Tuesday 1 May 2012

Somatics

Somatics

Here is a term that dancers and dance students hear all the time. When I asked people around me to tell me what it is I got various vague responses. So in this post I'll try define it from a dancer's perspective.

The word "somatic" comes from Greek and means "From the body", "Relating to the Body" and according to Wikipedia "Somatics" is a field which employs holistic body-centered approaches to assist people in integrating and transforming self through movement and awareness practices intended to promote psycho-physical well-being. The field contains distinct disciplines, each with its own educational and/or therapeutic emphasis, principles, methods, psychology and techniques.

All of these distinct disciplines concentrate on exploring one's own body through sensory awareness. Each technique, in its own way, is attempting to make us feel and listen to our senses (proprioceptors). The aim is mainly to get to know yourself better which, supposedly, often results in better health. Although most of the techniques were developed as a way to treat a medical problem I don't think this is where their appeal lays for dancers. I find the idea of exploring and discovering the body far more interesting. These techniques can help us be highly aware and connected to our bodies. This is more important as a dancer as it will help avoid injuries and dance better. If I know and feel my body better I will be able to listen to it when something doesn't feel right (physically) and I will also be able to quickly understand the complexity of a new movement quality.

Thomas Hanna is the person who first coined the term "Somatics" in the 1970's. He was looking for a term to describe this new field that was being developed by him and others. He then went on to create "Somatics Magazine" and "The Somatics Society". Since then the field has grown and developed into what it is today.

The amount of disciplines that came out since the 70s is quite astounding. You will most certainly have heard of some of them, to only name a few.


Hanna Somatic Education created by Thomas Hanna
Body Mind Centering created by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Feldenkrais Method created by Moshé Feldenkrais
Alexander Technique created by Frederick Matthias Alexander
Bartenieff Fundamentals created by Irmgard Bartenieff
Rolfing created by The Rolf Institute of Structural Integration (Ida Pauline Rolf)
Progressive muscle relaxation created by Edmund Jacobson
Ideokinesis created by Mabel Todd, Barbara Clark and Lulu Sweigard
Authentic Movement created by Mary Starks Whitehouse
Gyrotonic Expansion System created by Juliu Horvath

All these practices are often criticised for their complete lack of scientific evidence to back up their therapeutic claims. This is the reason why I want to show that we can ignore these claims and use these techniques as the brilliant tools that they can be for dancers. Tools that will help us know our bodies (mind included) better. Consequently making us better dancer, and I don't only mean better technically but also creatively and artistically.

Wednesday 29 February 2012

Choreographing on Commotions

I've just spent the last week end in Manchester choreographing on a youth dance company called "Commotions". The company has about 12 members ranging from 12 to 18 years old. It is a very nice non professional company with varying dance abilities.

I was asked to come and create a 6 minutes piece on the subject of "secret", in two days. Sadly the lack of founding doesn't allow for more time but I thought that it would be a great challenge. Being a choreographer is still something new to me as I am more of a dancer and teacher. I started planning the work about two weeks before going to Manchester, mainly by making lots of material. By material I mean dance phrases. I also decided on what the music would be and I created a rough overall structure. Although the time with the company was short I also wanted to make sure that some of the material would come from the dancers.

I arrived on the Saturday morning and we got started right away. First I taught a big chunk of movement and then we started playing with the rough overall structure. I wanted to see if some of my structural ideas would work. When the dancers had done enough learning we moved on to a creative task. The task was to pair up and play with the idea of:
- one of them walking and staggering and occasionally reaching with one arm. As if lost or in need of help.
- the other one grabs the arm and pulls it. Playing with pull and push.

I don't think I explained it very well but they still came up with some great stuff. I should have broken it down a bit more and made the first instructions more physical. We would then have been able to move on to a more conceptual idea.
For the rest of the day we worked on setting each of these duets and we played with the general structure of the piece.

The following day we started by running through what we had done the day before. Then we carried on working on the overall organisation of the piece. By then a much clearer structure had started to appear:
1st part - group section
2nd part - duet,solo with group in the background
3rd part - group section to end

I then asked the dancers to make one duet out of all the duets they had made the day before (only using the best bits). We used that material for the last group section. We also worked on the duet and solo that are in the 2nd part.

The idea of "secret" evolved into something a bit different. My first idea was about an oppressed state such as a totalitarian regime. Trying to show people that are sad and with no individualities. In that sort of environment people have secrets, but only in their thoughts.

Debbie, who was helping me, shared the fact that it reminded her of "1984" by George Orwell. So we thought about it for a while and decided to call the piece "101" in reference to the room 101 in the book. This is the room where people get punished by having their worst nightmare realised.

So the piece became even clearer:
- group section (showing oppression and lack of individualities)
- duet, solo with group in background (expressing how the group feels inside)
- group section (oppression leads to revolution)

The darkness of the subject never seemed to be a problem for the dancers. It is nice to explore dark ideas every now and then. The ending suggests a positive future without making it too obvious.

By the end of the Sunday we had a piece. There was still some cleaning and rehearsing to do but the piece was there. The dancers worked really hard. I didn't give them any break apart from a 30 minutes lunch. They were so good, patient and understanding with me. I am very grateful to all the people that helped during these two days. Debbie, who invited me in the first place, was amazing. She was so good at pointing me in the right direction and giving ideas. I feel I have learnt a lot through this experience. This was really a great opportunity.

Thank you Commotions!