Spotting & Why It Works

"You have to trust your body to take care of you." - A.J. Langer

         

 Dancers are taught to “spot” at a young age.  Hours are spent teaching this concept, visual aids are hung in studios, and many theatres have a spotting light at the back of the theatre for dancers. 

Spotting involves staring at a fixed point while the body is turning to prevent dizziness and loss of balance.  Clearly, experienced dancers believe it is a valuable tool since it is passed on through instruction, and it must work since dancers performing multiple turns on stages are able to continue dancing without pausing to regain balance or falling over.  What are the physiological reasons that spotting works?

The body uses three systems to establish balance – the proprioceptive system, the visual system, and the vestibular system.  

Proprioception is the body’s awareness of its position and movement in space.  There are sensory receptors located in the body’s muscles, tendons and joints that respond to changes in pressure and send messages to the brain letting it know where the different parts of the body are and how they are moving in relation to other body parts. 

The visual system helps determine where the body is in space.  Within this system is the body’s optical righting reflex.  This reflex helps ensure that we remain upright by working to keep both eyes on the horizontal plane. 

            The vestibular system helps the body maintain balance through the anatomy of the inner ear.  This system gives the brain information about the body’s position during movement.  The ear canals are filled with fluid and lined with cilia, or tiny hairs, that are sensitive to the movement of the fluid.  When the position of the head shifts during movement, the cilia send signals to the brain to activate the muscles that keep the head vertical.

            When a dancer is turning, obviously the body’s position in space is constantly changing, and the proprioceptive system cannot be relied upon to help establish balance until the turn is perfected.  Once it is perfected, the body's "muscle memory" (you can read more about that here)   can aid in helping the body to sense that it is balanced.  In the meantime, the body must rely upon the visual and vestibular systems.  Both of these systems involve keeping the head in a constant position that is upright and on an even horizontal plane.

            Staring at a fixed point keeps the eyes focused on one image.  If a dancer were to simply look at everything around him or her while turning, the brain would definitely be confused by all the input, but that is only a part of the equation.

It is imperative that the head be kept in a steady, level position while turning to prevent dizziness from occurring and to prevent the body from trying to “save itself”.  When the head tilts too much to one side, the visual system senses the horizontal shift, and the vestibular system signals the brain to force the body to right itself.  When this occurs, the dancer will either begin to hop to save the turn or fall out of the turn in an effort to re-establish the body’s vertical position in space.  It is important that dancers be trained to simply turn their heads while spotting and to eliminate any tilting motions.  Waiting to quickly rotate the head back to the focal point until the last possible moment will also ensure that as little movement occurs as possible.  By adding these two concepts to the idea of staring at a focal point, dancers can improve their turning technique immensely.

Our bodies have mechanisms that are useful and necessary to provide equilibrium and keep us safe on a daily basis.  It is important for dancers to understand these mechanisms so that they do not fight against them but, instead, use them to their advantage to improve technique and promote safe, healthy dancing. 

Using Knowledge of the Body to Teach More Efficiently

            "Repetition is the mother of perfection.”

                                                                             ― Ryan Straten

            In my last post, Learning and Remembering Combinations, I wrote about how the body processes new sensory information and commits it to memory.  This information is both important and extremely useful to dance educators.  By understanding how students learn motor patterns and commit them to memory, dance educators can adapt their teaching methods to create more effective classes.

            When taught, a new exercise is first committed to short-term memory.  After several repetitions the neural pathway (the route the brain uses to communicate with the body) that is formed when a new exercise is learned becomes a well-travelled route, and this exercise is sent to the long-term memory.  Once it is stored in long-term memory the exercise can be accessed quickly and repeated on demand.

            This knowledge can be useful when planning classes.  Since exercises can easily be accessed once they are learned, it makes sense to work backwards when planning classes and teaching new choreography.  If an educator choreographs the combinations that will be taught in class first, then he or she can work backwards and break the combinations into individual segments or exercises.  These exercises can then be introduced to the students during warm-up, in simpler form, or in smaller pieces when travelling across the floor.  A particular arm pattern that will be used in the final combination may be incorporated into a plié or tendu exercise, while a particular step like a spiral fall to the floor can be taught as a transitional piece of a developpé exercise. 

            Additionally, a step that may be done in a circular pattern in the final combination can be taught simply moving forward as a transitional phrase.  Once the motor pathway is established, it will be easier to manipulate it spatially, adding direction or using it to create new pathways.

           

This same principle can be applied when teaching choreography.  Rather than starting at the beginning of a dance, it can be useful to choreograph the piece first and then break it down into sections.  It will be easier if everyone first learns unison sections, then different groups learn their particular sections, and then the different parts can be woven together to create the final dance.  Once the phrases are learned, they can be manipulated to face different directions, can be slowed down or sped up, can be used in cannons, or can be layered on top of each other.

By working in this manner, dance educators can use information about how the body operates to make class time and rehearsal hours more productive and teach in a way that enables dancers to learn more quickly and experience less frustration when learning new steps and/or choreography.

Learning & Remembering Combinations

            "It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory." -Martha Graham

Everyday dancers enter studios, watch a demonstration of an exercise or combination, are asked to learn it, and then must perform it in a matter of minutes.  Some dancers learn the combinations quickly and are able to execute them almost immediately, while others struggle to remember what comes next.  It may be helpful for dancers and dance educators to understand what is happening in the brain and how memory is developed, and then use this knowledge to improve upon this necessary skill.

            There are three steps that occur in the brain when something is being “remembered”.  First, sensory information is gathered through sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.  For dancers, combinations are seen, directions and counts are heard, and the movements are kinesthetically felt through touch sensors as the exercise is performed.  These sensory messages are sent along nerve pathways by neurotransmitters to the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for organizing and storing memories.  The hippocampus connects and consolidates all of the sensory input into a single experience so that a dancer can watch a plié being done, hear the word plié, feel what it is like to perform a plié and know that all of these sensory experiences relate to the same thing.

            After this connection is made, this experience becomes part of the short-term memory.  The short-term memory can only hold about 7 items at a time and can only store them for about 30 seconds.  However, each time a new experience is repeated, the 30-second time clock is reset, which is why repeating something to yourself over and over again is valuable.  The short-term memory is also capable of grouping several items into a chunk of information – a relevé can be simply registered as one item and not as a plié, a rise, and a plié, which would account for three different items to be remembered.  The short-term memory also makes connections between the new input and past memories, which is why a repeated dance step is recalled more easily, even if it is being performed in a different context.

            After several repetitions, the neural pathway (the route the brain uses to communicate with the body) that is formed when a new exercise is learned becomes a well-travelled route, and this exercise is sent to the long-term memory.  Long-term memory has an unlimited capacity and can hold a memory forever as long as it is accessed from time to time.  If a memory is not recalled, the neural pathway weakens over time, and the exercise may have to be reviewed.  The review would serve to reactivate the established pathway and would not take as long as the original learning process.

            It is important to remember that how a dancer pays attention when seeing a combination for the first time will influence what he or she is able to remember.  Unless a dancer is focused, the brain treats the demonstration as merely another thing happening around it that has little importance.

            It is also important to understand that trying to absorb too much sensory information at once can overload the brain and impair the memory process.  A dancer might try simply watching the combination the first time it is demonstrated, marking it while watching it the second time, and repeating some type of auditory clues such as step names or counts to him or herself while watching and doing it another time.

            Repetition will help to reinforce the neural pathway and cement the memory.  Dancers should also know that merely watching others perform the combination or envisioning themselves performing it after they have learned it will also strengthen the pathway as is discussed in my posts

Envisioning Sugarplums and What Good Will It Do To Watch Someone Else Dance My Part.

            Remembering combinations in class will always be easier for some than others, but understanding the process may help those who struggle with this skill to find ways to improve upon it.

Understanding Post Performance Letdown

            “Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it.”   ― Dorothy M. Neddermeyer

          Last week’s post, Understanding Performance Anxiety, discussed the body’s physiological reaction to performance stress that results in feeling of anxiety before the performance begins.  This week’s post will address the physiological changes that occur after the performance is over that often result in feelings of sadness or depression known as post performance letdown.

 

            Dancers spend months training and rehearsing for performances, and while they are in the throes of it, it seems like the rehearsals will never end, but they do.  Suddenly dancers’ bodies get a break, tired and achy muscles get to rest, schedules return to normal, and dancers can return to a life outside of the dark, windowless theaters.  Sighs of relief are audible but are often followed by something called the post performance letdown.  Dancers become acutely aware of lingering aches throughout the body, they have difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, and are often overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and/or symptoms of depression.

            Dancers spend months creating a work of art that disappears as soon as the costumes are packed, dance floors are removed, and props are struck from the theater stage.  No other production will ever be exactly the same.  Dance is ephemeral, and psychologically, dancers may be mourning this loss.  Their goals have been achieved, the roles are no longer theirs, and they no longer get to hear the positive feedback from applauding audiences.

            It will help dancers to know and understand that there are definite physiological reasons for these feelings as well.  During intense bouts of physical exercise, the body releases high levels of neurotransmitters, proteins, stress hormones, and endorphins.

            The increased amount of neurotransmitters helps carry messages quickly and efficiently from the muscles to the brain and back to the muscles along nerve pathways.  The neurotransmitters norepinephrine and serotonin increase heart rate and blood flow and have also been connected to improved moods.  The neurotransmitter dopamine also acts as an analgesic, relieving or dulling pain.

            The proteins that are released stimulate growth in the nervous system to help increase the body’s response time as well as provide for cell growth to keep the overworked muscles strong and functioning.

            Adrenaline and cortisol are stress hormones secreted by the adrenal glands.  Adrenaline increases the rate of heart contractions, which results in quicker blood flow throughout the body.  It also relaxes the bronchioles, or breathing tubes found in the lungs, to allow oxygen to pass into the blood and carbon dioxide to leave the blood faster.

Adrenaline also signals the pancreas to produce more insulin.  Insulin is what allows the muscles to use the glucose that is in the blood to create energy.   

            When cortisol is released, it signals the liver to start converting stored energy into glucose for the body to use.  Cortisol also diverts energy away from activities that are considered low priority during physical activity and redirects that energy toward the muscles.  Although adrenaline levels rise and fall quickly, cortisol levels rise gradually and return to normal very slowly.

            All of these physiological changes move the body into a hyper vigilant, excited, and blissful state.  When the production comes to an end, and the body’s state begins to return to normal, everything begins to slow down.  The heart rate decreases, blood flow slows, respiration returns to normal, and nerve and cell growth return to a normal pace.  The conversion of glucose to energy slows down, dopamine levels decrease so any muscle soreness or pain is no longer dulled, and the blissful state created by the released endorphins also disappears.  Since cortisol levels rise and fall slowly, elevated levels stay in the body for a longer period of time, and high levels of cortisol have been linked to symptoms of depression.

            It is helpful for dancers to know that post performance letdown is a very real phenomenon.  The feelings of sadness or depression that dancers may experience after a performance are simply a result of the physiological changes that occur as the body moves from a heightened, alert state to a normal one.  This bit of knowledge and simply understanding what is causing these extreme feelings can help dancers cope with post performance letdown.