Creativity

How is your creativity skill? Often in studies on people who are creative and those who are not creative one major difference stands out. The people who thought they were creative were and those that didn’t weren’t. But does that really help? I think not. (As one author put it, “TBU: True but useless”.) Let’s look at some basic concepts of creativity.

Phases

Researching a bit into different writing about creativity one of the things that comes up frequently is the idea of different phases of creativity. Most break this up into 3 or 4 different phases. I will break it up into three. First, a generation or creation phase. This is the phase were you create ideas, brainstorm, dream, or whatever you want to call it. The second phase is a phase of reducing. Here you trim down the number of options that you created in the first phase to a more limited or applicable set. In the third phase you take a single idea and refine it, manipulate it, modify it, and get it into an actual useable form of the idea.

Different fields and forms of art have different requirements to the balances of these three phases. Some are heavy on generating a lot of ideas (like graphic artists making a few hundred versions of a logo). Some are heavy on culling down the ideas (too many great things to do, not enough time, often computer programming is like that). Some are heavy on the editing/tweaking phase (dance can be a lot of that, acting can be that way, writing poetry can be that way).

Often I see the problem of people working in groups where they are not clear about what phase they are in at any one point in time. Ever been in a brainstorming group and as the others are throwing out one great idea after another and there’s someone there just saying, “no no no that won’t work”. That person is out of phase with the rest of the group.

Blocks

Creativity is one of those things (like enthusiasm, love, and sexuality) that people actually have an endless supply of but it’s their own internal blocks that prevent it from letting it be expressed. It is less a skill to build doing creativity, and more so a skill to build not blocking it from happening. We are a society that over trains ourselves for the single right answer. As the famous educator Neil Postman once said, “children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.”

Mind mapping (read Tony Buzan’s Mind Map book) is an excellent way to start to train people not to block their ideas. The idea is that you start with a central idea and expand from that. Adding relationships and associations as one builds out from the center. Try not to limit what you associate with the other ideas. If you thought of it, it’s valid, add it to the mind-map. Sometimes it might be funny, bazaar, wacky, odd, and every time it will be different, even if you started with the same word or center idea.

Criticism

We, as humans are actually really good at remembering things. Perhaps too good. And unfortunately too good at remembering criticisms. This is a huge block to creativity. I see a lot of teachers just blatantly criticize in their teaching. It’s true you need to give feedback to a student, but you have to make sure the student understands that it’s there for them to learn so they have more technical skill to accomplish more with technical ability and not less by restricting what they do. If you move with your leg and foot in this way, then you will be able to move faster, stronger, more expressive, etc. Not you must move your leg in this way because it’s right and that’s they way to do it, all other ways are wrong. And then wonder why your student is not expressive, they look dry and boring.

The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey is an excellent source of ways to teach to help students get rid of their inner critical voice and also how to teach to not put it there in the first place.

Group Think

Working in a group sometimes you can end up with less creative results than might be possible. If you do one of the classical exercises for brainstorming where people kind of free through ideas out into a pile one right after the other, maybe you have observed this. Our brains think associatively, one thought leads to another. As one person adds an idea to the group it steers the group. The group then ends up having a single conscience idea and not divergent ideas.

Tony Bazan noticed this and recommended a different approach to group creativity exercises. First start with each member of the group separate – on their own. Then working individually they all mind-map out their ideas. Only after they’ve come up with their own unique ideas they come back together and share their ideas. This simple change gets rid of a lot of the group think and results in more variation.

The Independence Factor

Are you given a lot of leeway in what you do? Are you closely monitored? Are you told every little detail of what to do? Most people thrive when they are given more space, when they are allowed to make their own mistakes, and try on their own to make things work. On the other side what often blocks us or prevents us from progressing on with what we need to do is just not knowing what to do.

So, where do you fall on this continuum? As a student, how much instruction do you need? how much freedom do you need? As a teacher, how much instruction do you give to your student? how much do they want? how much do they need? As a manager? As a business owner?

People tend to error a bit on the side of over instruction, over management, and not on the side of patience and giving space and time for the student/worker/friend/partner to experiment, to learn, to fix it themselves. I’m always annoyed by the student in class who feels obligated to tell the person they’re dancing with what to do. Or worse at a social dance. Or a spouse telling the other spouse what to do. Just chill out! Back off, and let the other one have some peace so they can think and learn.

As you get more experienced as a teacher/manager you get better as sensing just where people are, do they need more information, or do they need space?

In studios there can be a huge range of what studios offer for instruction for the teachers working there. Some provide excellent private lessons from other teachers for coaches coming in. On the flip side I’ve also heard horror stories of just instructors just being shacked up in a back room so they can watch dance videos.

At the first studio I worked at the owner was a nice guy, and fairly knowledgeable of dance and would give the other teachers free lessons. Unfortunately, he was an alcoholic. Often gone or just totally unreliable. One day one of the other instructors was complaining to me about the situation, about how he wished he could get more instruction. Now that struck a chord with me, I’m not one to just sit and complain, I’m someone of action. From that point forward I vowed to be personally responsible for my instruction, for my learning, for my growth in dancing. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

In the beginning it’s good to have guidance, to learn from others, to depend on them for your growth and development. But in the long run, I’ve always found that moving to your own independence is required to fully develop your dancing. There are teachers out there that will spoon feed you, even try to keep you as a forever student. I know, there’s some comfort in that. In our society we are kind of taught that the one who gives more information is the smarter one, and some students are seduced by that, but most of the time I’ve found that the quieter, softer spoken teacher is better.

In the long run I’ve always found it better to find the other teachers, the ones that push for your own independence. I push my own students for their independence. I’d rather have a equal, and someone that I can eventually learn from than a forever student.

Technique, Style, and Choreography

Often these ideas are collapsed into one idea or concept in dancing (it happens in other styles too, not just ballroom). I think it’s important to separate them out to really understand what is going on, and learn most effectively.

Technique

Technique is really the practice and training of proper, healthy movement. It’s about the quality of the movement. Common concepts in this are: moving from the center, alignment of the bones/joints, sequencing of movements, functions of joints, balance use of muscles, strength, and so on. At the base of it, the simplest level, it’s about health of the body and health of movement, moving up the challenge/skill level, it’s about speed, efficiency, grace, and power. This is all one continuum of range.

We all have an in built feeling for what is good movement. We can all see someone move and think, “oooo… ouch, I bet that hurts…” or “that doesn’t look comfortable”. And no matter what you have actually trained in dance, you’re probably right. Trust your instincts. We can also see the far range – we can look at an athlete and appreciate how wonderfully smooth, easy, and powerfully they move. It’s probably written into our DNA to recognize these things.

In ballroom dancing we have a book “The Technique of Ballroom Dancing”. Perhaps misleading though, because it’s not really technique at all, but really choreography. Yes, perhaps having written so many details about this step or that and by careful analysis and comparison of them all you could piece out some elements of technique. (And there are coaches out there that will teach just such analysis.) But in the end, this is not really technique, this is just the steps, and nothing can replace the value of simply training for good movement. In fact most of the details in the book will happen easily and without effort or stress if they are just done with good movement.

Hmmm… someone should come up with a systematic way of training good movement. Break things down to their fundamental movements – moving forward, backward, sideways, up, down, lifting the leg, lifting the arms, turning, jumping. Maybe someone could make a lot of money from that. Oh, wait, somebody already came up with that 300 years ago – it’s ballet and people don’t give it the credit that it’s due.

Style

Technique is how you do things for the health of your body – it is universal across different dance types (ballet, modern, ballroom) and movement types (martial arts, sports, yoga, pilates). Style is how you do things that don’t effect or compromise the technique. It can be about creating a feeling, personality, attitude, difference, or quality of being. Technique is just a tool to train and allow your body to do style and choreography.

How do you create a style? There are an infinite number of things the body can do but you can’t do all of them no matter how long your dance is. Why not choose just a particular set of things that you do movement-wise? It is in the choice that we create style.

Some people have created their style as unconscious choice. They perform certain sports, certain actions again and again. It’s not that some other choice would not be as technically correct, it’s just the way they do it. Some dance schools teach a specific set of exercises and in the same time that they might be teaching technique they also teach a specific style. Martha Graham is a style. Cuttingham is a style. Vaganova is a style.

Want to develop your style more (and your understanding of style)? A great exercise is to take a list of a variety of different movements. (Laban is great for this – read “Modern Educational Dance”. Or simply the list of dance positions out of the Latin “technique” book.) Cut the list in half. Then make a dance from what is remaining. Repeat again but do it from the half of the list that you cut. Repeat again with a different list.

Choreography

Choreography is the actual movement that is done. Put together in a combination over time. It is the complete piece or just parts. It relies on style to create differences across time. (How boring are those pieces that are too monotonic in style!) And relies on technique to make it first just comfortable to watch and secondly to allow it to be executed.

5 simple things beginners can do to move (and dance) better

We all have busy lives. There are some easy changes you can do to in your everyday life to make your dancing better without much effort.

1. Brush your teeth while standing on one foot.

Pretty easy really, in the morning stand on your right foot, in the evening stand on your left foot. Your body with automatically improve in it’s ability to balance. Time cost: zero, and you get a mini ballet lesson everyday (it’s like doing a basic form of tendu’s :) ).

2. When you walk down the street, walk with your feet parallel.

Roll through the foot so that your weight leaves the foot between the big and index toes. Too many people walk around with their feet turned out – an action that weakens your arch and is inefficient. Your foot is your lever arm to move your body relative to the ground. With feet parallel they are at their greatest length and thus the most powerful. (And yup, the main reason why ballet dancers dance with turn-out? to maximize efficient movement sideways – so they can stay facing the audience while they move across the floor).

3. Park on the far side of the parking lot.

Walking is a natural movement that balances the muscles in the body. Take half a minute to walk the extra 100 yards across the parking lot any time you can. It’s good for you.

4. If you have a desk job, get up and walk around more often.

Some fitness experts recommend every 20 minutes! You can set an alarm in Outlook to tell you to get up. Sitting all the time shortens the front muscle chain in the body. Notice all those people out there walking around with bad posture – with their heads sticking way forward of their bodies like a turtle? Shoulders all slumped forward to the front of the body? That’s a short front muscle chain. So, get up and go visit your coworkers, find out what they’re working on. It makes a better work environment.

5. Go barefoot at home.

As one dance teacher described it, when we are born our feet have as much dexterity and mobility as our hands, but we put our feet in these little leather coffins called shoes and they proceed to die for the rest of our lives. Did we evolve with shoes on our feet? Going barefoot allows our feet to waken up and move around more, all the small muscles in the feet can get exercise that they normally wouldn’t by wearing shoes.

Classic reward and punishment = FAIL

Classic ideas that we need to reward good things and punish bad things leads to improvement don’t really work. Extrinsic rewards are not the way for people to be motivated. People need to learn to intrinsically motivate themselves.

I used to like the word passion, but I don’t anymore. I like the word enthusiasm. Why? “Passion” comes from French meaning to suffer. People who have a “passion” for something suffer for it. How many people do you know suffer for their dancing? Enthusiasm comes from Greek-- “En” : inner or within and “theos” – god. Enthusiasm is channeling the inner god – your inner energy.

You want great dance students? Don’t reward or punish them. Teach them to motivate themselves.

Watch this great video on motivation:

As a great yogi once said, “the winds of enthusiasm are always blowing, one need only learn to open one’s sails and take flight”.

Appreciation Needs to be Taught

“That dress was aweful!”

“That singer isn’t any good”

“Their dancing is horrible”

or any number of the other caddy things students (or even teachers say). Is it wrong to have an option? no. But if it blinds you to not see the big picture then it’s a problem. If it prevents you from seeing what you can learn from these outside sources, what you can take from it, how it can improve your artistry, then it’s a problem. If it prevents you from enjoying your performance, then it’s a problem. If it prevents you from learning to do what you actually need to do, then it’s a problem.

Sadly with art being taught less and less in schools, people turn out more critical than ever. Art takes work. Learning art teaches appreciation.

Music

Often you’ll hear students complain that they don’t like one artist or another. They don’t like Britney Spears or Celine Dion or country music or hard rock or whatever. Often it has nothing to do with if the music is good or not but what they’ve been programmed by their piers to like or dislike, and it’s obvious. Do they understand what is going on in the music? no. Do they hear the layering, the editing that has gone into it, the production value, the rhythm patterns? no. And so can they dance the feeling of the music? no. Can they play with the music?

To truly dance to music you need to understand music. There are four major aspects to music: melody (pitch), rhythm (timing), dynamics (loudness), and timber (what instrument it is). Fred Astaire would say not to dance as a slave to the music, but dance as if you were another instrument accompanying the band. So at times you music go with it and times you must break from it.

Walter Laird would tell his students to “keep the music with you in a suitcase in your head”. I love that imagery. So beautiful. So wise. You must know the music enough in your head to recreate it, as if you were dancing to your own music all the time.

Do you listen to all the elements of the music? Do you dance with all of them? Do you play with them? Against them? Through them? Around them?

Costume

There’s a huge range of costumes out there on the dance floor. There’s an element of popular style that people follow from time to time, and thankfully still a good number of people that are brave enough to break the style, or push it.

I remember watching a competition and this girl had this really awesome dress on – neon bright, you couldn’t miss it on the floor, a very fun color. It had a ton of fringe so it really moved nice and showed her movement well. And a week later hearing some of my students just complaining horribly about it. And it was just out of spite and hate and not an ounce of appreciation. I felt ashamed of them being my students.

Go out there and wear wild costumes, be brave, have fun, be playful. If it’s not you and you don’t feel comfortable in it then don’t wear it. But if it’s wild and cool and exciting and bold, do it!

Dancing

Dancers watching other dancers can be so critical. Too critical. This is the most tragic loss. There’s something to learn from other people’s movement. Often it’s to the point that they don’t see the goodness out of someone else’s movement that they desperately need to add to their own movement, too their own performance.

One of the first coaches I had was very critical and taught that to his students. In a big way it was a big plus to him selling his own lessons – his students were all convinced he was the only one that could teach good dancing. Even when it was blatantly obvious to the non-brainwashed that the best dancers just didn’t dance like anything he said!

I am always amazed when ballroom dancers are hyper critical about ballet or modern -- “Oh I don’t what to do that, blah blah blah”. Or “oh I don’t like that abstract interpretive stuff”. It’s too bad because the average ballet or modern dancer learns to move in a couple years much better than the average ballroom dancer learns in 20 years.

I hate the phrase “no pain no gain”

At least when it comes to dancing. Dancing is not supposed to hurt! If it hurts you’re probably doing it wrong. Most of the technique is there mostly just to avoid injury (not to “look good” or “fit a style” but to avoid injury!). It’s so that you move well so that you can keep on dancing until your 80 or 90 or beyond.

That being said, it is important to understand that there are types of pain that are good and types of pain that are bad. As a dancer you will probably experience all of them at some point. You will grow familiar with them and understand which ones are signals to stop and which ones are signals to do more. And most of that is just listening to what your body is telling you.

Muscle soreness.

This is a good pain. It comes the day after you workout. Often comes more from the time when you workout after you haven’t worked out in a long time. And it’s often a signal more of the connective tissue needing to change than the muscle needing to change. You need to rest (roughly 48 hours for muscles) and give the muscle time to recover, then work it out again. It’ll most likely be gone the second day after you workout.

Muscle tightness or softness.

More often the tightness in our society but sometimes softness. Often accompanying muscle soreness, but not the actual muscle soreness. Again, it will come the day after you workout (or sometimes if you workout in the morning and sit for most of the day). Tightness usually implies the connective tissue needs to lengthen and loosen (more common in our society – we hold too much tension!). Softness implies the connective tissue needs to tighten (sometimes the case if you are adapting to a new sport you’ve never done before). This kind of pain can last much longer than 48 hours. You have to use a bit of good judgment – workout again, but if gets worse back off a bit. It can take several months for connective tissue to change.

Sharp, sudden, or pinching pain.

Bad. Very bad. Stop immediately. You’re probably doing something wrong. Check your technique. Goals are for opening up your joints, loosening them up, nice alignment of the bones, and increasing space in the joints. Lower the weight or stress you are working out with. Better to workout with less than to workout and cause an injury.

Muscle recovery.

A similar pain to muscle tightness, but different. It will feel like tightness in that it restricts the movement. General muscle tightness usually feels even across the muscle, muscle recovery feels more like there are just spots of the muscle that need pulling. Often muscle recovery pain was caused by some injury in the past, and you’re sort of re-straightening out the fibers. Muscle tightness was probably just caused by prolonged holding the muscle in a shortened position.