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.

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.