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Appendix to Chapter 5 Accentuate the Positive . . . Perhaps few people today will remember an old popular song that began: “ACCEN -tu-ate the positive, E-LIM-in-ate the NEG-a-tive. . . DON’T MESS WITH MR. IN-BETWEEN,” but I recall these words well—though nothing beyond them has remained. Not only was the song in vogue when I began studying ballet in the early nineteenforties , it provided an idea about teaching that I never forgot. Although the songsource for the idea may seem trivial, the message it contains for the use of imagery by teachers of dancing is profound. Many teachers of dancing are guilty of a common error in using (more accurately, misusing) imagery in classrooms by constantly telling students what not to do instead of telling them what to do. My first ballet teacher was a shining example: looking back, I doubt that he ever gave a positive instruction when he taught dancing. To illustrate first with an example outside the dance classroom: suppose someone says to you, “Don’t think of the Empire State Building.” What are you thinking of—what is the mental picture created in your mind? A mental picture of the Empire State Building, of course! If (for whatever reason) that person doesn’t want you to think of the Empire State Building, the thing for him (or her) to do is to tell you to think of the Chrysler Building , the Rocky Mountains (or whatever) instead. This simple rule applies to any image pertaining to dance classes or dance performance whatsoever. Even at age thirteen, in beginning ballet classes, I found myself continually having to figure out what I was meant to do from that which I was told not to do! In dance classrooms, teachers often say, “Don’t bend your knees.” The image they instantaneously create in students’ minds is that of bent knees; thus the teacher’s use of imagery creates an image of the mistake. The image serves to deepen (not lessen) the student’s awareness of a specific blunder connected with a specified move, rather than heighten the student’s awareness of what it is that he or she is meant to do. If a dance teacher doesn’t want bent knees in a specific movement, then why doesn’t he or she say, “Straighten your knees”? Granting the fact that focus on the desired movement outcome (rather than the mistake) is difficult for the teacher to accomplish, especially if he or she has taught i-xiv_1-130_Will.indd 86 7/8/11 12:28 PM by means of negatives for years, it is nevertheless achievable. The effects of applying this simple rule throughout an entire class are often astonishing. The lesson here is that the use of imagery in dance classes has unambiguous negative (and possible positive) consequences. Thus we may say that images that are body-directed—that is, any image that names a bodily part, combined with a direction (as in the example above, knees and bend), should be stated in positive terms. That is, “Straighten your knees” instead of “Don’t bend your knees” “Eyes straight ahead” instead of “Don’t look at the mirror” “Push the floor down” instead of “Don’t lift yourself up” “Raise your arm shoulder height” instead of “Don’t raise your arm so high” “Bend forward from the thigh joints” instead of “Don’t bend from the waist” “Rotate thigh joints outward” instead of “Turn out your feet” “Extend your ankle” instead of “Point your toes” “Stretch your toes” instead of “Point your toes” This list could be extended ad infinitum. But someone says, “What about giving wrong directions positively?” Okay—to give a wrong direction positively is not good; that is, “Tuck your pelvis under” is a positive verbal language statement that creates an image of something teachers emphatically should not want their students to act upon or to perform. Here, the corrective isn’t quite so simple, but images that serve to lengthen the spine downward, or to direct the student’s attention toward widening the pelvis horizontally across the back, can serve to eliminate the image of tightened buttocks. The same can be said of “Turn out your feet” and “Turn out your knees”: here, the students’ attention should be focused on the thigh joints, not the feet or knees. Similarly , “Point your toes” needs positive focus on extending the ankle and/or stretching the toes. It is difficult to make general statements...

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