Bartenieff Fundamentals: Upper & Lower

We began this class working with a partner. Here we looked at discovering the words 'yield and push'. We began standing in front of our partner grounding into the floor, our partner then placed their hands on our pelvis to push down into the floor. This helped to yield into the earth as I bent my knees and softened my ankle joints, this is were I felt relaxed but still lifted towards the ceiling. This lead to doing plie's repeatedly to feel the weight in the floor, sending energy into the ground; yielding (or resisting) to then push out of the floor to resume original standing position. There is a sense of energy travelling through the body that explores through a line from the tailbone to the cranium out of the tip of the head and more. You therefore feel grounded and centred so that you are in control of what your body does. Spreading the feet and toes wide helps with this grounding sensation, so that you can hang onto your centre more and feel the floor's support. 


After the plie's with my partner, we began to include the palms of the hands touching, opposite the scapula. We firstly started by not making any contact with the hands and predicted how we would yield and push. We furthered this to connecting the palms together to see if there was any change and to see if energies could be transferred. This lead to resisting against one hand more than the other to feel the yield and push actions. This was a comfortable feeling as you had to work with someone else and you could feel your own actions and also, you could feel the other person's weight and intentions. Occasionally you could feel yourself letting go of your centre and increasing the curve to your lower spine; therefore remembering to keep your tail dropped and centre of weight connected throughout the plies. Most of your muscles will be tensed but the body will look strong and relaxed. Once this was clear and easy we then began to move around the space with our partners, turning it into a little game. See how much you could yield and how much you could push without losing balance or falling out of our centres. 


After this we found our own space in the studio and looked into: a tucked shape close to the floor to reaching out in front of yourself, jumping through front support to tucking back in. This is a yield and push action. I started to play around with this to see how much I could slowly lean out of the action and push out of my legs before hitting the floor with my hands. Yielding into the the floor to then push and pull back into the tucked shape. This is generated by the core strength originally but with the use of the legs and arms absorbing the movement. Grounding and power are the main outcomes for this movement.


We adapted this technique to all of the movement phrases we have previously done in other Bartenieff lessons. This was an eye-opener as I have never realised how much you can move your body and adapt all of these techniques to any phrase. I will always try and adapt phrases to pushing my body the most it can go. 


What Liz corrected me on in class:

• Ground myself in a crouch position; reach heels and tailbone to the floor.
• Pulling myself into things to link it together.
• Initiate from the centre to move, not hold up and be tight in the centre and assure myself to then move; link it together.