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Teaching Dancing with Ideokinetic Principles
By Drid Williams
University of Illinois Press
Copyright © 2011 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-07799-9
Chapter One
Beams of Light
Because I took courses in physiology and anatomy at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon, during the early forties, Dr. Sweigard said I could begin lessons with her after completing a single private course in bone anatomy with Dr. C. A. de Vere in New York City. I enrolled with him in 1957 and worked with him for six months. I started with Dr. Sweigard at the end of 1957 and continued with her for approximately a year and a half to two years.
Attending the lessons was difficult, because at the time, she was not teaching at Juilliard full-time; therefore she did not often come to New York. Most of the time, I traveled to her home north of New York City in Tomkins Cove. I had lessons with her more or less once a week for the first six months, and after that, roughly twice a month (every other week) for a year.
She visited my studio to watch me teach a dance class during the first month I was with her. That visit produced a lecture on the imagery I used in dance classes best described by saying that she went through the teaching imagery I used "like Sherman through Georgia." She was scathingly critical of nearly everything I said in dance classes, justifying her criticisms of my verbal performance by saying that many of the images I used were either anatomically incorrect or that they focused on the aesthetics of the dance form I was teaching, not on the body itself. She also said that the imagery I used was "unexamined—that is, I hadn't really thought it out, despite my anatomical training. She also said that the imagery I used in classes simply repeated what I heard in classes when I learned to dance.
It was from her criticisms of anatomically incorrect imagery that I first got the idea of separating two categories of images pertaining to dance classes, such as "anatomical" and "aesthetic." She was not prepared to tell me anything about what I shall hereafter call "dance imagery" (the aesthetic kind), because, she said, she knew nothing about dancing and was, frankly, not interested in it, except for working with dancers on their postural and mechanical problems.
Any anatomically based imagery I did use that alluded to bodily parts, such as "Keep your spine straight," "Point your toes," and the like, she totally destroyed by pointing out, for example, that what I meant by "Keep your spine straight" was "Keep your axis of gravity straight." She also pointed out that the toes themselves did not "point." The correct image pertains to the ankle joint in order to achieve plantar flexion of the foot. The ankle joint should be extended to the maximum possible, the toes themselves stretching out on a line and kept straight. There was to be no "clenching" of toes—a habit common among dancers and gymnasts that frequently requires extended retraining.
She was convinced that one of the basic problems for most dancers consisted of the fact that they had no idea where movements really come from in the body. They think in terms of generalities such as "hip," "thigh," "shoulder," and "back." They think of the outer contours of these bodily parts. Years later, after studying social anthropology, I discovered that dance teachers (in common with everyone) use a "social lexicon" of the body (see Appendix to this chapter, pages 18–20) that, for the teaching of movement, has substantial negative consequences.
Especially beginning dancers tend to think of the external shapes of their bodily parts such as "hip" instead of thinking in terms of the bony structures and connections in the body, say, "thigh joint," for instance, which locates the origin of most of the movements of the legs, or the "gleno-humeral joint," which locates the origin of nearly all arm movements. Rote learning of the anatomical terminology doesn't help. Learning anatomical terms should mean learning elements of functional anatomy that are important for the teaching of dancing.
To Sweigard, the basic problem with most dance teachers was that their use of imagery in classes was "received." They tend simply to repeat whatever they learned from whoever taught the classes they took, thus the usage of incorrect or distorted bodily imagery is transmitted from teacher to student, and has been for centuries. I do not exaggerate. According to Derek Lynham, Jean George Noverre was aware of such problems in the mid-seventeen-hundreds:
Granted that the would-be dancer is suited by nature to his profession, the first duty of the teacher is to study [the student's] physical conformation and his [or her] temperament and to instruct him [or her] accordingly. "There may be only one right principle to be taught, but is there only one way of demonstrating it and of imparting it to the students one undertakes to teach, and must one not of necessity lead them to the same end by different ways? I admit that in order to do so one must have real knowledge, for without thought and study it is impossible to apply given principles varied to suit different types of physical conformation and varying degrees of aptitude, for one cannot see at a glance what is convenient to one and cannot suit another, and one cannot vary one's classes in proportion to the variations which nature and habit, often more rebellious than nature, offer and present us.
"It is, therefore, left to the teacher to train each student in the style to which he is suited. It is not sufficient to possess a thorough knowledge of the art; it is also necessary to guard against vain pride which inclines each one to believe that his [or her] manner of execution is the one and only one which can please, for a teacher who always puts himself forward as a model of perfection and who endeavours but to make of his students a copy of which he himself is the good or bad original, will succeed in making tolerable dancers only when he meets with subjects gifted with the same disposition, height, conformation and intelligence as himself." (Noverre 1930[1760], cited in Lynham 1950: 138—italics added)
I ask readers' indulgence for the lengthy quotation: it may be the case that there are students nowadays who do not know who Noverre was. I am also aware that the world in which I grew up and learned to dance was very different from the one in which we now live; however, this quotation from a renowned teacher over two hundred and fifty years ago makes six important points:
1. Teachers are told to study students' physical conformations, that is, to understand their postural characteristics.
2. Teachers should find many different ways of teaching a right principle.
3. Noverre says that following his program of teaching requires real knowledge, and
4. Teachers must be clever, because they don't teach students individually—they teach groups of individuals.
5. Finally, teachers are responsible for teaching each student to the best of his or her ability, and
6. Teachers shouldn't be full of pride, believing that their manner of execution is perfect, secretly flattered when their students turn out looking like and dancing as they do.
Applications of Sweigard's Work
On the whole, my impression was (and still is) that Dr. Sweigard didn't think much of the plight of dancers in their quest for learning and/or excelling at some danced idiom, although I would not want this remark to be misconstrued. She was against any system of physical training, including gymnastics, military drill, or any form of dancing that proceeded from a "held" posture, a hyperextended chest or the "holding" of any set of muscles. Then, too, she didn't think much of how ballet and modern concert dancing were taught, even though she was allied with the Juilliard school. Insofar as I experienced her teaching, her entire focus was on the habitual posture of individuals in the constructive rest position, in a sitting position, in an ordinary standing position, and walking. These "postures" were of paramount importance to her:
... posture in the standing position is a dynamic phenomenon in which the amount and extent of muscle work, and the wear and tear on the skeletal framework and its joints and ligaments, depend largely on the efficiency of the neuromuscular coordination engaged habitually in maintaining upright balance. (Sweigard 1974: 174)
The posture with which an aspiring dancer started was the all-important factor. Many dance students and teachers found (and find) this principle unacceptable.
I had no argument with Sweigard's thesis, for I could see that improvement of the postural pattern of each individual student was the only way permanently to improve his or her dancing. However, I wanted to know what one taught with regard to teaching idioms of the dance, the nature of which often requires holding the body in various positions as part of the aesthetics of the dance form. Sweigard refused to discuss that kind of thing with me, thus I had to work out how to handle the problem on my own. I thought it was a pity that she didn't work more with dance teachers, for it is teachers who need to know that
To illustrate the ideokinetic power of imagination on subcortical planning of muscle action, visualize yourself growing tall and, in so doing, stand upright with greater ease. If you forcefully stretch up to make yourself taller, however, you will find your body taut and unyielding. In the former procedure, your muscles responded to subcortical directions, without interference of conditioned neuromuscular reflexes which may be inefficient. In the latter case, your consciously directed movement used established neuromuscular habit patterns which eliminated to a marked degree the possible influence of subcortical planning. (Sweigard 1974: 170—italics added)
Knowing this kind of thing—really understanding it—means that teachers will avoid using directions such as "Pull up," "Stretch up," and the like while teaching dance technique classes.
In my case, however, I didn't try to apply anything I learned from Sweigard during the first year I studied with her, apart from changes in the general bodily imagery I used in classes, such as "Keep your spine straight," or "Turn out your knees"—both of which are wrong—and any other images that used direct anatomical or bodily referents.
She was adamant that most neuromuscular reeducation had to take place on an individual level, and she warned that she didn't want to find out that I was teaching anything I learned from her on an individual basis. She threatened to terminate my classes with her if she got the idea that I was cheating. Over and over, she stressed the fact that my pattern of bodily problems was mine, and mine alone. As far as I know, the same held true for every individual with whom she worked. Even after I had passed the test, so to speak, I didn't incorporate any of what I learned from her as an individual into my classes. I will say that, apart from the generalized imagery regarding bodily parts described above, I devised a series of "techniques" (I can find no better word), usually given at the beginning of class, to get dancers to think about their bodies more effectively.
Procedures
For example, I would have the class sit on the floor, legs straight out in front of them, and then I would say, "Now, without moving your legs at all, turn out your feet." Of course this is impossible. Then I would say, "Turn out your knees." They couldn't do that, either. Next I would say, "Turn out your legs from your thigh joints." Of course they could do that, following which I would explain why this was anatomically true, hammering home the point that "turn-out" occurs only at the thigh joints. All the knees and feet are meant to do is to follow. As we all know, however, many dance teachers use the images of "turn out your feet" and "turn out your knees" in classes, but both images create misconceptions of how the body works and they reflect anatomical impossibilities.
In other words, there are ways in which the body moves that aspiring dancers (even professionals) simply don't know about, starting with the fact that knees and ankles have comparatively limited movements on their own. Most danced movements in any idiom of dancing come from the thigh joints. Similarly, elbows, wrists, and finger joints have comparatively limited movements (except in eastern dance forms such as Balinese and Javanese dancing and south Indian Bharatanatyam) in contrast to the gleno-humeral complex.
Mind you, none of this (effective as it was and still is, by those who use it), strictly speaking, is Sweigard's imagery, or her use of images to change the neuromuscular habits of individual bodies. I cannot stress that point too much.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Teaching Dancing with Ideokinetic Principles by Drid Williams Copyright © 2011 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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