Knees

Problems with knees usually aren’t problems with knees at all, but problems at the ankle or at the hip socket. Knees are actually pretty free formed joints, just like two bones in proximity to each other. No boney restrictions or muscular restrictions, but the combination of 6 ligaments restrict it’s movement to just bending in one direction, and once bent, some rotation. Knees tend to be high indicator joints, they are the points where pain tends to show up first, because they are so restricted in movement. The problem though isn’t at the knees, it’s at the surrounding joints – the ankle and the hip socket. Both the hip socket and the ankle have a huge range of motion, and if they aren’t held stiff with too much tension and they can move freely, then their movement takes all the stress out of knee joint.

Mobility

People have natural mobility in the ankle and hip socket, but if they don’t use it, or train themselves to force things too much the joint will get immobile. (One of those reason why people should avoid those teachers that teach over forcing movements just to look good or fast). It takes practice for people to learn to allow movement at the joint and relax away from forcing action at the hip and ankle.

Getting mobility going at the ankle and hip allows for natural ease and grace in movement. It gets rid of most of the ever being off balance a dancer will feel. It allows for a huge amount adaptation when you’re dancing with a partner (especially when dancing close in Standard or Smooth). It allows you to move around your center and adapt and change shape while just standing on a single spot and not moving (all those wonderful juicy moves that Bob and Julia used to do? yeah, work on your ankles and hip-sockets to make that sort of stuff easy.) It allows for easy leading in Standard from the body, and that nice rolling through the feet action that is needed to make Slow Foxtrot so slow.

Exercise 1 : Loosening the ankle

Lift one leg (you could be standing, sitting, laying down, doesn’t matter) and with the free leg make circles with the foot. Try to get as far around as you can – explore the full range of motion. Ready for a little change? A little more challenge? Trace the letters of the alphabet with your foot.

Exercise 2 : Plié (Squat)

Stand (could be feet/heels together -- “first position” or feet shoulder width apart -- “second position” do a few of both) and bend your knees and lower. Take a look down as you lower, does your knee track in the same direction of your foot easily? Does it track to the inside (very common)? or track to the outside? If your knee doesn’t track in the line of your foot, you have a tight hip socket or ankle – you needed this lesson! :)

When you lower, does your heel come off the ground? How far can you lower while keeping your heel on the ground? This insures that your working bend at the ankle – that’s the mobility we want to improve. Do several plié’s, only go as far as you can keep your heel on the ground – this isn’t a contest, you don’t get a prize for going lower – you get a prize for working the right joint – and that prize is better health. Pass go, collect $200, get better balance and grace, and reduce the chance of injury for your knee for the rest of your life.

When you lower, do you stick your butt out to the back? Do you tilt it up forward to the sky? Try to lower keeping your hips going straight down without tilting, so that your spine keeps it’s nice natural curve in the lumbar region. Like keeping the heel on the ground assures movement at the ankle, keeping the hips inline assures movement at the hip-socket.

(Plié from the french plier – to bend)

Exercise 3: Knee circles

You can find versions of this exercise in everything from gymnastics, to yoga, to gyrotonics, to ballroom, to whatever. Stand in a slight plie (with some bend in your knees) and make circles with your knees. Go clockwise, counter-clockwise, both knees in the same direction, go in opposite direction. Although the knees are the things moving though space you want to try to get most of the action happening at the ankles and hips – the knees won’t really be doing any work when you’re doing it right.

 

Remember, relax, have fun, learn to enjoy the movement and not force it. Here’s to happy knees!

Performance Anxiety

How do you feel about performance? Many people have performance anxiety. Some studies put it as the number one fear of Americans. I remember seeing one of the last competitions one of my coaches did and the absolute fear and horror on his face. I personally never really had a problem with it, I’m kind of a ham. It wasn’t until I had a couple of students that had a big fear of performance that I started researching it a bit more. What is it? Why do people have it? What can you do about it?

I often try to find someone who has dealt with this issue before to learn from. Who deals with this the best? Dancers and dance teachers as a whole tend to ignore the situation. Although this has some merit in that by shrugging it off, as if it’s no big deal, that people will just relax about it. But that doesn’t work. Actors deal with performance anxiety the most, they’ve done the most research about it, they’re written about it the most, they talk about it the most. I remember reading an actress’s account of starting to learn to dance, and she was amazed at the total lack of dealing with the issue. That dancer’s just tried to ignore the problem.

What can we learn from theater? What makes it different?

Teaching Focus

When I first started taking acting lessons, it was a shock as to the completely different focus they had from dance lessons. In dance lessons there is perhaps an over concern and value placed on technique. And on a very extreme end taught very much in a right wrong perspective on technique. In acting classes the focus is on a different set of things. It’s on the individuality of the person, and on feedback, positive feedback about how the person is presenting themselves.

Now if you are worried about everything being right or wrong, where is your concern directed? What are the consequences of doing something wrong? Of course you’re going to get tense performing with that kind of focus. Of course you get tense and since a large part of good dance technique is about being able to relax muscles, well there goes half your technique out the window. You’ll probably even feel worse then!

Uniqueness

What if your focus and goal is on something else? What if it’s about showing your uniqueness, your individuality? Then perhaps making mistakes just shows humanity. It shows willingness taking risks. It shows courage.

Think about why you go to watch other people perform, whether it’s dance, music, comedy, or theater. Do you really go to see them to see how perfectly they can do it? Do you go to dance competitions to say, “Oh they did that Natural Turn so perfectly!” (If you do you’re probably fooling yourself). Aren’t you actually more paying attention to HOW they did their Natural Turn? Aren’t you actually fascinated that all of the top couples do it slightly differently? That the best couples do it differently every single time they do it.

When you watch performers aren’t you actually fascinated by the fact that they are all at different levels? Doesn’t it make it more valuable to actually watch one performer at one level and another performer at a different level? I personally love going to the comedy club. A popular format is having 3 different performers. One local, one regional, one national, each at different levels and abilities, all in one night, one after the other. You can really learn about what is comedy, what are the components about it, what makes the good stuff good.

Don’t you want to see people at different levels? I can’t tell you how many times after doing a showcase that the people that inspire others to dance the most are the beginners? “Oh! I think I could do that.”

Extraordinary

People have ordinary lives. They get up they go to work, they come home, they eat food, they sleep. It’s practical. We have to do that. We train our children not to be way overly emotional or crazy – and that’s healthy. We need that to deal with the world as it is now. If the building is burning, we don’t have time to worry about how we feel about it right now, we need to get out of the building.

But we are emotional beings. We have feelings, we feel sad, happy, angry, disgusted, surprised, have contempt, and have fear. These things are hardwired into us (check out the book Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman). When we go to see people perform we go to see something out of the ordinary – something extra ordinary – people expressing themselves. Allowing us as audience members for a moment to dance with the dancer on stage, be in the position of the actor in the play, be connected to the comedian. To live vicariously through them. To allow all the emotions that we want to express so badly to be expressed through them.

When we perform, if we’re not concerned and distracted by getting it right or wrong, we can express. We can be a vehicle for people to be expressed. In a way we can allow the audience a small amount of healing the pain of not being able to express in our overly practical world. Performance can actually be one of the best gifts we can give to our fellow human being.

I find that perspective, that performance is a gift and not a fear of judgement, is the key to dissolving performance anxiety. But it takes practice and an approach to teaching to make it happen.

Play to Win

Not the cliché, narrow, meaning of that title, to go all out in a performance or game, but a double meaning. Play as in fun, as playing a game, as if a kid. Winning as in the big picture, winning in life.

Engagement

We all seek engagement. Of being wrapped up in something, totally involved. We crave it for work, hobbies, the entertainment we watch, whether it’s dance, theater, movies, or tv. We crave it in our conversations and relationships. In what areas of your life are you engaged? How do you get more engaged in something? What is it that causes engagement? How can you have more of it?

Puritan Work Ethic

American society has a mis-concept about work and work ethic. There is this idea that you must be “serious” about your work. That you have to work hard to get somewhere, that it can’t be fun. (Students fall for this all the time -- “oh that teacher is better, because he is tough and gives a lot of correction, it’s hard work.” and the teacher having a ton of fun or taking it easy isn’t considered good.) But most of modern psychology (from “A Theory of Game Design” by Raph Koster, to “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, to “Drive” by Daniel Pink, and many others) points to the opposite. Fun and play is the path to mastery.

Games

How can you turn what you are doing at any point in time into a game? Kids are great at this. Kids are naturally engaged and excited and all about having fun. We need to keep that into adulthood, and bring it back to our lives when it’s missing.

If you’re teaching a class, don’t correct people just to correct them like some right or wrong thing. That will just make it no fun. But engage them. Make it a game. “oo! Go faster”, or “good, now stronger”, or “now softer”. Challenge your students. Play with them. Become a kid again.

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is this super bright awesome psychology professor who’s done a ton of research and written a ton of different books about the positive aspects of psychology from creativity to flow. Flow is that totally engaged state. The state where you’re active in doing whatever you’re doing, totally absorbed into it. Time can pass super slow in it, and it can pass incredibly fast in it.

How do you get to flow more often? One of the essential elements of flow is a balance between the challenge of the task and the ability of the person. Too challenging and the person will give up, too easy and the person will be bored. If you’re writing a computer game you want it to start out easy, but not too easy. As they play longer, it gets tougher. Good teachers balance this very well in students. Give just enough feedback, but not too much, sense how the student responds, adapt, adjust, find their level and get them engaged.

On your own if you are doing something, adapt your goals in the moment to make the balance right for you. If you have a huge task, break it down, don’t try to do it all, choose a easier version of it at first, or break it up into a smaller part. Learn to develop this skill in itself.

Go

Go out and try it out. There is no reason why not to learn to be totally engaged and live fully in everything you do. Some would say this is the truest development of self, what you were born to do in the first place, it just got lost along the way.