Why Dancers Need to Ignore their Bodies - Part I

        Dancers’ bodies are their instruments. They know which muscles are tight, they know how flexible each body part is, and they know the difference between sore muscles and injured muscles. They can concentrate on and control each and every movement their bodies make – that’s a good thing, right? Maybe not…

        Scientists are spending a lot of time researching exactly how our bodies learn to move and perform, and there are some interesting findings. When we move, our bodies are programmed to respond automatically.  They respond quickly, reflexively and without any thought on our part. These responses are there to keep us balanced and to keep our bodies operating efficiently and effectively. When dancers or any other athletes begin to think about and analyze movements, they interfere with the bodies’ automatic responses and actually hinder motor performance. An example from every day life would be running up a flight of stairs. It may be something we do each day automatically. The minute we begin thinking about it, we find ourselves tripping and maybe even falling because we have interfered with the body’s automatic motor responses.

        Imagine the dancer who is working on turning. She tirelessly concentrates on alignment, arm placement, balance, the strength of the relevé and spotting and yet falls out of the turn. She prepares again, concentrates even harder and falls again. It seems that the more she concentrates, the harder the turn becomes. She believes she is working on controlling her body, and she may, instead, be fighting against herself. The more control she attempts to exert over the turn, the more she impairs her body’s automatic muscular and balance responses to turning.

        How then does the dancer stay in control of his or her movements without interfering with the body’s automatic motor learning responses?

        Studies have shown that when dancers focus on something external, rather than on their bodies, their bodies work automatically and efficiently. When we stop thinking about controlling our bodies, we use fewer muscles more effectively, our heart does not beat as fast and we do not breathe as hard. All of this means that our bodies do not have to work as hard and undergo less stress which are two great goals to achieve.

        Studies that involved jumping found that subjects who focused on jumping higher than something in the room achieved greater height than subjects who thought about the muscular effort of their feet and legs.

        A study conducted on gymnasts introduced the use of stickers to help with turning jumps. The sticker, although placed on the gymnast’s body, served as an external focus. The gymnasts were working on half turns and were told to concentrate on which wall the sticker would be facing when the turn was complete. The subjects who wore the stickers improved both jump height and movement quality of the turn.

        By using an external focus, dancers can use the body’s automatic motor responses to their advantage while also using tools to improve their technique. 

The next post in this series will discuss how metaphorical imagery can be used by both dancers and dance educators to create external foci for dancers to use.

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Guss-West, C., Hum, B., & Wulf, G. (2016) Attentional focus in classical ballet a survey of professional dancers. Journal of Dance Medicine and Science, 20 (1), 23-9.

Teaching the Plié

"Plié is the first thing you learn and the last thing you master." Suzanne Farrell

            In last week’s post, Using Your Muscles Differently, I discussed how changing the way we think about and approach movement can change the way muscles are activated and how they are used and develop.  This post will specifically address different ways that can be used to teach the plié.

     The French verb plier means to bend, which is clearly what dancers do when performing this exercise – they bend at the hip, knee, and ankle joints.  Since bending changes the level of the body, executing a plié has become synonymous with lowering, and dance students tend to release their weight into their legs.  This dropping of weight places tremendous pressure on the knees and also encourages dancers to release their muscles at the bottom of a grand plié and end up “sitting” in a plié.  Sitting occurs when the dancer relaxes into a squatting position at the bottom of the plié rather than using muscles to hold and stabilize the body isometrically before rising out of the plié.  In an isometric contraction the muscles  remain contracted and do not change length but simply hold a position.  The difference between isometrically holding the position and sitting in a plié can be illustrated by asking a dancer to perform a grand plié in a turned out first position and relax at the bottom of the plié.  The dancer should then be asked to rise about two inches from that position at which point he or she will feel muscles begin to activate and contract in order to hold the position.  The level where the contraction is felt is the point at which the plié should always stop and the lengthening of the legs should begin.

"sitting in a grand plié"

correctly executed grand plié

            

            Another way to prevent the weight from dropping into the joints of the legs during a plié is to think of a plié in a turned out position as a separating exercise instead of a bending exercise.  By focusing on pulling the legs apart from each other, the energy is sent out to the sides rather than down into the floor.  By thinking about pulling the legs back together during the rise out of the plié, the dancer can activate and feel the turn out muscles working to maintain the position.

            It is also helpful if pliés are performed slowly.  Quick pliés encourage the downward motion and weight dropping.  The imagery of separating the legs as if they were glued together, as if they were part of a piece of taffy being pulled apart, or as if the plié were occurring in a vat of peanut butter can also be used.

            Each dancer performs an infinite number of pliés in his or her lifetime.  It is imperative that dancers be taught to perform them in ways that place as minimal strain and stress on the joints of the leg as possible.  By simply thinking of the exercise in a different way,  dancers can be taught to perform healthier pliés that keep their knees much much happier.

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