions per week and length of term, but also in our approach to training dancers. We are all established practitioners who have developed our methods over several years so our own experience and beliefs are wrapped up in the practices we have developed. The social and organisational context, individual aims and the dancers themselves shape our class   structures and the emphasis we place on different skills or areas of training. So seeing how each of us interprets, adapts and develops the activities and exercises is as much part of the process as measuring the impact they have on our dancers. This will also help to ensure our final resource is accessible, adaptable and usable to fit the wide range of practitioners needs.

So we had finally got the part we had all been waiting for. Trying out some new ideas with our dancers! While exciting and refreshing to get some new ideas for class, the process wasn’t going to be without its challenges. I quickly discovered how set my class structure has become which is reassuring for the dancers as they know what to expect. Familiarity is comforting. But shaking this up can also be good sometimes, to help them (and me) adapt to new situations and re-examine. Finding new approaches makes you question what you think you already know, and do. But perhaps as importantly it has also reminded me why we do some things in a particular way. Because it works well, which is reassuring.

Seeing what each other is trying out through sharing short videos has felt really supportive and motivating. Joop and Manouk’s idea for a chair based exercise to Greek Sittaki music (standing and sitting to the changes in the music) was a revelation! Fun is definitely an important point to consider for motivation, engagement and group dynamic. Through emails and Skype meetings we have been able to share thoughts and challenges which is a refreshing change to working alone on ideas. Its good to be part of a bigger team.

Team Ability!

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