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Nature, Grace, Flow & Play

March 8, 2021 by 4dancers

Early 20th Century Dancer Florence Fleming Noyes Takes a Somatic Approach

Noyes Dancer, scarf on rock
Noyes Dancer, Scarf on Rock, Courtesy of the Noyes Archive

by Nancy Wozny

I took the idea of staying home to include the home of my body, and the home of my dance life, which is based in Somatics.

Somatics, defined by Thomas Hanna in the 1970s, translates to an experience of the body from within, and is now an umbrella for an ever growing cluster of disciplines including: the Feldenkrais Method, Alexander Technique, Body-Mind Centering, Continuum Movement, The Franklin Method, and many more. Although we think of somatics as concerned with our inner sensations, it also emcompasses body mechanics, alignment, learning to be a more easeful mover, slowing down, and feeling more. 

During my pandemic adventures into the soma-sphere I moved in both directions in time, from studying with the new crop of dancing Feldenkrais teachers to exploring vintage somatic methods, such as Noyes Rhythm, a method, that chances are, you’ve never heard of. 

Relax, a few months back, I was right there with you. 

It was at a performance of Celebrating Isadora Duncan with Lori Belilove and Sara Mearns at  Virtual Jacob’s Pillow Festival on May 27 that reconnected me to my friend Meg Brooker, who had left Texas to become an Associate Professor at Middle Tennessee State University. 

I had some questions for Brooker about the Duncan technique after the show. She answered them in a generous email, and also invited me to her Duncan and Noyes Rhythm classes. 

I joined both classes. We are well acquainted with Isadora Duncan, as she was generously historicized by scholars and Hollywood. As for Noyes Rhythm founder, Florence Fleming Noyes, not so much; perhaps, not at all. I joined the Noyes Rhythm “recreation” class via Zoom knowing next to nothing.

Within days, I was soaring about in my cramped apartment, inspired by Brooker’s narrative of cloud formation, wistful breezes, unfurling leaves, and other elements of growth and shift in the natural world. 

I needed to know more.

Noyes Dancer with flowers
Noyes Dancer with Poppies, Courtesy of the Noyes Archive

Brooker also sent me her writings on Noyes (1871–1928), a leading figure in the free dance movement, often mistaken as a Duncan imitator. She describes Noyes Rhythm as “an early twentieth century somatic practice through which dancers increase the depth of their capacities for experiencing free, joyful, and expressive movement.”

As someone deeply invested in the entire continuum of body-mind based practices, the word “somatic” caught my eye. 

Quite the entrepreneur, Noyes founded the Noyes School of Rhythm in 1912 at Carnegie Hall, with branches in major cities throughout the U.S. In 1919, she settled at Shepherd’s Nine in Portland, Connecticut, where one can still today learn, study and explore on the glorious outdoor dance studio.

Brooker, now one of 12 Noyes Rhythm teachers, is bringing this body of work out of its seclusion at Shepherd’s Nine and into her studio at Middle Tennessee University, along with workshops for dance educators and classes for the public. 

Noyes, a frequent performer during the Suffrage movement, was brought back into our vision when Brooker recently re-constructed and reconceived Noyes’ Dance of Freedom on her students in honor of the anniversary of the 19th Amendment.

Noyes Rhythm involves two movement experiences: the technique class, and the recreational class, and each of those have their unique structure. Both reveal strong somatic values.

Brooker has served on the Noyes School of Rhythm Foundation Board of Directors, and is currently the Archive Director. She has presented workshops on Noyes for the Dance Studies Association, Society of Dance History Scholars, Congress on Research in Dance, and the Isadora Duncan International Symposium. In addition, she is also a legacy Isadora Duncan dance artist with an international performance background and holds an MFA in Performance as Public Practice from UT Austin and a BA in Theatre Studies from Yale.

I visited with Brooker to get a clearer idea of how Noyes fits into the ever-growing somatics canon.

Meg Brooker dancing
Meg Brooker, Pavalon Floor Reach, Photo by Christopher Graefe

Nancy Wozny: I see somatics as a porous and expansive field, open to new information, even if that information is, well, old! Noyes used the term, “sentiency,” which is much more poetic. What exactly did she mean?

Meg Brooker: When we talk about sentiency in Noyes Rhythm, we are talking about a feeling of aliveness, of interconnectedness, it is innate embodied knowledge. 

NW: Aliveness is a close cousin to awareness. Interconnectedness lies at the root of many body/mind based practices, especially in considering how every movement is a movement of our whole body. Are you also talking about the human body in relation to the natural world?

MB: Yes. In Noyes, we study movement and growth in nature. There is a deep intuition and a sense of following, allowing, creating space for unfoldment to happen. We go into the body and follow the body’s movement impulses, and we do it in a playful and joyful way. 

NW: Joy doesn’t get talked about enough in somatics! But how does sensing manifest in the work?

MB: We use the term “feel” a lot in our teaching. Feel the moss underneath your feet. Feel the warm sun on your back. (And we teach this work in the summertime outdoors where you really can walk barefooted on moss and stand in the warm sun). There is a huge emphasis on releasing tension, on relaxation and playfulness. The “letting go” of thinking, of mental activity, so that the body is leading and the mind is following. Sentiency is a kinesthetic awareness.

Noyes Dancers outside
Noyes Dancers – Crescent Stretch, Courtesy of the Noyes Archive

NW: I am so glad that we are talking about moving outside, because I’ve done quite a bit of that this past year. It is awakening to be moving while feeling and hearing a breeze, and other textures in our environment. Being in the natural world gives us something to attend to along with our bodies.

MB: We also talk about the “elemental,” meaning feeling the elements. Being outside in nature is important for understanding this– this is an exploration that challenges what is comfortable–mud, cold rain, strong winds are examples of elemental feeling. 

NW: Noyes’s former student Valeria Ladd writes in her 1949 book, Rhythm and the Noyes Technique, “It is desirable that the dancer be unconscious of the body as a body; either a heavy body or a light body, it will always be in the way if it is in the thought of the dancer.” 

Two things jump out here in terms of somatic thinking: First, it rarely helps to think of a body as an object, which so often happens when we use mirrors. Second, the notion of getting out of your own way is embedded in so many disciplines. There is an underlying premise in somatic methods that we are not so much doing as undoing. Tells us more about how these ideas manifest in Noyes’s work.

MB: In Noyes Rhythm, we are “dropping off the head”– literally! Similar to Duncan technique, we focus on the solar plexus as a center of movement initiation and of coordination, and in Noyes Rhythm we call this high center “the spot.” One thing I often tell students is that while much of their dance training is taught from the musculoskeletal system, these early modern practices prioritized coordination of the nervous system. 

NW: Wait, what? Noyes was aware of the operation of the nervous system and its role in sensing movement? Well then, she was way ahead of her time. Say more.

MB: We “follow” the movement in a sequential way, “feeling” the patterning from the nervous system, so there is awareness of movement and sensation through the whole movement pathway, not only at the joints.

NW: So she was aware of the kinetic chain of motion. Impressive!

MB: Yes, she used terms like: letting go, dropping off, allowing, following, not doing.

NW: Juicy words for a somatic denizen. It seems like Noyes had her own hierarchy when it comes to the mechanics of the body though.

MB: Noyes identified the vertical axis, the line over gravity, as the “axis of being” and the horizontal axis, the line underneath the arms when stretched out to the sides, as the “axis of doing.” There is emphasis in the technique of “dropping off” the arms, as well as the head, so that the high center of the body is leading. The arms can get swept up in movement, but they are secondary. Noyes trains dancers to let go of “willful” movement. 

We work on breaking and disrupting habitual patterning. 

NW: Boom! Noyes Rhythm earns its somatic stripes with that statement. That’s great, but exploration is integral to many somatic disciplines. Is there leeway to find one’s own way? 

MB: Yes! The Noyes techniques have both a “physics simile” and a “symbol.” The physics simile is the rote mechanics of the movement, what she might also call mathematics. For students new to the work, it is important to learn these basic patterns or movement pathways. 

The symbol is what animates or enlivens the movement pattern. Noyes Rhythm is taught through the symbols or images. This pedagogy encourages newness, freshness. I’m thinking of something an old acting teacher used to say, which is “always for the first time.” There is an aspect of spontaneity and newness that is very important, and the movement is in response to the image. 

NW: I want to get to Noyes’s use of images, but first we have to address novelty, a major component of many modalities, including my somatic home, The Feldenkrais Method. Precisely guided exploration is how we find fresh pathways. Can you give us an example of how this manifests in the Noyes work?

MB: Yes, one of my favorite techniques is the spot and radii floor stretch. In this technique, the dancer begins lying on the floor in a long line, with the legs together and the arms outstretched overhead as if the body was the diameter of a circle. The mechanics of the movement are for one arm and leg (the limbs in this exercise are the radii (limbs are also called trailers) to trace an arc towards each other on the floor, and then back to the center line. The “rhythm passes” and is picked up on the other side. 

This technique is often taught with the image of a single raindrop plopping into a still pond, and sending arcs of waves widening out toward the shore. The raindrop is felt right at the spot, and, as radii, the arm and leg are imaged as connecting to this spot. The force or weight of the raindrop is the cause and the long arm and leg are released into the arcing pathway as a result of this felt impulse. 

Each time this movement happens, it is a new raindrop with a different mass, different force, different momentum. Because the limbs are moving in response to this image impulse, the degree of movement will vary. How far the limbs move is not what is important, feeling the coordination from the image impulse through the movement is key. 

NW: I am glad to hear that it doesn’t matter how far the limbs move. Quality over quantity is important here. Since you brought up the raindrop image, let’s move in that direction now. I have recently returned to the work of Mabel Todd, Lulu Swiegard, André Bernard, Eric Franklin, and others who have used imagery in their work. Nature images are central to Noyes. Help us understand her use of imagery.

MB: The vegetation stretch can be helpful to dancers, and it is basically the pattern of a grande ronde de jambe with the image of seaweed stretched out and floating in the waves. 

In Noyes technique, the pattern starts with a basic leg fold, in which the dancer softens at the base of the sternum (the “spot” drops) and gently folds at the hip, knee, and ankle of the standing leg, allowing the other leg to release to the front, and then drawing the released leg into a tight fold with flexion at the hip, knee, and ankle and a C-curve in the spine. The sternum lifts (“spot” rises), as both legs lengthen, the standing leg rooted into the earth as the released leg extends away from the center and floats–like a length of outstretched seaweed–around from front to back. The outstretched limb lowers down as the spot drops and that leg takes the weight as the rhythm passes to the other side. 

NW: Ah! Seaweed is a marvelous image for motion, but let’s keep this somatic inquiry going. Rest is present in most somatic disciplines and serves multiple functions. We can sense differences, and we can let the work do its work in our neuromuscular organization. How might we experience rest in a Noyes class?

MB: Rests exist in many aspects of Noyes. One difference between Noyes and how other somatic disciplines incorporate rest is that we are not directing the mind to notice the effect of the rest. We are not directing the mind at all. We are cultivating deep embodied awareness and staying in that space, building an endurance for sustained awareness. 

NW: So there is an ebb and flow of doing and not doing.

MB: Yes. The Noyes work historically was a “rhythmic” movement practice. Most of the technique exercises have active and passive moments–one side of the body is engaged, lengthening and the other side is resting, passive, and then the “rhythm” transfers and activities the passive parts, allowing the active parts to rest. 

NW: Explain how rest is built into the improvisation class structure. 

MB: Noyes Rhythm classes have three parts, and each section of the class is separated by a deep rest. Imagine going to a yoga class with two savasanas during the class! 

NW: Sign me up! 

MB: The first part of the “recreation” (or improvisation) class is a warm up with playful, whole-body movement. In this section of class we shake off, drop off the “personal,” let go of self-consciousness (this was huge for Noyes) and this part of class usually involves connecting to breath, opening the body, and may also include some locomotive and aerobic movement. Imagery may have a deep elemental feeling–rainstorm, volcanic eruption, change of seasons. In the deep rest, there may be imagery of disintegration, dissolving, further letting go, or of being held, safely rocked in the earth. There is music, and the quality of music will also guide the rest. It is a time for un-doing and for doing nothing. 

Mara Morris dancing Noyes
Noyes Dancer Mara Morris, Rolling, Photo by Nina Wurtzel

NW: Efficient movement is a common thread in somatic practices. We are often looking for the “just enough” effort when doing any movement, activated muscles as needed to avoid overdoing. Where does Noyes stand on that concept? 

MB: Noyes Rhythm absolutely trains efficient movement patterns. Noyes was vigilant about correcting over-efforting in her students. She identified over-efforting with “willfulness.” For Noyes, “willful” movement is straining, recruiting too much muscular force to accomplish an action, and misunderstanding the difference between strength and tension. Her pedagogy emphasizes balanced action. There is nothing rote, mechanical, or externally motivated in the Noyes work. 

Noyes also talks about overflow or the 110%. This idea is that there is a letting go, and emptying out that happens (in other practices this is talked about as yielding), and then a filling back up–the movement doesn’t happen until there is overflow–until you have been filled up to 100%, fully enlivened, fully aware, saturated with sentiency, and then the extra 10% is the movement. 

NW: It’s in this language that it reminds me that we are looking at a different time in history, and ways of being in our bodies.

MB: Yes, these early moderns, both Duncan and Noyes, were also interested in the relationship between the body and light. Duncan talked about “luminosity of the flesh” and Noyes also talks about an effortless feeling in movement, a feeling of the body disappearing and being moved by the music, what she also calls “leaking over gravity.” If we think about the relationship between light and energy, light and force, and also energy and matter, then this sensation of the body as light seems to result from finding the perfect balance between effort and action to create movement.  

NW: I have no idea what leaking over gravity is, but it sounds splendid. I love the idea of emptying and refilling. Sometimes I feel that the dance field is just heading in a “more and more” direction, as in harder, higher, and more extreme.

MB: I know what you mean! I see this tendency to push the body to extremes in my undergraduate dance students. They are so focused on end-gaming the movement, on finding the most extreme form of a shape, and often doing this through over-efforting (they are wonderfully dedicated hard-workers). I incorporate Noyes Rhythm into my teaching of undergraduate dancers. It is a revelation to them to find, to feel, just the right amount of effort for the movement to happen, and to feel the joy and satisfaction of moving with connection through a small range of motion, as well as through a larger range. 

NW: Thanks for the segue! I do want to know more about how you bring this work into teaching right now. How do you frame it to have value for today’s students?

MB: This work has so much value for today’s students–from both a general wellness and mental health perspective as well as from a dance technique training perspective. It teaches the importance of deep rest. It teaches the value and simplicity of just being (not always doing). It offers space to experience a huge range of qualities of movement and expression. It enables students to find and feel dynamic alignment and balance and to cultivate integrated, whole-body strength. It also cultivates a space for fun and play! Noyes Rhythm reminds us that the joy of moving is an experience that is always there, always available to us as dancers. It is an empowering and important reminder. 


Nancy Wozny, photo by Christopher Duggan

Nancy Wozny is editor in chief of Arts + Culture Texas, reviews editor at Dance Source Houston and a contributor to Pointe Magazine, Dance Teacher and Dance Magazine, where she is also an contributing editor. She has taught and written about Feldenkrais and somatics in dance for two decades.

Filed Under: 4dancers, Dance Wellness Tagged With: 19th Amendment, Alexander Technique, Body-Mind Centering, congress on research in dance, Continuum Movement, Dance of Freedom, Dance Studies Association, Duncan technique, Feldenkrais Method, Florence Fleming Noyes, isadora duncan, Isadora Duncan International Symposium, Lori Belilove, Meg Brooker, nancy wozny, neuromuscular organization, Noyes Rhythm Classes, Noyes School of Rhythm, pandemic, Sara Mearns, Society of Dance History Scholars, somatics, the franklin method, Thomas Hanna

Enhance Your Dancing With The Alexander Technique

January 11, 2017 by 4dancers

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I’m very pleased to bring you this current article, on The Alexander Technique, from a longtime dance / dance medicine colleague of mine, Nada Diachenko, faculty in the Dept. of Theatre and Dance at University of Colorado, Boulder.

Nada was a professional dancer in New York for many years, primarily with Erick Hawkins, before she went into the academic dance world. We first met at the American Dance Festival (Durham, NC) 30+ years ago, and formed a lasting professional and personal friendship based on our mutual interest in dancers’ well-being and health.  Over the years we have had many opportunities to work together at CU-Boulder, teaching  Dance Wellness course offerings and starting a Dance Wellness Screening Program, along with Pilates.

Nada’s particular focus for many years has been The Alexander Technique (AT) – teaching dancers how this particular neuromuscular re-education practice can help facilitate more comfortable and productive movement in their bodies, both in dance and daily life. I have experienced AT many times over the years, both with Nada and other practitioners, and always strive to incorporate many of the principles daily, to allow more ease in my body movements. I’m so pleased that she offered to write this article for us.
Nada has included some excellent links for further reading / researching on AT – enjoy and pass it on!

 – Jan Dunn, MS, Dance Wellness Editor


by Nada Diachenko

Do you ever wonder why you get the same correction year after year?

Or why you continue to work on your turns and they don’t get better?

And maybe you struggle with learning a new style and can’t figure out how to make that easier.

Personal History

Honestly, if I had asked myself those questions as a young dancer I would have had to answer yes. In retrospect, I wish I had studied the Alexander Technique (AT) at 19 when I first discovered an AT book at a NYC bookstore. That book sat on my shelf for years. When I finally had a series of weekly lessons, I discovered ease, freedom of movement, balance, and an overall sense of organization. Then I read that book, Body Learning, by Michael Gelb which led me on a life changing journey as a dancer and teacher.

It wasn’t until I moved to Colorado after a 20 year career in NYC as a professional dancer that I began to understand the power of the technique.

While on faculty at the University of Colorado (CU), I realized I wanted to help dancers go deeper in changing inefficient movement habits. It also became clear to me that I needed AT for myself in order to continue to move and dance into the future with less strain and pain.

So I trained and became a certified AT teacher. I learned skills and gained tools that helped me change some of my very strong compensation patterns from injuries and imbalances from my scoliosis. Incorporating these skills and tools that helped me so much, I developed AT courses for undergraduate and graduate students at CU. One of their basic requirements is to read Body Learning. [Read more…]

Filed Under: conditioning, Dance Wellness Tagged With: dance teachers, dancers, F.M. Alexander, Nada Diachenko, somatic training, somatics, somatics for dancers, The Alexander Technique

Flash Feldenkrais for the Busy Dancer: Part I

October 29, 2015 by 4dancers

We’re pleased to offer you “Flash Feldenkrais for Dancers” — by Nancy Wozny. Nancy is the Somatics expert on our Dance Wellness Panel — she wrote the article introducing Somatic work, and why it matters for dancers, “A Somatic Update for Dancers” in August of 2014. Nancy is a Feldenkrais practitioner herself, and is sharing her expertise with you in this series of “Flash Feldenkrais” postings — here is the first one.  Try it  –  I think you will like it.  Enjoy!       – Jan 

Jacob's Pillow
B: Brandon Collwes, Molly Griffin, and Brandin Steffensen of Liz Gerring Dance Company in glacier. Photo Christopher Duggan

Note: This is the first in a series of Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement Lessons that have been streamlined for dancers.

by Nancy Wozny

Watching Liz Gerring’s dancers in glacier this summer at Jacob’s Pillow navigate their way through a glorious feast of highly nuanced movement reminded me of how somatically rich some contemporary dancers’ lives are these days. Because Gerring’s vocabulary is so mind bogglingly detailed, her dancers are neurally nourished with novelty on a daily basis. Gerring’s dancers also move as if each step is a question, embracing an exploratory process, so that each movement feels like an act of discovery. The sheer abundance of specificity not only makes for compelling choreography, but has an added benefit to the dancers, and possibly the viewers as well. Just watching these deft movers made me feel as if I was getting a month-long Feldenkrais retreat thanks to those handy mirror neurons at work.

Sometimes, we forget just how diverse a dancer’s life is when considering the role of Somatics for today’s dancer. Somatics, defined by philosopher Thomas Hanna, is the study of the body as a lived experience. In my first piece for 4dancers, A Somatics Update, I outlined the characteristics of the field, which include cultivating an accurate sense of awareness, the use of non-habitual movement, resting between actions and attention to our habits, to name a few. The Feldenkrais Method, one of many somatic practices, is particularly useful for performing artists, especially dancers because of their complicated movement lives, which includes both repetition and novelty.

Contemporary choreographers and educators regularly look to change the status quo in what they are asking dancers to do. The movement in today’s dance classes and choreography is considerably more varied than it was say 20 years ago. What does all this have to do with Somatics?

You are busy, and all of us dance health folk are always trying to make you busier. Do this! Do that! The list of what a dancer needs to do besides daily technique class to stay healthy seems to grow each year.

I understand the demands of today’s dancer enough to know that anything can be streamlined to fit an artist’s schedule, even the prolific work of Moshe Feldenkrais, who created over 3,000 brilliant Awareness Through Movement lessons. And trust me, each one is a gem. Although it’s always beneficial to do longer and more complicated lessons, especially when you are in recovery mode, it’s possible to receive a benefit from shorter lessons.

Feldenkrais could very well be the father of cross training as well as somatics, as he addressed expanding our habits head on by introducing the role of novelty in movement as a neural refresher.

We also need to keep in mind that Feldenkrais Method and dance share some of the same domain, which includes inventive movement. The average dancer has no shortage of novelty in their lives, as they regularly meet the demands of today’s choreographers who tirelessly look for new ways to put the human body into action.

Maintenance mode doesn’t quite need the same time commitment, especially when you are getting a good amount of somatic diversity in your daily classes and rehearsals. However, a dancer’s time and energy budget is tight, so perhaps a need-to-know approach may be more doable when it comes to maintaining your somatic health.

With all of this in mind, I offer Flash Feldenkrais for the Busy Dancer, streamlined lessons that address common conditions in a dancers’ working life, which sometimes involves an abundance of novelty. That can be discombobulating in its own right. Sometimes, we need to scale back, look to more central organizations, and simply calm the whole system down. And because it’s Feldenkrais, a tiny bit of novelty pops in at the end because we always need a little post Feldenkrais play time.

Flash Feldenkrais Lesson #1: Returning to Neutral

When to do this lesson: When you have been doing a lot of performing or traveling, or both at the same time. Anytime something has thrown you off from your center, this lesson will help reel you in. I find it to be a somatic palate cleanser, and a “returning to your baseline” lesson.

Why do this lesson: You will find a wonderful ease in your limbs afterward. It’s the Feldenkrais equivalent of straightening out your holiday lights when they get all in a jumble.

What do you need to do this lesson: A soft mat or blanket and 15-20 uninterrupted minutes in a quiet room.

Remember: Rest between each step and before you fatigue. Do each instruction just a few times. Make the movement as easy as possible.

Lie on your back with your legs long and your arms by your side. Sense your contact against the ground. Bring your right arm up so that your fingers point to the ceiling and your palm faces your midline. Notice the effort it takes to do this movement.

Bend up your knees and bring your feet to standing. Bring your right arm up again and move your right arm slightly toward and away from your midline. Notice the “sweet spot” when you pass through neutral.

Bring your right arm up again and move it slightly toward your head and then toward your feet. Notice when you pass through neutral.

Bring your right arm up again and move it toward the midline and away, then toward your head, then your feet, always returning to neutral between each movement.

Repeat steps 1-5 with the left arm.

Repeat steps 1-5 steps with both arms at once.

Repeat steps 1-5 with the right leg in the air.

Repeat steps 1-5 with the left leg in the air.

Bring all limbs into the air and spend some time improvising. Play with the limbs moving toward and away from each other in various configurations. This is where the imagination can slip in while you find some new and fun ways of moving your limbs in space.

Rest on your back again. Lift your right arm into the air and notice how easy it is now. Come to sitting, then standing. Walk around and notice your sense of ease and grace.

NEXT UP: Stay tuned for the second installation of Flash Feldenkrais for the Busy Dancer, which will focus on organizing oneself for a shift and cleansing the kinesthetic palate.


Nany Wozny

Nancy Wozny is editor in chief of Arts + Culture Texas, reviews editor at Dance Source Houston and a contributor to Pointe Magazine, Dance Teacher and Dance Magazine, where she is also an contributing editor. She has taught and written about Feldenkrais and somatics in dance for two decades.

Filed Under: conditioning, Dance Wellness Tagged With: choreographers, contemporary choreographers, cross training, dancers, feldenkrais, Feldenkrais Method, Flash Feldenkrais, jacob's pillow, Liz Gerring, mirror neurons, nancy wozny, somatics, Thomas Hanna

A Somatic Update For Dancers

August 7, 2014 by 4dancers

Ami Shulman with participants from the 2011 Contemporary Program of The School at Jacob's Pillow; photo Cherylynn Tsushima, courtesy Jacob's Pillow Dance
Ami Shulman with participants from the 2011 Contemporary Program of The School at Jacob’s Pillow; photo Cherylynn Tsushima, courtesy Jacob’s Pillow Dance

Our guest author for this Dance Wellness posting is introducing a topic I have been wanting to bring to our readers–integrating somatic work into dance. Nancy Wozny has long been associated with somatics and dance, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Arts + Culture Texas, in Houston. She is a Feldenkrais teacher and has taught at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Women’s University, the Jung Center, and other institutions, and has been a guest lecturer at Rice University since 2005.

Somatics (the term is derived from the Greek word for the living body ‘ Soma”) many years ago was called “The Body Therapies”, and has long been a topic close to my heart. In the 1980’s / early 1990’s, I was Director of the Workshops for Professionals at The American Dance Festival, which included The Body Therapy Workshop–and in that capacity, I had the privilege to learn about and experience many forms of somatic work, and could see their benefits for dancers.

Nancy’s article will be the first in a series of articles I hope to have for you, our readers. This one is meant as a general introduction to the subject, and down the road we will have separate articles on some of the major somatic systems that are being used in dance. We have already talked about some of them – Pilates, for example, and Franklin Method, could be considered to be in this category.

I’m very pleased that Nancy has agreed to write this initial article on a very important topic —Enjoy !

Jan Dunn, MS, Dance Wellness Editor

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by Nancy Wozny

“How do you allow the movement to be reversible at any moment?” asks Ami Shulman, while teaching in the contemporary program at the school of Jacob’s Pillow. Shulman, formerly of Compagnie Marie Chouinard and now a Feldenkrais teacher, is part of a new generation of movement educators shaping the dance field one plie at a time.

Somatics has come a long way since I was once introduced by accident as an expert in “somnambulism,” which technically is a sleeping disorder. We do, in fact, become a little sleepy when doing a somatic practice, but that’s not the point.

Much of what makes up the field of somatics was in motion way before the term was coined in 1976 by philosopher Thomas Hanna. Somatics derives from the Greek word for the living body, “soma,” and is the study of the body experienced from within. More simply put, it’s the skill of being able to sense one’s state of being. You would think we wouldn’t need help with that, but due to the habitual nature of our modern lives, we do.

Today, if you mention you attended a Feldenkrais Method or Alexander Technique session, many of your peers will have some idea of what you mean. The years of “Feldenwhat?” and “Alexander who?” are fading. The Alexander Technique even got a mention in Lena Dunham’s popular HBO hit show GIRLS. There’s also a much greater chance that you might run into somatic principles and concepts in your daily life.

Ami Shulman with participants from the 2011 Contemporary Program of The School at Jacob's Pillow; photo Cherylynn Tsushima, courtesy Jacob's Pillow Dance
Ami Shulman with participants from the 2011 Contemporary Program of The School at Jacob’s Pillow; photo Christopher Duggan, courtesy Jacob’s Pillow Dance

Listening to Shulman pepper in instructions with words like “soften,” “feel,” “explore” and “sense,” reminds me of just how fluid the boundary can be between somatics and a dance class. There are a multitude of ways the work surfaces in a movement class. If your dance or yoga teacher starts with a body scan on the floor, that’s somatics. If you have worked with a foam roller with your physical therapist, yep, somatics. (Moshe Feldenkrais was first to use those handy cylinders. Back in the day, they were made from wood.) If you have tried any wobbly balance challenging gadget, yes, that too has its origins in the somatics goal of enlisting a non-habitual environment to elicit new movement. If anyone has asked you to stop and pay attention to what you are actually doing in that moment, boom, somatics.

The idea that we can better pay attention to our actions to control our movement can be traced back to the late 19th-century European Gymnastik movement, which used breath, movement, and touch to direct awareness. François Delsarte, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and Bess Mensendieck encouraged a kind of inside-out expression that questioned the traditional nature of movement training. They seemed to be saying “the body is the person,” thus joining mind and body in a celebration of the human form.

The American contribution to somatics also deserves mention. Mabel Ellsworth Todd’s classic text, The Thinking Body, introduced dancers to the role of the mind in dance training back in 1937. Her student, Lulu Sweigard (who later taught at Juilliard), developed a process of activating the imagination to affect movement called “ideokinesis.” (from the Greek words for “idea” and “movement”) Irene Dowd, who won the American Dance Festival’s 2014 Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching award, carried the work even further. Eric Franklin, with the Franklin Method, continues to explore and develop new ways to incorporate imagery and neuroplasticity concepts into dance training.

The American Dance Festival, in Durham, NC, under the leadership of Dean Martha Myers, introduced somatic work to thousands of dancers in the 1980’s and ‘90’s, with The Body Therapy Workshops and by having specific classes and faculty as part of the regular Festival schedule. Myers, while not a somatic practitioner herself, early on recognized the value of this work for dancers, and through her, ADF became one of the seminal places where somatics integrated into dance training. Her 6-part Dance Magazine series “The Body Therapies” (1983) is considered one of the best early sources for learning about the field.

Soon, it seemed people from all over the world, from a variety of disciplines, were exploring the same territory from different entry points. Because dance is a body-centered art from, it has always been ahead of the body/mind game.

In fact, so many of the American somatic pioneers harked from the dance world. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (Body-Mind Centering) was first to consider how our developmental structures are mirrored in our movement. The late Emily Conrad (Continuum) considered the primacy of the fluid system. Joan Skinner (Skinner Releasing Technique), Elaine Summers (Kinetic Awareness), Susan Klein (Klein Technique), and Judith Aston (Aston-Patterning) each added their own approaches as well.

Ami Shulman with participants from the 2013 Contemporary Program of The School at Jacob's Pillow; photo Christopher Duggan
Ami Shulman with participants from the 2013 Contemporary Program of The School at Jacob’s Pillow; photo Christopher Duggan

And then we need to consider all the somatic smoothies going in dance, yoga, Pilates and fitness classes. The material is out there and people are using it, whether they know where its origins are from or not.

So what defines an activity as somatic? Here are some basic guidelines. Know that there are differences between each somatic discipline that may stress one of these principles more than another. While the modalities differ, the goal of living a more complete and embodied life remains central to the somatic domain.

Starting in a neutral place:

Somatics is a subtle process, if we don’t know where we are in the first place, it might be hard to tell that anything is different at the end. We need a baseline to know that change occurred. Most somatic classes begin with some kind of inventory of how a person is operating. It may be as simple as lying on the ground and sensing which parts are heavier.

Slower than slow:

If you have ever listened to someone playing a familiar song on the piano so slowly that you forget what song it is, you will know exactly why we move so slowly in a somatic class. When we move slowly, it gives us the time to pay attention, and our habits are less likely to commandeer the train of our body and take over. We get a fresh start and a better chance for improvement. Keep in mind, things aren’t always slow; that would be too habitual.

Using images:

When Shulman asks her students to use their feet like a tongue, suddenly the quality in the room shifts as they consider the contact of their body against the floor. Many somatic practitioners have used visual images to evoke certain ideas, direction or quality of movement. The mind/body card has been since backed up with mirror neuron theory concerning the power of thinking yourself through a movement.

Reflection:

Whether its Emily Conrad’s open attention, or Alexander’s inhibition, or Feldenkrais’ many rests, there is always the pause that matters. Somewhere in the process, you will stop what you are doing. Somatics enlist a discontinuous process, and the pauses are built into the lessons. In Feldenkrais, the pause is when the work does its work.

Habit:

Somatics practitioners talk a lot about habit. The first thing to know is that we need habits. Life would be a huge bore and a chore without them. We would spend all day trying to figure out how to tie our shoes. Habit is not the bad guy. But not having enough habits, or using the wrong habit to accomplish a certain action, can lead us into trouble.

Non-habitual movement:

If you find yourself doing the same thing week after week, it’s not somatics. We like to change it up on planet soma, so there is very little repetition. Most often you are doing movements that you have never done before, which will feel awkward and sometimes, even annoying. Dancers don’t like to be beginners, but they should give it a try more often. When you do a movement that is new to you, it’s hard to bring old habits to the floor, because you don’t have any.

Exploration rather than accomplishment:

This is a tough one for dancers, who are used to getting somewhere, and generally speaking, the faster the better. The “there” of somatics is not one place, but many places. Lessons are designed for you to explore through. You navigate a constrained playground set up by the lesson or practitioner.

Feel rather than see:

When I was a young dancer, moving away from the mirror meant I basically disappeared. I had no idea where I was in space without my BFF, the mirror. I was constantly getting lost on stage because of this over reliance on my reflection. In a somatic experience, the mirror should and will be covered. You will be sensing yourself from the inside. This is a skill, and a rather handy one at that. As mirrors do not follow us around in our lives, I suggest you learn it well. (Editors’ note: Do you remember from the Sally Radell articles on mirrors? – I gave you Master Limon Teacher Betty Jones’ favorite quote: “mirrors put you outside of your body, not in it”!)

Ami Shulman with participants from the Contemporary Program of The School at Jacob's Pillow; photo Em Watson, courtesy Jacob's Pillow Dance
Ami Shulman with participants from the Contemporary Program of The School at Jacob’s Pillow; photo Em Watson, courtesy Jacob’s Pillow Dance

How does somatics fit in with a dancer’s overall training regime?

In my day, some dancers went off the deep end of the somatic pool and forgot that they needed daily training to keep up their technique. This is the contradiction we need to embrace in any kind of elite training. It takes hard work to make a dancer, with tons of repetition and time in the classroom. Somatics doesn’t replace training, it augments it, preventing the strict training regimes necessary in dance from becoming injurious. It helps spread the neurological load, so we move with more of ourselves in terms of effort. We don’t build strength in a somatics activity, we gain easier access to our strength. Just like a diet, we need and crave variety, and a chance to reboot our system so that we are operating in the most optimal way. That’s what somatics offers.

Do I have to go to a dedicated somatics class?

These days, a somatic experience can be slipped into just about any kind of movement class. There are ballet teachers who have been known to bring in a little somatics between tendus and grande battements. As I said earlier, the material is out there and being used in all kinds of innovative ways. You would be hard pressed to find a physical therapist not using some somatic principles in their work. A dedicated class is terrific for injury prevention and deep learning, but know there are many ways to access this wealth of knowledge.

What will seem downright weird to newbies?

Honestly, just about everything. You will think you are wasting your time on the ground sensing yourself when you could be stretching. Your teacher may not be a dancer or even look remotely like a dancer. I remember thinking during one of my early Feldenkrais classes that the movement was ugly. You will wonder how these simple movements will help you. You might doubt everything. All of this or some of this will probably happen. Carry on anyway. It will be worth it in the long run.

So why add this to your already jammed back training regime?

A few reasons: you will have a longer career, you will gain skills that will stay with you way beyond your dance career, and finally, you will simply be more graceful to watch, whether you are fetching water or doing a 32 fouettes.


Nancy Wozny, photo by Christopher Duggan
Nancy Wozny, photo by Christopher Duggan

Nancy Wozny picked up the somatics cause when she was 22 and never put it down. She has taught Feldenkrais classes to a broad range of individuals and has taught at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Women’s University, Rice University, the Jung Center and other institutions. Her stories on dance and somatics can be found in Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher and Pointe. Currently, she is editor in chief of Arts + Culture Texas, based in Houston, TX.

Filed Under: conditioning, Dance Wellness Tagged With: alexandar technique, american dance festival, ami shulman, bonnie bainbridge cohen, dance conditioningmartha myers, dance training, dance wellness, emily conrad, feldenkrais, judith aston, mabel ellsworth todd, nancy wozny, sally radell, somatic practice, somatics, susan klein, the thinking body

Competition Dance: Maximizing Peak Performance Part II

August 21, 2012 by 4dancers

This week we are pleased to offer part II of the series on Maximizing Peak Performance for Competition…read part I here.

by Robin Kish MS, MFA

Photo by Catherine L. Tully

How often has it been a part of a dancer’s training to believe, “No Pain, No Gain,” “If you’re not sore you didn’t work hard enough,” and of course the best of all, “The Show Must Go On.”  It is a part of the dance culture to push as hard as possible with little regard for the short term or long term consequences.  I have heard countless stories over the years of dancers performing with sprained ankles, stress fractures in the lower legs, and pain levels that would make any sane person stop all activity.  At the end of all these stories, the tag line is usually the same, “I had to dance because my dance group, teacher, choreographer, studio, parent etc… was counting on me.”

This type of attitude is not unique to the dance population but is also prevalent in competitive sports.  The major difference here is most of the time athletes have athletic trainers, physical therapists, and many times team doctors that know how to keep the athletes going and when an athlete has hit their limit.  So how can a dancer decide when enough is enough and it’s time to seek help? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Competition, conditioning, Dance Wellness Tagged With: choreographer, competition dance, dance, dance wellness, flexibility, robin kish, somatics

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