Dance

Please breathe

I think that breath is a fundamental part of movement that is often looked over in dance. I can not count how many times I have heard students and friends comment on how they forget to breathe while dancing. I had one dancer that would get athletic-induced asthma because she would hold her breath to dance; but she always was fine for 30 minutes on a treadmill.  

Breath is the fundamental process of life and movement. It might be surprising how much this one simple thing can affect one's dancing.

To get the point, breathing not only supplies oxygen, which is an obvious plus when dancing, it also helps to stabilize the core and allows muscles to relax after a contraction. 

Science...

Scientifically speaking Calcium is required to contract a muscle and ATP (Adenosine Tri Phosphate) is required to relax a muscle.  ATP is produced in more abundance with aerobic exercise due to the dramatic increase in Oxygen.  Anaerobic exercise produces 1/16 the ATP aerobic exercise produces.  

(Just to clear this up!) Dance is anaerobic.  

To increase your VO2 max (your body's ability to utilize Oxygen well) you need to do 20+ minutes of aerobic exercise (raise your heartbeat consistently the whole time...be careful if you are just starting) 3 time a week.

Another option is to practice your dance routines as if you are in a competition. Go through your entire first routine, wait 15 seconds, then the second routine, and so forth.  Check your competitions to see how many times you will dance and add one more round so that you become aerobically superior to the task.  If you are going to higher elevation add two or three more rounds to push your limits.  Always pay attention to your body in order to prevent renal failure.  If it seems like too much then you need to continue training to increase your ability to utilize oxygen.  Stretch afterward to protect yourself.

Using breath in core initiation

When inhaling, the muscles that are used help to align the posture of the neck and head, when exhaling it helps to engage the lower core muscles, such as the transverse abdominus, and helps to ground us. 

An important thing to note is that this will only really make a difference if the dancer is relaxed enough to allow the body to align itself. If the dancer is tight and holding themselves out of alignment the breathing process can only do so much. The dancer needs to relax as much as possible and only use the muscles absolutely necessary to the movement to experience the true aid of oxygen, and to achieve better movement overall for that matter.

A more technical and detailed explanation will probably follow in a later post or on the our website when it is finished, but if dancers remember to breathe when moving, they will experience more stability and freedom.

Kinesiology vs. imagery of dance instruction

It is interesting to see the transformation of our understanding increase. For the past two years we have been doing research on the kinesiological functions of the human body. We have tested different theories of spinal flexion, Psoas contraction and strengthening, and postural deviations.

Thanks to Kathleen Sheffield we have a phenomenal core isolating exercise with multiple variations that prepare muscles to better function while dancing. I have witnessed this muscle strengthened in students who had absolutely no clue what a center was and improved in students who had been working on it for years.

We took ballroom principles and specifically applied the core and spinal rotation. In a one week workshop, for only four hours a day, the students were already beginning to consistently produce advanced movement.

Most of these students were quick to listen and try out the movement. To our suprise the students who had done ballroom the longest struggled more than those who had never done it. Luckily, when they took the time to understand the principles they reached consistency more quickly.

After our first year of research I visited a competition where I saw an amazing dancer, that was visiting the area, giving a private lesson. I can only assume he was a professional due to the strict rules at the location we were visiting. I took a few minutes to note what he was teaching, what he was doing, and how the student was responding.

First he would give an instruction to initiate with the leg, then she would obey with less quickness than he desired, then he would demonstrate. I was more than shocked! He did what Brian and I teach. He grounded himself into the floor and initiated with his core which reverberated into his leg and created quick and direct movement to "strike the leg out" into place.  I realized that there is a need for how we teach initiation in order to bridge the gap from idea to action.

We hope that as we share anatomical and kinesiological knowledge we share with dance instructors and dancers an increased efficiency in producing correct movement will spread.

Where we base our instruction

We base our teaching in kinesiology, anatomy, movement analysis, and several posture and relaxation techniques such as Pilates, Alexander Method, Feldenkrais, and Structural. With this background we also teach movement training to other forms of dance, athletes, singers, actors, or anyone that moves. The instruction is based on principles of movement that create the foundation of stability, flexibility, strength and quickness.

We currently teach the "unteachables".  We also facilitate licensed massage therapy and kinesomatic programming.



Some of our greatest mentors are:

• Athletic Trainer, injury prevention & conditioning instructor: Ronald Nuttall
• Kinesiology Instructor: Pam Musil
• Dance Instructors: Kathleen Sheffield, Caroline Prohosky, Curt & Sharon Holman, Elaine Grenko, Brent Keck, Betsy Denney
• Pilates and Massage Instructor: Kathy Thomas, 
• Flexibility & and Nutrition: Three times olympic athlete Dr. Zanandrea