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Esther Hopkin

Dance 363

Kate Monson

December 11, 2014

Efficient and Connected Movement

Movement—whether simple or complex—is essential to life. Most people use seemingly

simple movements to complete the essential tasks of every day. They move out of necessity and

do not stop to think about how their movement style or connectedness affects their internal

thoughts and feelings (or vice versa). They rarely stop to think about how efficient their

movement is or what they could physically change to feel different during the day. On the other

hand, a day in the life of a dancer or athlete is full of extremely complex movement, and we are

constantly trying to figure out how to move more proficiently. We are also keenly aware of what

it feels like to have an “off day” and how that affects our performance. However, we sometimes

are not sure what to do to fix those off days. In my study and observation of people doing

pedestrian movement (“walking” on crutches) and ballet, I came to find that our inner feelings

and our outer approach to the world are affected by one another; and that all movement can be

more efficient, connected, and meaningful by implementing principles of body patterning.

Although I definitely did not anticipate it, watching people on crutches ended up being a

great manifestation of how Inner Connectivity and Outer Expressivity affect each other.

Movement Therapist Peggy Hackney elucidates, “Inner Connectivity and Outer Expressivity are

in a co-creative relationship to each other. And that relationship is always changing” (Hackney

36). In essence, our outer world affects our inner being, and our inner view of the world likewise

affects how we interact with it. Being on crutches inherently brings negativity into one’s life,

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and, if one is not careful, that negativity from the outside world can greatly affect the inner

psyche and therefore their movement. For example, after injuring my knee in 2012, I was on

crutches off and on for about a year-and-a-half, and I remember being frustrated with the

situation on a regular basis. The physical negativity and discomfort can be guessed fairly

intuitively: I could not wear certain clothes because they made the crutches chafe my underarms;

my teres muscles were not accustomed to being used so much and were therefore perpetually

sore; the supportive muscles around my hip joints (both the good leg and the bad leg) were tight

—the good side from overuse and overcompensation and the other from hiking my hip in order

to not drag my foot.

The mental negativity that comes along with crutches may not be as intuitive for those

who have never experienced them, it is even more detrimental and runs far deeper than the

physical. I could no longer get ready for the day quickly because of seemingly simple things like

not being able to stand on my bad leg while putting on my pants, or taking three times as long to

gather my things into my backpack from around my apartment when I was already running late.

Rushing anywhere was no longer even a possibility, especially in the icy winter. I felt like the

whole world was passing me by while I took a detour road with a ten-mile-an-hour speed limit.

In the first week or so of being on crutches, my reaction to these physical and mental

tensions was to breathe less. As Movement Therapist and Professor Peggy Hackney explains,

“breath can be influenced by and is reflective of changes in consciousness, feelings, and

thoughts” (Hackney 51). In other words, I allowed those negative feelings and thoughts to affect

my breathing; I “cut off” my inhale at about the base of my lungs, and I rarely exhaled fully. This

resulted in tension throughout my whole body, especially at the proximal joints.

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I saw this in those that I observed “crutching” as well; each of them had extreme tension

in their shoulders, and their whole body exemplified the word “down—their heads were down,

shoulders were hunched, and their overall demeanor was a little Eeyore-esque. I did not

specifically ask them how they got injured or how they felt about it because I was all-too-familiar

with it myself. Something had happened in their “outer world” to cause the injury, and the injury

had affected nuances in their movement. They were breathing heavily from the exertion of

propelling themselves forward on crutches, but their breath did not extend past the base of their

lungs, and they did not exhale fully either. They were only breathing halfway, and thus their

movement was only halfway efficient.

Thankfully, Hackney sheds some hopeful light on the situation: “We can attend to our

breathing and become attuned to changes in our own inner attitude as we go throughout our

day…. And we can consciously choose to alter our breathing to affect our feelings, thoughts, and

patterns of moving.” (Hackney 51-2). In this case, the person on crutches would be wise to take

an inventory of her breath, notice that it is shallow, and consciously choose to breathe slower and

deeper. Doing so would reverse the process mentioned above. After the injury from the outer

world affects her breathing, movement, and approach to the world, she allows her deep breathing

to relax her and move through the world more smoothly and positively. Although I did not

succeed with that every day, I gradually honed that skill in order to mentally and physically cope

with my injury. I eventually learned to change my breathing when I felt particularly frustrated or

needed to approach a situation more calmly, confidently, and collectedly.

Beyond Breath, some of the other Bartenieff Fundamentals principles that would have

made the crutching more efficient are connecting the Upper and Lower Body through the “Dead

Seven Inches” and understanding the power of the sacrum in locomotion. First, I could tell which

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of the people I observed were still fresh “crutchers” and those who were veterans by how they

connected (or did not connect) their Upper and Lower Body. Crutching requires alternating

bearing your weight on your shoulders and arms (Upper Body) with your legs (Lower Body), but

that does not mean that those two have to work as separate entities. Ideally they are connected

through the torso. As you are only using one half of your lower body, that connection can be

made in part with a Body Half sensibility—with the “good side” swinging through as one,

connected whole to bear the body’s weight again.

While Body Half does aid in connecting the Upper and Lower Body while on crutches, I

found through personal experience and observation that an even more important principle is

understanding and using the driving power of the sacrum to propel through space. The beginner

crutchers tended to either trail their pelvis behind them altogether or initially leave it behind and

then swing it through. Those that let their pelvis trail behind traced a scalloped pathway in the air

with their sacrum—one over curve followed by another as they attempted to hop along behind

their Upper Body; those that swung through traced a scalloped pathway of consecutive under

curves.

In her video, Discovering Your Expressive Body, Movement Therapist Peggy Hackney

claims that leaving the pelvis behind “means that you not effectively mobilized your weight;

[instead,] intend to go forward, and go” (Discovering). In other words, these individuals wanted

to move forward, but they were leaving the center of their body (along with their weight-bearing

and mobilizing leg) behind. Hackney continues, “Since the lower body contains the center of

weight and all the connections from the torso to the ground, it is the area which must initiate

[propulsion]. Initiating with the upper body [is ineffective] because it does not move from the

weight connection. To move through the space, you must mobilize your lower

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body” (Discovering). We learn from this that a more helpful pathway to trace in the air with the

pelvis when locomotion—including on crutches—is one continuous, straight line. This would

indicate that the sacrum is initiating the movement rather than being an afterthought.

As illustrated, Bartenieff Fundamentals can be applied to every-day movement (such as

locomoting on crutches), but it is seen possibly even more clearly in a dance setting.

Interestingly enough, Breath is one of the first Patterns of Total Body Connectivity that I noticed

as I watched an intermediate ballet class at Brigham Young University—Dance 291. As per the

norm in ballet classes, the barre began with a plié combination. Ideally, such a combination is

like one continuous, expressive, fluid motion with one gesture initiating the next. Such

continuity, expressivity, and fluidity can only be achieved if the dancer is letting his or her breath

instigate each portion of the sequence.

As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, Breath is absolutely essential to any

movement, especially if that movement is to be expressive or efficient. Stopping the breath adds

unnecessary tension and forces the muscles to do far more work than needed. Contrastingly,

imagining the breath entering the lungs and spreading through every nook and cranny of the

body all the way to the distal edges enlivens the mind and muscles. With that breath comes

oxygen that every individual cell needs. In that sense, each breath literally gives life. But breath

can be a mental image as well—an image of inhaling positivity and healing thoughts, of wind

rushing through the body to pick up mental or physical tension. It is important to remember that

this enlivening inhale will not help, however, if it is not accompanied by a full exhale. Again, this

exhale is both a literal and a figurative idea: Exhaling the air releases carbon dioxide from the

body—waste from the cells—and can be used to imagine tension, stress, and negativity leaving

the muscles and mind.

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Unfortunately, the dancers in 291 performed the motions and recreated the choreographed

shapes of the plié sequence, but there was unnecessary tension in the proximal joints, and the

individual body parts seemed somewhat stiff, disconnected from each other, and lifeless.

First, those who struggled to breathe throughout their whole body did not free up their

proximal joints to allow their breath to flow out to their distal edges. Rather than grounding and

supporting their arms through the latissimus dorsi, they lifted and held them with the deltoids—

which then caused problems with their Core-Distal connectivity. They were unable to use the

natural kinetic chain that runs from the palm to the core. There was also extra tension in the hip

flexors which was apparent in the many anterior pelvic tilts I saw. Hackney warned, “If there are

points of holding in the body, the movement will be blocked, and a dead spot will

occur” (Discovering). Such dead spots were apparent in the dancers that held tension in their

shoulders and hips. The energy in the distal edges did not come from the center, but rather died at

those “points of holding.” Hackney explains that breathing “aids me in becoming more mobile

by enabling me… to open spaces in my body…” (Hackney 54). If breath had been utilized

properly, the rigidity in the proximal joints could have dissipated and opened the pathway to

reconnect the core to the distal edges.

Breath also enlivens movement of any kind. Life was another thing lacking in the class

that I observed. All dancers recreated the shapes from the plié combination accurately, the

movements seemed forced and disconnected for some of the dancers. Certified Laban Movement

Analyst and classically trained ballet dancer Cadence Whittier reveals that “many ballet dancers

fall into the pattern of emphasizing only the shape itself. While their… positions are clear and

consistent, their transitions between the shapes are elusive” (Whittier 127-8). She goes on to say

that this focus on only the still shaping of ballet makes students lack "the subtle changes in

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breathing that accompany movement, the change[s] in the torso,” etc. (129). Thus, the dancers in

the 291 class were so focused on the shapes in the movement rather than the movement itself and

the transitions. They saw, felt, and thus demonstrated the movement as separate shapes rather a

string of fluid and connected gestures.

On the other hand, those dancers that did use their breath tended to naturally add

expression and personal uniqueness to their movement with tilting the head and actually seeing

their surroundings rather than just looking at them. Their breath seemed to connect their whole

body and all the nuances and movements to each other. Instead of performing the movement of

the different body parts as separate gestures that happened to be simultaneous, each body part

was connected to the other to create one fluid motion. They also seemed to be thinking less about

the sequence and simply allowing it to happen.

Observing the difference between the students who used their breath and those who did

not made me realize how important it is to explain how breath can enliven movement to students

at every level. Once a dancer understands the power of breath, he can use the traditional

beginning plié sequence in a ballet class to unify his breath with his movement. For instance, in

my experience, when I take the time to tune into my breath, it feels almost innate to inhale as the

hand extends before coming through fifth low and first during the customary “two demis and a

grande” sequence; to exhale each time I bend my legs and inhale as I straighten them; to inhale

and extend the gesturing arm before exhaling into a port de corps. If the dancer is in tune with

his breathing, he can use this time to reconnect to his breath patterning and center his body, mind

and attitude.

Another part of class that strongly demonstrated aspects of Bartenieff Fundamentals was

the battement sequence. The teacher generally does battements at barre, but the day that I

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observed, she chose to bring the combination into the center. It turned out to reveal that the

dancers had been relying on the barre for much of their stability because they kept stiffening up

in an effort to keep their balance.

The first principle to address with these students would be finding greater Core-Distal

connectivity. As I watched them that day, it seemed almost as if their center was surprised by the

sudden surge of energy at their distal edges as they shot it into the air. If the students imagined

energy shooting from their core out through the limbs, their center would not be able to be

surprised; it would be aware that it sent the energy out through the foot, and thus the whole body

would be able to adjust as needed.

I also noted the stabilizing power that a Cross-Lateral connection can have. Because the

students are used to holding onto the barre, stabilizing one side of their body and mobilizing the

other, their brains have organized battement movement into a Body Half sensibility. However,

moving into the center and leaving the barre behind automatically makes movement more

complex and thus requires “the most complex pattern in the basic developmental sequence”—

Cross Lateral (Hackney 177). Hackney suggests that cross-laterality, in fact, builds on Core-

Distal patterning. Students who do not have “true Cross-Lateral connections… [may feel that

their] limbs [are] separate from [their] core”in contra-lateral movements (Hackney 179). In other

words, if these dancers in 291 had felt the diagonal graining of the torso—if they had felt the

gesturing arm connecting to the moving leg through the shoulder, core, and opposite hip joint—

then the movement would become a full-body experience rather than a series of disconnected

movements.

In conclusion, it is obvious that each of us as individuals use movement every day,

whether it be simply to accomplish day-to-day tasks or to express ourselves through dance.

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Either way, it would benefit every person—dancer, athlete, or businessman—to examine how

their movement reflects their inner paradigm (or even their mood that day). Also using somatic

principles to make movement more efficient will aid in feeling more connected, whole, and

complete as an individual.

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Works Cited

Discovering Your Expressive Body. Dir. Peggy Hackney. Dance Horizon Video, 1981. VHS.

Hackney, Peggy. Making Connections: Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff

Fundamentals. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Whittier, Cadence. “Laban Movement Analysis Approach to Classical Ballet Pedagogy.” Journal

of Dance Education 6.4 (2006): 124-132. Web.