Guerrilla Dance Practice Day 99 Function and Expression Having taken on the Laban theme of Exertion and Recuperation in my last post, today I’d like to write a tad on Function and Expression. Teaching Pilates and doing bodywork I focus mostly on function: I work with people’s alignment and connectivity. If movement patterning isn’t functioning optimally pain and degeneration will result. Restoring function by establishing new alignment pathways through movement exercises and touch can also facilitate expression. Today a client expressed that he had never felt himself move in the new way we were exploring—it was very exciting for him. He felt his relationship with the world change into a new expression of himself. Moving only from a functional perspective, particularly if there’s little about the experience that’s new, can be dull. For me expression is about relationship—and a movement is expressive for me when I create a relationship between parts of myself, myself and others, or myself and the environment. Leading from expression is common in ecstatic dance realms. Yet this can also become dull if the expressive stimulus isn’t changing. When I dance I particularly aim to bring function and expression together. Dancing with Hannah Ruth Brothers today in front of Simpatico Pilates and Gyrotonic Studio on Coast Village Road in Montecito was a wonderful combination of the two because we were in such a public place and focused on technical phrasework in our dancing. Our little dance formed in three parts over the course of an hour—first a slow standing warm up of weight shifts, then some torso movement and deeper hip flexion, and finally a little jumping. The timing of the movement shifted over our session, and with that, its expressive integration. We sang for each other as we watched and learned from our successes and mistakes. One of the hardest parts of technical dancing is that it’s difficult to be expressive if we can’t remember the movement. To do so requires practice. Finding time to practice is easier to manage if it can be after work in the median of Coast Village Road! Heres us: https://vimeo/108858573
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 03:55:52 +0000
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