It
was a striking experience, one that convinced me that study of Alexander's
discoveries could be an effective and integral part of a professional
dancers training.
Since
then I have trained as an Alexander Teacher, and now work with dancers
in a contemporary dance training context. My work has included developing
and teaching courses in Alexander technique, functional anatomy and
Somatics in professional dance training programmes.
I
have found the Alexander work to be an accessable and extraordinarily
useful tool for dancers, despite many dancers ingrained habit of striving
to "get it right" - endgaining in Alexander's words.
In
1994 I presented a well received paper "Good Dancers
Make it Look Easy" at the DACI (Dance and the Child International)
conference in Sydney Australia.
Recently,
I have been involved in the Somdance Project
at the Universities of Western Sydney, and New South Wales in Australia.
A two year research and development project
has recently been funded by the Committee for University Teaching and Staff
Development (CUTSD) to investigate means of bringing somatic information into
the training of professional contemporary dancers.
The project consists of a team of two
university dance lecturers with an Alexander teacher (myself) and a Feldenkrais
practitioner. Both somatic practitioners have experience as professional dancers
and teachers.
Good
dancers don't make it look easy - they make it easy; ease in movement and
postural alignment is an underlying factor in the development of good dance
practise and a long lived practical enjoyment of dancing.
This
paper discusses the way we use our bodies. It considers the role of muscle
tension and proprioception, or body awareness, in dancers alignment and movement
quality from the perspective of the Alexander Technique. It then discusses
the Alexander Technique as a method for facilitating ease of movement while
dancing.
It
benefits both teachers and students to 'make it easy' for themselves.
