Indian Dance Technique

For me personally the facial mudras do not show strong elements of Bartenieff fundamental connections; however we have to practice these as they are an essential part of Indian dance technique. Whilst the dancers are sat performing the facial mudra’s they still have to concentrate on their posture. The posture is the same as when dancing and this posture is also known as the pelvis tilt.

The English translation of the name for this posture is ‘the application of breath to the spine’. This could still be seen as a head tail connection through the spine however the spine is in a ‘C’ shape position not a long reaching spine which we usually use in the release technique. This feels out of position and I don’t feel as tall in comparison to when I have a straight lengthening spine. In order for me to still feel this connection within the pelvis tilt I think consciously about unzipping my core but still reaching up out of my head. I then found that I could still have a lengthening spine and an opening chest whilst arching my lower back. Through finding this I felt the connections through my upper body growing into space.

Previous somatic awareness can still be applied to Indian dance technique within the performance of the Nattavadue. The use of breath is important whilst performing this sequence because it is a long piece therefore incorrect breathing will lead to fatigue resulting in less aesthetic movement material. Breathing into movement helped me to find extensions within the space, remembering the importance of breathe also helped me to retain the correct posture throughout my practice. Breathing helped me focus on muscle memory within Indian dance, muscle memory is essential because there’s so much to remember and the movement to remember is unnatural for our bodies.

The core-distal connection focuses on the connection of the inner core muscles with the hands, feet, head and tail. I believe that the Nattavadue shows this connection strongly because the position the body is in for the most of the technique is …

When the body is in this position I can feel a very strong core-distal connection because my hands and feet are reaching away in opposition to one another and my head and tail are also doing the same even though there is a curve in the spine. As all of my limbs are reaching away I can feel the reach coming from my core because the reach fills the space more by using the core securing this strong core distal connection.

The head tail connectivity phrase was discovered in a lot of detail within today’s practice. “The concept that the head and tail are in a constant and always changing interactive relationship is often the single most important realization that a student of movement may have” (Hackney, 2003, 93). The quality of the movement was discovered through applying attention to detail. The reaching through the head looked a lot clearer and this made the dancers lengthen through their whole body keeping the correct posture. I came to realize that I had to focus on my head and tail together not one and then the other. When I was just focusing on pulling through my head I forgot about my tailbone and the connectivity within my spine was lost through arching within the lower spine. “One does not ‘fix’ alignment by making an adjustment only in the head or in the tail. The two are in a relationship and the whole spine is involved” (Hackney, 2003, 105). Discovering this connection every session was making me feel more confident within my dancing. The head tail connection is essential to the pieces for our assessment because there are many movements, which suspend pulling from the head to tail lengthening each vertebra. The head tail connection is a Bartenieff fundamental which is a “movement techniques that focus upon achieving comfort and ease in the body including smooth flow and improved coordination” (connectedmovement, 2014).

In order to have a strong head to tail connection a strong core is essential. For the last two years we have been working on a strong core by learning to squeeze our abs and feel like a zip is pulling our torso upwards. I think this has really helped us all to find our head and tail connection.

One of the phrases we practice is named the ‘body-half connectivity phrase’, within this phrase we have to focus on the right and the left sides of the body in contrast to eachother. There is one movement within this phrase called the robot, we have to alternate our arms in oposition to eachother whilst moving our legs in different positions, this helped me to learn to co-ordinate my body through the body-half connections. I found this the easiest connection in comparison to all of the others and found it interesting and fun to practice. I found that it used my brain more than my body through strong concentration.

Bibliography:

Connectedmovement (2014), Bartenieff Fundamentals. [online] Available from http://connectedmovement.com/Bartenieff%20Fundamentals.html [Accessed 18 March 2014].

Hackney, P. (2003) Making Connections: Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff Fundamentals. London: Routledge.

This week we did the class back to front and started with the material that we finished with last week. This made my body feel much warmer and helped me to get into the sequences that we started with previously. The focus of folding into the arms ensured a reach from my head to tail and also helped my body soften into the floor and pour through the ground. I found that bending the legs through the use of the upper lower bodily connections made the lower sections a lot juicier and this resulted in my movement feeling far clearer and exciting. The continuity of the given phrase was a bit stop start therefore we worked to connect the phrase and work with momentum. I found that whilst using momentum I had to feel and see the space in order to create a continuous phrase. Once the phrase was continuous I could perform it to a better ability and I felt juicy within the choreography. I could feel the change in high to low levels and the transitions between the two now felt clearer and looked more interesting.

I focused on my feet as a rule for today’s class. I did this to improve my grounding and release technique. I ensured my feet were active by pressing through the floor at all times. Through spreading all of my toes I could use the push from the floor to get deeper into the movement and this also helped me to spin faster helping the landing of my spins. With the spins I used my head to reach up and out to feel the connection within my spine. My spine was lengthening and my head and eyes were seeing where I wanted to end up in space.

The use of sound and breath in todays class showed so many improvements in mine and everyone else’s dancing. I could see people expanding in their chests which resulted in lengthening through their backspace from the use of deep breath. This showed a strong application of somatics to release dance technique. The movement that was performed without breath/sound looked and felt a lot smaller, whereas when sound and breath was used the movement eat the space and looked and felt free not stiff and placed.

Through this semesters focus on applying somatic principles to dance technique I am feeling a strong journey. I can see how I have changed as a dancer. I am now more concerned as to how a movement feels rather than what it looks like through sesnsing the connections within my body. Using the correct posture along with many other techniques has led to juicer dancing which fills the space with strong bodily connections.

Indian Dance

The starting point of today’s class was mudra’s. A mudra is “any of various similar gestures used in India’s classical dancing to represent specific feelings” (Dictionary.com, 2014). The first mudra studied was the isolations of the eyebrows performed in four speeds.

This mudra felt the most natural and the easiest of all the mudra’s and I noticed that an upward focus helped me to perform this mudra.

The second mudra we focused on was the bottom eyelid mudra and this was performed in three speeds. I personally liked this mudra also even though the rest of the class really disliked it but I still found isolating the bottom eye lid pretty simple although I discovered that I was twitching my nose at the same time as my bottom eyelids therefore this was not a complete isolation. In order to refrain from twitching my nose at the same time i slowed down the mudra and really concentrated on the isolation before speeding it up. The third mudra was the frowny lip, also performed in three speeds. In order to complete this mudra correctly it was essential to make sure the lips do not pout they simply pull down the bottom lip into a frowning position. This movement initiated from a pouting movement and felt comical to perform.  These mudra’s were then applied through mudra emotion to mudra sentences. The first sentence was ‘I request some food’. To these mudra sentences we had to apply ‘real sad emotion’ I found this very difficult to be sad when I actually wasn’t feeling sad deep down. I discovered that this emotion was shown strongly through the eyes. The mudra sentences have to come from the stomach within a deep sensation to get the full effect and meaning.

The indian name for our dance is Bharatanatyam and the Indian word for the fast dance in which we perform is a Nattadavu. We had dance phrases of 8 stages and 2 speeds for each phrase all linked into one big dance piece for the assessment. Whilst performing this sequence our hand had to be in the position (mudra) called tri-pataka.

I really enjoyed performing this sequence including a wide range of Indian dance movement. The phrase starts really simple however it builds up to one completed long phrase. The phrase includes lots of stamps and mudra’s of the hands. The movement is initiated from a very important posture, which is the completely “stereotypically” incorrect in terms of contemporary dance and somatic posture. This posture disconnected my head and tail because we had to arch our backs, which disturbs the connection sticking out the chest and bottom. My aim for the next practice was to find the connection between my head and tail and hands and feet with the correct Indian dance posture. I noticed that my body was confused in this posture, as it’s not the posture that has been drilled into my body for the last two years. This resulted in strong back pain after the class. The Nattadavu movements reached directly into the space making me feel the first sighs of core distal connections which i planned to make stronger in the next class. I could particularly feel no connection when there was a fast plié in the sequence, I really tried to lengthen from my tail and reach out of my skull to make me feel height within my body but i still could not find a connection in this part of the routine as i was definately leaning too far forwards. There is a video showing the movements of the nattadavu which i found very helpful in learning the correct postures for my steps, this video also helped me with the timing and the indian namings of the phrases. (Youtube, 2013)

Bibliography:

Natyakriya (2013) Nattadavu Steps 1, 2. [online] Available from http://www.natyakriya.com/2013/09/nattadavu-steps-1-2-bharatanatyam-adavu.html [Accessed 17 March 2014].

Dictionary.com, (2014) mudra. [online] Available from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mudra [Accessed 13 March 2014].

Youtube (2013) Nattadavu Steps 1&2. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3jjc4hQ-lg [Accesed 17 March 2014].

After warming up we discovered the head, tail connectivity phrase.

This photo shows the long line between the head and tail. Within this phrase there were many movements shaping the spine into different positions. Throughout the sequence we had to focus on lengthening from the tail to the head. When I firstly performed the movement my head to tail connection wasn’t strong therefore we got into pairs to help each other find the senses when your tail was being physically pushed. This really helped me because I felt where my movement should be initiating. When my partner was giving me a push through my tail to help to feel the connection it helped me to travel me through space showing me that moving from your tail gives your more speed and momentum in a dance phrase.

The second sequence was the ‘upper lower’ phrase (can also be named the Homologous connection). Within this phrase the focus was going up and coming down finding high and low space within the body. The upper and lower body connections make you think about your two halfs of your body working in opposition to one another, these were discovered when performing this phrase.

This phrase made me feel not only space within my body but also the space within the room. My body felt open and the use of breath aided me to feel my backspace. This enhanced my low and high parts of the sequence. I struggled to soften into the floor in this sequence because the transitions were really quick therefore I found myself just throwing myself at the ground. In order to help me soften into the ground I made sure I had active hands and feet and thought about the movement before diving into it. Using active hands and feet made me feel more dainty and delicate within my dancing and it definately reduced the amount of crashing and banging to the floor, i used strong pushes through my legs and active feet to help me feel my way up from the floor so i didn’t then need to use my hands to help me.

The third sequence we focused on was ‘the half body’ phrase.

This sequence is made to make us coordinate our bodies and most of the movement was performed on a high level with isolation movements of the arms and rib cage. All of the movement initiated from the top of the body and i felt myself getting taller throughout performing this phrase. The phrase included switching of directions and speeds to provide dynamics and travelling pathways.

The last phrase was my favorite and it was called ‘the cross lateral’ connectivity phrase.

I did some research on the cross lateral connection as i find it very interesting and found  quote which really summed it up for me… “The more closely we consider the elaborate interplay of brain and body, the more clearly one compelling theme emerges:  Movement is essential to learning.  Movement awakens and activates many of our mental capacities.” (ateachermom, 2013). Through performing this phrase I could really play with the use of dynamics because within the choreography there was many pauses, slow & suspended moments and fast and strong moments however these were not set so we could choose the dynamics we wanted.

Bibliography:

ateachermom (2013) The Connection Between The Brain And Body. [online] Available from http://www.ateachermom.com/2013/01/12/the-connection-between-brain-and-body/ [Accesed 11 May 2014]