pilates

“Older Dancers”

May 7, 2013 by 4dancers

We are pleased to welcome back guest contributor Gigi Berardi, dance author and critic, who has written over 150 articles and reviews that have appeared in Dance Magazine, Dance International, The Los Angeles Times, among others. She is also a natural and social scientist currently on the faculty of Western Washington University.

Her academic and background and performing experiences allow her to combine her passion for both dance and science. Her fifth book, “Finding Balance: Fitness and Training for a Lifetime in Dance” is in it’s second printing, and is one I highly recommend especially for younger dancers. Gigi’s master degree thesis in dance, from UCLA, focused on older dancers who were able to continue dancing and performing well past the age when most have to retire because of injuries – i.e, what were they doing differently that kept them actively performing into their 50’s, 60’s,70’s? Her current book project is called “A Cultivated Life” — look for it soon!

– Jan Dunn, MS, Dance Wellness Editor

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by Gigi Berardi, MA

To be honest, I don’t like using the term, “older dancer” to describe dancers over 30 or 40 or 50. I’m not exactly sure why (it connotes “less than,” not as compelling?) – although I used it mightily in my Masters thesis at UCLA, developing “Case Studies of Older-aged Dancers and the Factors that Contribute to the Longevity of Their Performing Careers” (UCLA, 1989). But, the “older-aged” part now, for me, is about psychological and emotional staying power in dance, as I describe in “Bill Evans: “Changing the Body and the Geography of Modern Dance” (Dance Magazine, pages 38 – 43, October, 2003) and elsewhere, see: http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/gberardi/performing_articles.shtml.

It seems to me that for most dancers in their 40s and older, the important questions for them are, “do they feel like they can still do what they want to do in a particular role?” and “do they want to?”

Few dancers are being taken off the stage, fighting and kicking, and screaming “Nooooooo…” I think that what happens, over time, is more subtle (and, if you will, nefarious). They begin to have fewer opportunities for lead roles (for whatever reason, but I must say that audience demand for younger, thinner, and those more capable of dizzying pyrotechnics may comprise a sensibility that artistic director are particularly aware of). Further, past injuries may be catching up with them, other conditions in the work place may be undesirable (re: physical space, etc.), and they may have other personal constraints (wanting to raise a family, spending more time with their children) or financial ones (wanting to be financially solvent at the advanced age of 45, say).

From my perspective as a dance critic and using a lens of physicality, as a career progresses, it is nimbleness and stamina that seem to be on the wane. Strength and flexibility, emotional prowess, commitment to conditioning (for me right now, as a “mature” dancer, Thai kick boxing is my passion) and a diet high in good fats and low in sugar – all seem to characterize dancers with staying power. Nimbleness and stamina are the more illusive traits.

What to do, then, for a “lifetime in dance” (the subtitle of both editions of my Finding Balance book)?

feed that mind with good cholesterol and saturated fat (for more, see my forthcoming book, A Cultivated Life, 2014) that coat the myelin sheaths in and around and of all the parts of the central nervous system,
get some sun, which helps in all of the above,
find your passion in conditioning – martial arts or Franklin Method ©, or Pilates, or step aerobics, and above all,
keep dancing, which is the best way to build character and flexibility and strength and stamina in all that dancers do.

Or, dancers might want to look for a job in Europe where all (above) seems easier. See: “From Dance to Danse: Why so many American Dancers are Heading to Europe” (Dance Magazine, 2009, at website mentioned in this article).

Gigi Berardi holds a MA in dance from UCLA. Her academic background and performing experience allow her to combine her interests in the natural and social sciences with her passion for dance, as both critic and writer. Over 150 articles and reviews by Ms. Berardi have appeared in Dance Magazine, Dance International, the Los Angeles Times, the Anchorage Daily News, The Olympian, The Bellingham Herald, and scientific journals such as BioScience, Human Organization, and Ethics, Place, and Environment. Her total work numbers over 400 print and media pieces. Her public radio features (for KSKA, Anchorage) have been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Dance Critics Association, and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, as well as Book Review editor for The Journal of Dance Medicine & Science. A professor at Western Washington University, she received the university’s Diversity Achievement Award in 2004. Her fifth book, Finding Balance: Fitness and Training for a Lifetime in Dance, is in its second printing. Her current book project is titled A Cultivated Life.

Email: Gigi.Berardi@wwu.ed<mailto:Gigi.Berardi@wwu.edu>u

Website: http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/~gberardi and http://www.gigiberardi.com/

Blogs: http://blog.gigiberardi.com/ and http://resilientfarmsnourishingfoods.blogspot.com/

Competition Dance: Maximizing Peak Performance Part I

August 9, 2012 by 4dancers

This month’s guest contributor to the Dance Wellness column is Robin Kish, MS, MFA, who is on the dance faculty at Chapman University in Orange County, CA. She is a leader in the field of dance medicine, and is especially focused on competition dance.

Robin comes from that background herself, and most of the students she trains come from competition studios as well. Many of them graduate to teach in that same environment. Others have become professional dancers in shows such as “Wicked”, competed at the highest levels of “So You Think You Can Dance”, and joined such top notch companies as Momix.

Robin’s passion is to help competition dancers look for ways to be able to dance / compete / teach without feeling broken. We are so pleased she has joined us here on 4dancers.org, sharing information especially for this important segment of our dance community.

– Jan Dunn, Editor, Dance Wellness

by Robin Kish, MS, MFA

Olympians, professional athletes, and even collegiate athletic programs have something in common….they all provide a team of medical health professionals to promote wellness and maximize peak performance.

Where is there anything similar for competition dance?

Choreography, music, costumes, hair, make up, technique class and 100’s of hours of rehearsing make up the day to day life of young competition dancers. The bread and butter of private studios today are competition teams, with students ranging from ages 5-18.

Competition organizations have been around for a while, however; in the last decade the level and interest in competitions have reached an all-time high. In addition to the increased opportunities to compete, there is also a continuous stream of conventions and workshops available for dancers to take technique class and learn choreography from the latest and greatest artists. Reality TV shows such as “So You Think You Can Dance” and “America’s Best Dance Crew” have helped promote dance in the public arena. That said, the missing factor supporting a dancer’s longevity and maximal performance is wellness…i.e, what this column is all about!

Beyond the rhinestones and sequins, the most important instrument the dancer has is their body. The hours of hard work take a toll on the body and sensations of pain may increase; therefore, a decrease in performance may develop. Since the focus of training frequently is toward the final product and the tricks necessary to score big at each competition, dancers forget to listen to their bodies along the way. [Read more…]

Keeping Dancers Dancing: Outside Conditioning – GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS®

May 30, 2012 by 4dancers

by Jan Dunn, MS

Summer is almost here, and if you’re still a student, you’ll be out soon for summer break — and if you’re a professional dancer, you might have at least some time off over the coming months (hopefully!). In recent articles, we’ve been talking about the value of outside-of-class conditioning for dancers of all ages, to help your body stay in great shape for a long, healthy career. Summer is a good time to investigate different forms of outside conditioning that are beneficial for dancers (if you aren’t already doing some!).

The last article I posted on this topic was about Pilates –this time we’ll talk about GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® (G & G, we will call them, when talked about together), exercise forms which are not as well known / widespread as Pilates, but one which many dancers enjoy.

Juliu Horvath, the creator / founder of the system, is a Hungarian “man for all seasons” – a former professional ballet dancer, yogi, and wood sculptor, now in his 60’s. Like many people who went on to develop unique methods to address concerns about the body, Horvath suffered career-ending injuries while performing as a principal dancer with the Houston Ballet. He moved to the Virgin Islands to recover, and began an extensive study and practice of yoga. His experience and research led to developing the G & G system, He states:

“I discovered Kundalini energy through my pain and agony, and somehow that awakened me. Being awakened energetically means that you can read the movement when it is not a movement yet. You are like a little child who is totally unconscious and not prepared to make movement happen. Children move because something moves them from within.”

The G & G movement system gently works the joints and muscles of the body, using key principles which are found in many forms of movement, such as yoga, tai-chi, gymnastics, swimming – and dance. It is an undulating, rhythmic, circular movement form, which is one of the appeals to dancers.

Horvath’s aim is to take the body “beyond its current limitations”. The exercises strengthen, lengthen, and stretch muscles, stimulating the connective tissue around the joints – improving balance, flexibility, coordination, and strength.

The system has two components, mentioned earlier: [Read more…]

Keeping Dancers Dancing: Outside Conditioning — Pilates

May 4, 2012 by 4dancers

by Jan Dunn, MS

Last month we talked about what ”conditioning” means for a dancer, and why working on this important aspect of your dance life outside of class is so important. This month and next, I’ll give you some specific information on what forms of conditioning you might consider incorporating — if you aren’t already doing so!

Let’s start today with Pilates, something with which many dancers are already familiar.

Pilates has been in the dance world a long time, so most dancers have at least heard of it, even if they’ve not had personal experience. It is of course now very much part of today’s fitness world (and rehab) as well, but that’s only happened in the last 20 years.

History:

Joe Pilates was German-born, always interested in the body / exercise / helping people, and began developing his system during WWI, while living in Britain. He began working with injured soldiers, initially with floor exercises (“mat work”), and later using the springs on the beds as resistance (which evolved into the Reformer).

Joe immigrated to the USA in the 1920’s, settled in NYC, and with his wife Clara, set up a gym to begin teaching his developing work. During the 1930’s, his gym and the fledgling New York City Ballet were located in the same building, and dancers from the company began working with him. Joe himself was never a dancer, but that’s how the work came to be integrated into the dance community. Many dancers in the NYC area worked with Joe over the years, as they could see how much it benefited and helped their bodies and dance life.

Pilates 1 Duggan — Photo courtesy of Christopher Duggan

Pilates exercise (originally called “Contrology”) remained primarily in the NYC area for many years, until several of Joe’s dancer students who had trained with him moved to other parts of the country, and began teaching on their own. This first generation of teachers, now called “The Elders”, include people like Ron Fletcher, who recently passed away at the age of 90, and studied in NYC with Martha Graham. He moved to CA, opening a studio in Beverly Hills which catered to movie stars, and helped to popularize and spread Pilates on the West Coast.

There was also Eve Gentry, who studied and danced in NYC for many years, and was in Hanya Holm’s company. She settled in Sante Fe, NM, in the 1960’s, and began teaching both Pilates and dance. Over the years she produced many teachers of the next generation, who, like Fletcher’s students, helped the spread of Pilates all across the country.

There were other dancers among that first generation who became teachers, and slowly Pilates became known in other parts of the country. Today, almost 100 years since Joe first started developing his system during WWI, the work is taught and used world-wide, not only in dance, but in medicine / sports / fitness / geriatrics, etc. [Read more…]

Finding Balance: An Introduction

February 3, 2012 by 4dancers

Today I’d like to give a warm welcome to Emily Kate Long, 4dancers latest contributor. Emily Kate will be writing about “Finding Balance”…something every dancer struggles with in one form or another…

Balance is an integral part of dance: in technique, physical appearance, partnering, staging, casting, injury prevention…and on and on. Balance is what makes dance beautiful, and imbalance is often what keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, tense and excited. In our day-to-day, balance—or the lack of it—can provide comfort, frustration, boredom, serenity, or stress.

Physical imbalance reared its ugly head in my life throughout December and January. After nothing but Nutcracker for November and early December, three weeks of layoff seemed welcome at first. By about day four, though, I was longing for full days of rehearsal again! How was I supposed to keep myself in good shape while still allowing time for recovery?

Two months of promenades on my left leg had not only eaten through pair after pair of pointe shoes, but had also done noticeable damage to the muscles in my hip and calf on the left side. Prevention, correction, and maintenance all played a part in physically rebalancing my body before rehearsals started up again.

Pilates Reformer work was, and continues to be, a really effective way to maintain balance and alignment in my body. It was also useful as a preventive measure. My trainer and I had been working to stay on top of the one-sidedness of classical pas de deux work in weekly sessions during Nut rehearsals, so by the time the run of shows was over I had a repertoire of exercise remedies to practice with her and on my own.

A visit to the chiropractor kicked off the corrective steps. He’s always telling me to reverse one-sided choreography, even if that only means one time reversed for every ten times I dance it. I think there’s validity in that, though in a company of nine dancers with one full-size studio there is not always time or space (or, more often, quite enough self-motivation) to take on that extra project, however small. I did begin doing the left side first for class exercises during the layoff, which was an interesting and helpful experiment.

Long, busy days in the theater meant that I wasn’t able to stretch as much as I would have liked, and dancing on a hard stage meant that I needed it more than usual. So I ended up tighter in general, especially in my hips and lower back. Hot yoga was a nice fix for that. The heat allowed me to stretch more intensely, and the combination of turned-in work and plenty of twisting relieved a lot of the tension that had been living in my back and hips.

Maintenance, in addition to continued Pilates work, involved taking lots of time to do class on my own and really simplify things, going back to the basics and re-examining those steps for quirks that could lead to bigger problems later. I also indulged my love of running outdoors, something that I avoid during rehearsal weeks because of the impact.

Now that rehearsals are back in full swing things are starting to get crazy again—just the way I like them! Full days at the studio plus planning classes and choreography make me really appreciate any opportunity I can find for pastimes—currently, reading Jane Austen and Stephen Manes. But that’s fodder for another post!

BIO: Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007. She also has spent summers studying at Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive, Miami City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, and Ballet Chicago.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed the title role in Courtney Lyon’s Cinderella and the role of Clara in The Nutcracker. Prior to joining Ballet Quad Cities Ms Long performed with Milwaukee Ballet and MBII in Michael Pink’s The Nutcracker and Candide Overture, Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadére, Balanchine’s Who Cares?, Bournonville’s Flower Festival in Genzano and Napoli, and original contemporary and neoclassical works by Tom Teague, Denis Malinkine, Rolando Yanes, and Petr Zaharadnicek.

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