Amanda Britton
Somatics and Dance: Obvious Partners?
For the last ten years, my aim as a dance teacher has been to formulate a methodology and structure for a dance class, active enough to allow the student to develop the necessary aesthetic, strength and fitness required of a professional dancer, yet simultaneously promoting a heightened sense of awareness, which may help the dancer to feel at the centre of, and in control of, their own learning process. It is my belief that all too often a dancer may feel dictated to by outside forces beyond their control: the teacher, the requirements and restrictions of the choreography, the company director. It is easy to become removed from the process: the mind and the body somehow separate. On one hand a dancer's individuality and creativity are actively encouraged, on the other hand they may feel suppressed by the constant need to strive for a certain aesthetic (by a particular count in the music), and also by the perceived need to please those in authority.
The field of Somatics deals with our personal experience of the world, and how this defines and changes both external form (through movement habits) and internal thought processes. How this differs from one person to another-from me to you- we can never really know, as of course we only have our own experience as reference. The habits we form as we grow and develop will affect every area of our lives: choice of career, relationships (with ourselves and others), how we go about our daily business. Somatic techniques, such as Alexander or Feldenkrais methods, place sensation before form in an effort to purify the mind-body connection, and to eliminate unwanted 'noise' in the neuromuscular system. Somatic practices rely on proprioception: that is, the feedback through the nervous system from the body to the brain, which provides vital information about the whereabouts of the body in space, and sensation of the body in movement.
All movement is initiated in the nervous system. At birth, a relatively simple nervous system fulfils the most basic needs of the human baby. Gradually through recognised developmental patterns, feedback from the proprioceptors to the motor cortex of the brain allows the infant to develop an increasingly versatile repertoire of movements. New neural networks develop as demands become greater, extending movement capabilities. Thus, through repetition and perfection of increasingly complex movement, the ballet dancer or the concert pianist is able to refine a virtuosic display, and perform this virtually without thinking about it.
These neuromuscular patterns become ingrained in our systems, and as we grow and mature we may develop habits which are less useful, or even physically damaging: our bodies may forget the ease and simplicity of the original patterns. In re-patterning techniques, these developmental patterns may be re-visited to return the body to its neutral state, and to underpin more complex movement patterns.
The process of dance training must necessarily build strength, specific co-ordinations, and artistic expression at one and the same time. However it seems that, the more movement becomes complex, the further away the dancer may be from their original simple movement patterns: neuromuscular connections established when they first started to move. At the same time the desire to dance with passion and commitment, and the need to please the teacher or choreographer may override the ability to actually sense movement. And, whereas sports training may hone an athlete down to one very specific single skill, in modern dance training we expect students to increase their movement range and possibilities exponentially. This would appear to necessitate an overall organisational feature: a sense of being 'at home' in the body- a place from which we venture, and to which we can return at times of rest or in times of stress.
Often the dancer may be highly self-critical of their (perceived) imperfections. If we can encourage the dancer to accept their body, with its own strengths and weaknesses, perhaps we may breed performers with an honest sense of their own potential, comfortable with and accepting of, who they are. The parallels between this theory and so-called 'student-centred learning' would seem obvious; in encouraging the dance student to feel the sensation of the body organising itself into movement, rather than making a shape that looks right in the mirror's reflection, perhaps they may also feel able to take more personal responsibility for their own learning, rather than relying on the positive feedback from the teacher.
My continuing research has led me to focus on the work of Irmgard Bartenieff, a dancer who trained with Laban, before becoming a physical therapist. During years of rehabilitating patients with both physical and psychological difficulties, her extensive teaching and research led to the foundation of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. I have found the direct application of this work has enabled students to clearly identify and connect with their own bodies at a deeper level, whilst they are actually learning and dancing movement material.
