Performing Arts

Dancers

Excerpted with permission from ‘The Alexander Technique and Dance’ by Phyllis G. Richmond

Dancers often sense something is wrong with what they are doing, but they do not know exactly what it is or how to correct it. When they suffer injury or chronic problems, they tend to utilize specific remedies, such as chiropractic, osteopathy, massage, drugs, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and so forth. These treatments can alleviate symptoms, but, in my opinion, they do not get at the underlying cause, the dancer's habitual use of his own instrument, which is himself. The dancer should focus on prevention instead of cure. The Alexander Technique offers a framework to understand the problem and an effective means to bring about change, not by someone doing something to the dancer but by facilitating the dancer's learning to control his way of working. Over the past year I have had the opportunity to experiment with the Alexander Technique in the context of professional dance training and performance. This paper records the current stage in the evolution of my thoughts on the subject, based on my experiences.

It was increasingly clear to me that traditional exercise and correction do not invariably correct technical problems. There exists a deeper level of co-ordination in the nervous system that cannot be reached in this way. This fundamental level of neuro-muscular organization underlying all activity is the level of general co-ordination which Alexander called "use". He wrote that " satisfactory general use is essential to satisfactory specific use." If a dancer's general use is inadequate, he will be jumping, turning and lifting in an inefficient and possibly damaging way which may in the long run impede his progress and predispose him to injury. Improving use is essential in order fundamentally to improve technique. Yet there is not, to my knowledge, a commonly accepted concept of use in the dance world. Dance training is traditionally concerned with technique not use.

Dancers training without an understanding of use means that on some level they do not know what they are doing. Traditionally dancers are not taught to understand how movement works, but to imitate and repeat. What are they imitating? They may not have the understanding to see the movement accurately. In fact, they may imitate the peculiarities or defects of their teachers because those peculiarities are what they notice. Dancers depend on kinesthetic awareness to re-create and repeat movement. Since our vision and kinesthetic sense function according to use, if our use is inadequate, we will be seeing and repeating poor use and feeling it as correct. Alexander's phrases "untrustworthy sensory appreciation", "perverted sensory awareness" and "Debauched kinesthesia" are wonderfully descriptive of this universal problem. "Debauched kinesthesia" traps us in a vicious circle, for if we cannot depend on sensory awareness to tell us what we are doing, we cannot really know what we are doing, so we cannot change our habits, because in order to change them we have to know what we are doing.

Going through the process of change can be confusing and disturbing. As the old use breaks down, the new use feels weird...there is a period when the system is disorientated while the new use is unsure and unsettled. I found myself for a time uncharacteristically uncoordinated, bumping into things, misjudging distance, cutting myself, and so forth. I could no longer do things in the old way, but I could not yet do them in the new way either. I do not think there is any way to ease this transition. Like babies learning to walk, we need to allow ourselves to fall, even to fail. We need to be patient, to give ourselves time to adjust to change. Dancers tend to be hypercritical of themselves anyway, as well as sensitive to the criticism of the teacher, choreographer, company director. A non-judgmental, playful, and patient approach can create conditions where it is all right to experiment, to take a risk, to fail to “get it right”.

Today there are a growing number of teachers concerned with issues of injury and appropriate technique and who base their work on anatomy, basic movement patterns, and the “body therapies” such as Bartenieff Fundaments and Laban Movement Analysis, Body/Mind Centering, Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement, and so forth. These teachers find that traditional exercises are not the most effective ways to develop and improve technique. Such classes include as warm-up a movement content which is not traditional dance, movement which is designed to improve neuromuscular co-ordination and integration. I think this kind of training is an improvement over the traditional make-or-break approach. However, enlightened movement content alone does not address the core issue of conscious control over use. The Alexander Technique does address this issue. Since the Alexander Technique has no exercises to teach, the challenge is to teach movement from an Alexander viewpoint. While appropriate visual and verbal instructions are important, I do not believe that the essence of the Alexander Technique can be transmitted effectively without communication through the hands of the teacher.

I believe that dancing with good use will tend to reduce the prevalence of dance-related injury and/or chronic pain. I cannot prove this: I have not done a statistical study. But it is my experience and the experience of other dancers involved with The Alexander Technique. Of course, this depends on the cause of the injury or pain. Obviously improved use will not alter inhospitable performing spaces, rehearsal and performance schedules, nutritional deficiencies, professional pressures, or problems, which require medical treatment. But I do think that improved use can affect technique by changing the predisposing conditions of use which lead to injury and pain and by giving the individual better means to deal with overwork, fatigue, stress, and injury or pain which do occur. I have seen the co-ordination of talented natural dancers fall apart when they were in pain from injury. Yet they continued to dance despite pain, which is dangerous. I think that commanding the means to control their use would change their understanding of what they do habitually and enable them to manage themselves constructively when they are in pain or injured.  The difficulty is that maintaining good use requires continuous conscious involvement. You cannot turn on the mechanism and go on automatic pilot. If you are not fully present or if you forget to use the means, the process stops. It is up to the individual actually to engage in the process for it to work.

The complete article can be found on AlexanderTechniqueDance.net. 

Phyllis G. Richmond, Certified teacher of the Alexander Technique since 1991, is based in Dallas, TX. She teaches through the University of North Texas College of Music, the University of Texas at Arlington Continuing Education Program, offers private lessons in Dallas and Arlington, and gives workshops for universities  and performing arts organizations around the region. Ms. Richmond has written extensively about the application of the Alexander Technique to performance. She is the Editor of AmSAT News, the international journal published by the American Society for the Alexander Technique. Visit her website at www.alexandertechniquedfw.com.

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