The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making

Day 20

Breath affects the phrasing and timing of movement and vocalization. It frames how one sees and hears these aspects of performance. In dance, breath motivates actions, gives accent and dynamic shaping, and creates intensity. Most important, breath is the oxygen source and energy fund underneath all movement. You can’t think or move clearly without adequate breath—it’s physiologically impossible. The body prioritizes oxygen over everything. Many dancers hold their breath, restricting movement and limiting expression. Perhaps the most effective way of improving stamina onstage while enhancing performative range is to clarify breathing habits. Breath patterns, governed by the breathing rhythmicity center in the brain stem (top of spinal cord), can be based on the mother’s breath rhythm in the womb, birth processes, or experiences and training techniques in your life. Each person has his or her unique breath rhythm, which may or may not be optimal. Yet breathing can be enhanced with awareness. Breath flow requires movement. Any restriction caused by muscular habits or clothing affects efficiency in breath. For dancers, this includes over-contraction of abdominal muscles, particularly the upper quadrant, which limits movement of the diaphragm. Trauma in particular, for example a fall, shock, or injury, can result in holding or even freezing the diaphragm. Muscle tension in shoulders, hips, and neck reduces oxygen flow to the periphery including the brain. Understanding the process of breathing encourages responsive muscle tone. Breath is an exchange with the environment. Oxygen (from plants) flows in air through the nose and mouth and down the trachea along the front of the neck. The trachea divides into two primary tubes (bronchi), leading to the five lobes of the lungs that fill the entire thorax along with the cradled heart. When signals come from the nervous system communicating that the body needs oxygen, the diaphragm and its stem—two crus muscles along the front of the lower spine—contract. As the diaphragm is pulled down (like a trampoline yielding), the ribs flare open (like an umbrella opening). The increase in space and volume creates a vacuum in the lungs, and air rushes in. When the lungs are filled, the crus and diaphragm release, and deoxygenated air is expelled from the lungs, sending carbon dioxide (necessary for photosynthesis in plants) into the atmosphere. When relaxed, the mushroom-shaped diaphragm arcs upward into the thorax, with the apex of the dome resting at about nipple height. The diaphragm attaches to the inside surface of the lower five ribs and sternum, with the stem continuing from the twelfth thoracic vertebra down the front of the lumbar spine. Like a drumhead, the diaphragm seals the cavity Breath and Voice Dynamics Onstage You can do anything with your voice as long as you have enough breath. —Alex Draper, rehearsal Day 20 Day 20: Breath and Voice • 155 Moving Your Mouth Dancers are trained to keep their mouths shut. My first performance using text was Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales—a feast of words inviting movement . We presented this mostly for children , and they let us know immediately what worked. Dancing and speaking the “gong was bombulating” made vocalization tasty and raucous; the children laughed, squiggled, and repeated the words. Becoming one of three small aunts who “sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers” changed my dancer’s body posture while performing, affecting both pitch and articulation. Rehearsals invited sensual sound, along with release of the underlying jaw tension, carefully cultivated through years of dance technique classes. Kristen Linklater ’s book Freeing the Natural Voice was the basis for our work: relaxing the jaw and letting the breath fall evenly in and out across our lips. Inviting sound without tightening any of the neck muscles, breath and voice become one. 156 • collaborating containing the lungs and heart, above, from the digestive and reproductive organs below. About 80 percent of efficient breathing comes from the downward movement of the diaphragm. Only 20 percent is derived from intercostal muscles (between the ribs) spreading the ribs and the scalene muscles (from neck to top ribs) lifting the two top ribs. Some dancers are reverse breathers, lifting the ribs up and keeping the belly flat, rather than descending the diaphragm down on the in-breath, massaging the digestive and reproductive organs. If oxygen reaches only the lungs, you die. Both lung and cellular breathing are essential. Two-thirds of lung volume is composed of blood...