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.

Improvisation

After reading a post on this very good blog http://studio180dance.com/blog/ I got inspired to write about improvising.

Improvising is a very important thing to teach and a very hard one too. It's one of those things that you have to enjoy doing yourself before you can share it. You also have to be ready, as a teacher, to try and fail a few times before getting it right.
It is important for three main reasons:
-Because it is the best creative tool and it is the best way to create new material. When you find yourself doing the same choreographies year after year maybe it is time to improvise.
-Because it is accessible to everyone.
-Because it can be used for a wide variety of things.

First timers are usually the hardest ones to teach as there is so much for them to discover. You have to convince and reassure them as they will feel very vulnerable. There are two very important rules in improvising:
-no self censoring
-no judging (yourself or others)

Setting an improvisation task requires to have an aim. Concentrating on this aim you can then create any tasks. The most simple one being something like:
lets cross the room (giving a beginning and an end) but we have to stay on the floor (imagine the ceiling is 30cm high).
The aim here is to discover levels (the level of the ceiling can change as we cross the room). We can do the same thing with quality of movement or rhythm, etc.

The aim can be as simple as wanting people to dance. The great thing about improvising is that anyone (I really mean anyone) can do it, if they're willing to. You just have to find ways to make people move.
You can react to something (picture, theme, poem, colour, etc)
You can tell a story
You can place body parts in the space
The possibilities are endless. The only thing you require is an open mind and a bit of imagination.

Every time I lead a creative class with first timers I improvise with them. It helps them feel less self conscious . It is often very rewarding to see people discover how much they like it.

For pros, I concentrate more on how to challenge them. They are used to improvising and they need new tasks and ideas to explore. Most of the time the aims are the same only the process of discovery changes.

As a professional dancer myself, I have rarely worked with a choreographer that hasn't created through improvising. Most choreographers use improvising as a creative tool.
Some will teach you a phrase or combination and then ask you to personalise it. The exploration the dancer goes through, to change the phrase, is an improvisation.
Some will set a task with which you can play.
Some will film you improvising on music and then pick up the movements from the video.

Improvisation is a subject that could be discussed forever. So many books have been written by so many experts. It is worth having a look at them if you're a novice. I would love to chat and exchange ideas on improvisation (tasks, games, etc) so feel free to comment.