Teaching Dancing with Ideokinetic Principles

Chapter 3. Baking Biscuits and Kinesthesia

Chapter 3 Baking Biscuits and Kinesthesia We start with the idea of an interface between ideokinesis and teaching dancing. For me, the diagram illustrates a personal choice: Teaching ballet and modern concert dancing Teaching kinesthetic awareness More important to realize, perhaps, is the fact that there are huge differences between teaching ideokinesis to nondancers and dancers. The area of overlap grows smaller for dancers because the aims and attitudes of serious dancers toward their bodies are in a class by themselves. On the whole, professional dancers are in a distinctly different social group that is defined by what they do. To a professional dancer, the body is an instrument or vehicle through which he or she produces the performances required to serve the repertoires of professional companies. Drawing 1. A Venn diagram conception of choice. There is an overlap that connects different fields of work, but the overlap is not the same as either of the fields of work concerned. i-xiv_1-130_Will.indd 37 7/8/11 12:28 PM Depending upon the idiom of dancing, ballet or modern concert dancers have developed higher ranges of flexibility of their joints and maximum amounts of strength, speed, and balance required to serve the needs of their chosen dance form. They do so in specific ways; for example, see Hart-Johnson ’s account of a Graham technique class (1997). Nondancers do not place comparable kinds of long-term, persistent demands upon their bodies that are common among professional dancers, champion ice-skaters, or Olympic gymnasts. I think it safe to say that the majority of nondancers simply want their bodies, movement-wise, to function normally, without pain, so that they can participate in everyday life easily and freely. In my view, Dr. Sweigard carried the notion of everyday movement to the level of an art, although she would never have admitted this, nor, I think, did she see herself doing anything of that kind. I often remember one of the times when I went to her house for a lesson, arriving to find her in her kitchen baking biscuits. The moves she used to accomplish this task became part of the lesson for that day. I watched her knead and roll the biscuit dough, reach for the knob on the electric stove that controlled the oven’s heat, and, later, kneel as she opened the oven door to place the unbaked biscuits into the oven. She stood by the kitchen sink, washing the bowls, utensils, and measuring cups she had used. Then, she removed her apron and sat in a kitchen chair talking to me while we waited for the biscuits to bake. The telephone rang during this time, so I saw her rise from her chair, walk to the telephone, answer it, and return to her chair. When the biscuits were done, we enjoyed them with butter and jam while the discussion of functional anatomy and body mechanics continued. Every move and postural detail imaginable connected with baking biscuits was noted by me and explained by her during our conversation over the kitchen table. I cannot overstress the fact that every move, every transition, every posture was gone through with the proverbial fine-tooth comb. Needless to say, perhaps, all moves that were required for the task were performed beautifully, although it would have embarrassed Dr. Sweigard if she had heard me say so, and she would have in no way conceived of what she did as a performance. Performing was for dancers, actors, and such—not for her! Dr. Sweigard moved superbly well, with more controlled energy and focus than I have ever seen before or since. She practiced everything she preached. She personified the kind of postural integrity and movement efficiency that she advocated. She was a living image of the realizable potential that one could achieve in ordinary, everyday movement. She had to be at least seventy years old when I knew her, but her posture and movements were those of a slender twenty-five-year-old woman, although she had gray hair and a few extra lines on her face. 38 chapter 3 i-xiv_1-130_Will.indd 38 7/8/11 12:28 PM I never doubted that she could have carried the movement she did into artistic forms of mime or dancing, but she was shocked at my once-only tentative suggestion about the subject. She was, in her words, “just an ordinary...