16/11/11 Barteneiff Fundamentals

"As we roll onto our sidesand prepare our legs to get out of bed, we flex and bring our legs nearer to our core. As we push to stand, we extend. As we take our first daily step and everyone thereafter, we swing one leg forward in flexion and as we transfer our weight to stand on one leg, the femoral joint extends." Hackney, P, 1998. Making connections. 2nd ed. London: Routledge pg124
I really enjoy Hackneys approach to movement and life and find it fascinating how simple movements we undertake in day to day life resinate through the body without us even realising a lot of the time, constantly massaging joints and flexing muscles without taking a second to think. It is instinctual to us through discovering our bodies as a child when every movement was an exploration. It is interesting in Hackneys work to take a step back and explore the body once more, sensing every muscle and joint as we begin to balance in life. Todays class was focused on becoming aware of the movement available to us in the pelvis and hip joints, it has a presence in our day to day lives that the majority of us do not use effectively, instead we put pressure in the knees or lower back to compensate for this. The femal joint is crucial in connecting the torso to the limbs, as simple an action as picking something up can be made so much easier by increasing flextion in this joint rather than placing added strain on the back. In dance actions such as plies can feel easier and deeper if we think of oiling through the femal joint to assist in as opposed to putting strain on turning out from the knees, we need to consider the deeper physical elements to technique and what we are doing to our body, in comparison to what you can see on the outside.



Image available at: http://www.e-radiography.net/technique/pelvis/pelvis_ap_anatomy.jpg

 We focused on the femoral joint, the less trochanter and illac crest and to become more aware of these joints we began by indentifying pelvic areas by place stickers on them, locating them by feeling ourselves and attaching a visual aid helped in constantly showing us where we were moving from, giving us an instant sense of sending energy to these places. We began improvising with these areas and I found this to help me feel more grounded in my movement as I was holding my enegry in a lower space and having a different sense of gravity in my actions, I was suprised at the inspiration this gave me and how much freedom we have in this area there seemed more room for rotation, extension and tilting than I had experiemented with before and I felt a change in myself as a dancer just by working from a lower part of the body. I could feel more connected with the floor as I felt a weight pulling me down through the pelvis and relaxing the legs with use of the femal joint felt satisfying as I had less pressure on muscles such as the quadriceps, I am going to try and remember this sensation for dancing in the future as I enjoyed this deeper connection with the floor and exploring movement with a different focus point, the pelvis.

Watching this video I can honestly say I think I have excuted this routine, my body appears tired and tense in this video but can still take the reflections I make forward on to next weeks class. On the first rotation in the femal joint at 2 second, I could have pushed the knee higher for longer as the leg rotates to the back I see myself drop the leg unnessarily, holding the for longer would create suspension and a greater sense of drop into the next movement. I feel I could have pushed myself further throughout this excercise, stepping out beyond myself and ppushing myself just that little bit further. My feet within this excerise need to be more precise both in posistion and pointing to help extend through the leg creating cleaner lines, on a lot of these movements I can see a bend in the back of the knee, at 21 seconds especially, which could be improved through directing the energy I have out through the toes.

I questioned in class today how much of our movement do we miss? By that I mean as we move through class and through life how much of what our body does to manouvre do we ignore, obviously we cannot consider every muscle, tendon and bone in the body when walking but do we appreciate the complexity of our bodys as much as we should? As dance practitioners I suppose that we more than most understand what it takes for the body to function but how much movement are we missing out on? I can draw from this thought that as a choreographer and performer I want to explore the full capacity of the body and push its limits to create extrordinary movement that would make people wonder the same as me.