Now that you've a day to think about it...what were your impressions of our class on Friday. We talked about the transverse abdominal muscles, how to stretch, alignment vis a vis the three spinning orbs and tendu a la second. That's alot of information in one class! Again, what was most useful to you? What do you think you will be able to integrate most easily in class?
25 comments:
The two most valuable things from class on friday were the parts on stretching and viewing the body and the three spinning balls.
I've never been taught the way it's supposed to feel when you stretch, but just to streak until it hurts hold it then release. Stretching on friday felt great and actually productive.
Viewing movement as the three spinning balls was the most helpful. Afterwords I couldn't help but stand up straighter. It felt more comfortable than being told to sit up straight because to me that means a perfectly straight spin which isn't comfortable. I am really looking forward to applying these two new ways of thinking to the upcoming classes.
I actually felt taller after Friday's class and was wondering if anyone felt the same! It felt great, and still does.
The stretching was effective and it's nice to take time doing it properly.
I was pretty familiar with pilates exercises already but the three spinning balls was an interesting new idea. The exercise with a partner helped in imagining the spinning energy. The idea of constant spinning also served as a reminder to avoid tension while dancing and using your muscles. I find it's strongly connected to the idea of constant rising when balancing. It'll be interesting to see how these lessons affect my dancing!
Nicole Boutillier:
On friday, so many things were explained to me that I never understood before. I have been dancing for years, but my teachers never stop to explain why we did what we did.
For example, one of my ballet instructors made us do the hundred every single ballet class, but I never felt pain or even knew why I was doing this. When you explained about the tranverse muscles on friday, it finally all made sense!! And it felt incredibly good to stretch those muscles. And I was much more flexible after doing those exercises. In fact, yesterday, a friend asked me if I could do the splits and I said that I used to be able to and attempted to do them and went down to the floor with ease. I was crazy.
Back to the point though...i also never realized how our bodies react to pain and that if you back off a little in a stretch, that your body will relax and allow you to stretch that muscle. I had always just forced my body through the pain to do what I wanted. It is so nice to understand my body, because I know this will help me work better in class.
The concept about the moving orbits in the 3 parts of our body: head, torso and pelvis, was really useful to me. First of all it was amazing to feel the energy when our partner traced these circles, and secondly, because I think I am finally beginning to understand what proper alignment is. I was always told to stand up straight, and tuck my bottom under, but even when I did that, I could never find the proper placement. It was so refreshing to finally understand where I should be. I also like the idea that it is not a static place, but constantly shifting. I really appreciated that exercise. And now I know what my body should feel like, so I will be more conscious in my effort to find this position.
Thank you so much for teaching us the very basic ballet concept and technique. Friday's lesson absolutely helped me to understand what ballet is like. As you know, I didn't know anything about ballet, and I was misunderstanding about ballet. I thought while dancing ballet, we only need to think the imaginary middle lines in our bodies, and these imaginary lines are extended to the sky...I didn't feel natural and felt awkward. However, because of the three circles concept, I feel dynamic even when I am not moving. Also, it is more natural and effective to dance. I think that it is the first principles for any kinds of dance.
When we first tried this concept with partners, I hardly saw points to feel three circles in our bodies. Yet, when I closed my eyes and danced with feeling my partner's support (making circles on my body), I definitely started getting the points and losing useless tension. Then, I just followed how I should be...
I understand ballet more than before, and it is getting fun to dance! Thank you!
I really enjoyed the stretching exercises. I feel like the importance of stretching and the proper way to do it often gets overlooked in dance classes. After we did them, I felt like my movements were more fluid and relaxed. My body felt like it was happy and in it's ideal natural state.
I really enjoyed class on friday, the focus on the awareness of our positions and alignment was very helpful. I will have a lot to think about in class today, that I never really focused on in past. I think the most useful information was having us try to focus on the energy in a position, that positions are dynamic instead of tense. It will take a while to relearn and use this information in class, but practice makes perfect.
At the moment, I think the easiest thing to integrate will be the tendu in second, because I will try to replace the word "side" with the word "diagonal" in my mind. Well, we'll see how things go today... :)
As of right now what helped me the most in everyday life would be the stretching. Years of Track, XC, and rugby I got in the clearly bad habit of working the stretch instead of letting the muscles stretch more naturally. I kept that in mind as i was getting ready for my run yesterday morning and took the time to stretch and breath...easily the best 10 mile run I've had for a while. I am very much looking forward to increasing my flexibility and decreasing the amount of tension I hold in my upper legs.
The notion of the three spinning balls is one that i've been thinking about constantly. At work last night I ended up drawing the idea on a piece of paper in anyway i could imagine. I love the concept and as much as I think it will help me in ballet i cannot wait to see what i can accomplish with it in modern. Even walking around, at work or on my motorcycles, the idea of energy circulating seems to take a lot of stress of my legs at work, I stand taller and more naturally in line and helps alleviate some discomfort while riding (though the practice of relaxing my muscles also helps significantly).
So with the stretching coming as the most valuable piece of information I took from friday, and the three balls of energy as second, I'm not going to say the proper foot placement in tendu's is not important. For me it is important in the sense that I'm taking ballet in part cause of the challenge it poses and that I can always improve. I knew how to doa tendu and what it was....but now i can practice on getting it PERFECT and apply it everyday to the point that it is natural.
Thanks for a great friday!!!
Friday helped me a lot to think about dancing and what needs to be happening while I'm dancing. Going deeper into the specific details of my body and how the energy should be consistently moving, I had different views about dancing and how it works. Starting from stretching and finding the alignment, I built a stronger inner strength in my body. The three spinning orbs helped me to think to keep the energy going even when I am just standing in a still position. Last but not least, the tendu a la second! I didn't even notice what I was doing until Friday. The way we marked the floor was a great way to remind myself. I really enjoyed Friday and all the exercises we did.
Stretching felt great! In dance classes I have had before we would take about half an hour to stretch as well, but it was more about quantity of stretches, not quality. The thing that helped most was the idea of backing away from the pain, and then breathing into a stretch. I didn't yank, I didn't force, I just inhaled and exhale into it when I felt it was right. I felt amazing after class!
The transverse abdominal exercises along with the spinning orbs exercise made everything feel stronger, longer and better put together and connected. In fact, just yesterday I was in the middle of something and all the sudden felt the orb sensations and was inclined to fix my posture and alignment!
I learned a lot in class on Friday, and it all seemed very manageable to put into practice and easy to remember and use for the classes to come.
I really like the concept of the three spinning balls... i notice my posture greatly improves just by thinking of them!
The stretching was good and i enjoy having some time to do them, though personally I prefer stretching after warming up a bit (think I might try and do that myself before class next time) and I just got really dizzy from the 100's, so don't think I got anything out of them. Probably need to figure out if my breathing is all wacky or what I was doing wrong.
The most valuable part of class for me on Friday was my tendu a la second position, since I always feel like I have to tendu "to the side" rather than to my own individual side. It will help me to do ballet exercises easier.
It also helped me because I am starting to realize the different ways you can view ballet. You can view it as doing the exercises witha predetermined requirement in mind (I havet to look like this) or you can do the exercises with yoru own personal limits and abilities in mind. I want my ballet to be for me, not for an imaginary audience watching me.
The stretching exercises will probably be the easiest to integrate into class, as it is a simple concept that makes all stretches easier. The only problem is when you don't have time enough in exercises to do a full stretch (you don't have 17 seconds).
Friday's class was wonderful. It is always both relaxing and invigorating to spend time on the body by stretching in specific ways, and on the mind, by thinking about those stretches and what each body part is doing. The part that was most applicable to class was the limits on stretching - you get nowhere by causing pain. However, the most interesting and important lesson I will take from class on Friday was the feeling of being touched by a stranger in fairly intimate, but safe ways. It is not something I had experienced before, but fund myself relaxing as I concentrated not on the other person or the touching, but instead on what the touching was supposed to teach me.
Katrina Hamilton:
I responded a lot to the pilates work and how much ease I felt in my posture afterwards. I'd been taught before about how in dance we use different muscles in the abdomen than the superficial ones we're used to thinking about, but this is the first time I did an exercise specifically meant to engage the area as part of the teaching. I've done things before that should have, in theory, worked those muscles. But I don't recall ever being told that was the goal.
Since Friday every once in a while I bring my attention to my posture and think of it as being based on my deeper trunk muscles. It seems to help!
I really liked working with a partner in Friday's class. It was great to get some outside stimulus, through touch, to reinforce the mental imagery of the rotating spheres. I think we should have more classes like that!
I'm not sure why but I'm most aware of thinking about my hip spheres rolling backward--especially when I'm just walking around town. So, because I spend time thinking about this outside of class, I believe this will most easily be incorporated into my class work.
I believe that the three spinning orbs technique most useful for me. I have never thought about my body functioning as three different orbs. It is also interesting to note that the orbs complete the energy that is transmited from your body.
I can actually think about my body as a fluid orb. It connects and interacts with each other to function without harming the body in everyday life.
Oscar Milano MAI
I really liked all the stretches and abdominal work that we did. I feel like the stretching we did is a wonderful way to be ready to dance. It made me feel refreshed and ready to learn more ballet!
I like how this class gives us permission to go into the positions that are most natural and undamaging to our body. This being said, I plan to take all all of my 4ths as very loose 3rds, and hopefully I can get away with my torso being slightly lopsided and my butt sticking out a little. I was just experimenting and found that this seems to be the most healthy position for me as it doesn't give me shinsplints or knee wrenchings, and allows me to go into a deeper plie. I think learning the healthiest ways of bending out knees will allow us to go into a deeper, and therefore more useful (this is a great concern for me!) plie!
I haven't had a ballet teacher make us do pilates or the hundreds in a long time, I really was missing it! Furthermore the spinning orbs is useful to imagine, but I am not very good at it yet. It really is an interesting effect though.
After last friday's class I felt amazing! I felt like I was no longer being pulled down by gravity and was lighter weight! I would say the thing i took away from the class was the 3 spheres. Just imagining that whenever I feel gravity taking its toll on me makes me feel much better and more at home standing tall and straight. Also I really enjoyed the stretching, I never realized not to stretch to the pain and hold it (which is what I always did!), but now i just stretch to right before the pain and feel much more stretched in the end! All together an amazing class, very helpful!
I think that classes like that are so helpful. A lot of times the structure of ballet classes doesn't allow the time to really talk about the reasoning and methodology behind things, and then we end up doing things wrong and hurting our bodies. It was nice to take a step back and really talk about and experience proper alignment rather than just having a teacher walk past you at the bar saying "pull up" like it's supposed to mean something.
I also think that it's really important to see that stretching really is more of a time investment than people usually make it. Stretching fast and hard doesn't help anyone, but stretching right can do amazing things.
And then tendu a la second... I think that a lot of times we see professional ballet dancers with their nearly 180 degree turnout and think that that's how it's supposed to be, when in reality their bodies are a sort of anatomical anomaly. I think it's good for us to realize that for the majority of people, it really is "tendu diagonal" rather than "tendu side" and there's nothing wrong with it. And then we can dance with proper alignment through our hips and have the ballet aesthetic and keep our bodies happy too!
What I really enjoyed was developing a better sense of my own body and how it moves, or rather, I was more accutely aware of all movements and then really able to enjoy how those movements felt. The second position alignment was very helpful as well, I had heard that 2nd was more of a diagonal, but it was really good to figure out what that meant for my body specifically.
Also! The pilates is particularly interesting to me because it is unbelievably helpful in my life outside of dance-I am a grad student of voice in the music department, and the idea of breath and breath support is always something you hear as a singer, but it has always been very vague. But it turns out, its exactly what we do in ballet! Using and strengthening the transversus abdominals is so so so helpful to healthy singing technique, and I feel like I have had all kinds of breath/support breakthroughs in, of all places, my ballet class. So, thank you!
The parts of class that I value is the stretching and the relaxation that dance provides! The part in your teaching is that you make dancing fun and funny. Allowing us to let out our inner goofiness. The stretching allows for my body to know that it is time to dance. The thing that I notice that I need to really work on is knowing where my turn out is when I go to passe. I notice that I tend to allow my hip joint to get all wonky. I need to really work on that.
I was just going through old posts to make sure I haven't missed any and found this one. I can't figure out what happened, but here's my response.
I REALLY enjoyed the instruction on stretching. I love to stretch and how my body feels and can move after I give everything a good stretch. It was interesting to hear the anatomy behind stretching, the part about it taking like 17 secs for the body to relax its hold on the muscle. I've found that it has made a big difference when I stretch out when I don't rush the process.
The orbs exercise I found to be incredibly awkward, but justified in being incredibly useful. I like the idea of the orbs being in constant motion to get your body to be shaped correctly. The idea of working on putting all of the different parts of your body into static positions and holding them starts to hurt just thinking about it. The orbs visual just seems more natural.
I love the image of the lines radiating out the top and bottom of the person. I am having a difficult time feeling a swirling orb feeling in my own body. I understand the idea of zipping up the transverse abdominal muscles in order to elongate the spine and give as much length and strength as possible but I don't seem to feel a circular motion yet.
There are a lot of different ways to think about the movement of the body during dance. For me I have a really hard time locating turn out muscles in my hibs and thigh and really "feeling" turned out and "pulled up." The metaphysical ideas about how the flow of energy in the body should be might be the only way for me to get my body to move like its suppost to. through out the whole class every time i tendu a la second I think of it as a diagonal and except my turnout at the level. That, I feel, is a big improvment.
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