Turn out, pointed feet, travelling... Triplets!

Today we performed Cunningham Technique, where we carried out a number of sequences and phrases that included various articulating movements throughout the joints.

We began the class with bounces in an over curve (curving over the ribs; like I have a corset on) followed by plie's and side curves. I improved my curve by thinking about the use of breath and extension through the spine. Included in this sequence was the use of spirals. This comes from the torso and works its way up the spine with an upper curve, giving a twisting sensation. In doing this, I have to remember to keep my hips square and breathe throughout as I have a tendency to follow my spiral with my hips so the position I end up in is incorrect; I corrected myself in class as I can feel my positioning now. The pictures below show how good my curves are when I use Breath...

We then performed plie sequences which I realised were one of my strong points in Cunningham's work. Comparing this sequence to when I performed it last year, I have improved massive amounts, as I think about every single detail and I try to keep the phrase continuous, whilst deepening plies and moving through the longest routes possible.









I feel that since I started this course I have improved a lot in technique and I can self-criticise and self-evaluate my movements to help improve. As a dancer I need to not only listen/learn from my teachers and others around me, but I have to be able to think about my strengths and weaknesses and correct them myself, which involves experimenting in and out of class. So what if I fall over whilst trying out movements at least i am putting in my all and attempting different things, pushing myself to limits.

In today's lesson I was informed that my feet roll inwards when performing a plie in second. I was then conscious of this throughout the rest of the class and began to adjust myself to the correct position.

Here is a diagram showing my feet positions of 'rolling in' and 'turned out'. Due to me being flat footed and having bunions my feet positions always look incorrect. This is no excuse for me now, as I am able to correct and feel the right position for my turn out; yes, it does feel abnormal now, but if I continue to alter this I will get used to the feeling and it will begin to come naturally.

In this video you can see that I begin brushing the floor and go through every Metatarsal, tarsal and phalanges possible (this is easier to do slowly). But then when I begin increasing the speed of the tondu's, my movements weren't as detailed and I began to 'slack' in technique.

At one part of the sequence I didn't brush at all, but at least I can recognise and alter the movements for future reference.

I was familiar with one of the phrases in class (Balancing) because we have done it in Release Technique, so I was able to perform this well. The key to this phrase is:

 "TO BALANCE IS TO MOVE CONTINUOUSLY".

This means that you never stop moving because as soon as you stop, you become off balance and fall over. Therefore if you lengthen up and out to continue deepening through the plie to lengthening and bending, it is always moving but there are movements of stillness throughout it. Here I show this in the video:

 

I will explain my strengths and weaknesses in this video and show my knowledge and self criticism.

You can see that when I begin the sequence I try to push through the floor whilst shifting forwards at the same time. If I am grounded into the floor through a plie, I am more steady and I can travel to where ever I want to without any effort. I then balance through movement by lengthening and thinking about the use of my centre to help control myself.

From an arabesque in plie to spiraling the back on a straight leg, I concentrate on the pressure I put into the floor from the base (standing) leg. As long as my base leg is working I can move or perform any way I like with the top half of my body; spiraling the back is easier to control, but as you can see I could spiral/twist my back even more than I have on this video.

When I chasse through to attitude you can see that I reposition my lifted leg. This is because when I was performing this sequence I could feel that my leg wasn't in the correct attitude position that I had mentioned previously in ballet. As this was one of my faults in ballet I was conscious of this and corrected this as soon as I realised my knee was lower than my foot.

The final turn at the end of the sequence was performed badly as I was off balance and not on my base leg enough, but I tried my hardest to fight for it as much as I could because if I keep giving in I will never improve.