Fellowship Week 2-Upper West Side nights

Image via WikipediaAs I begin week 2 of the fellowship, I am finding my stride and using the day (I arrived at 10:45 today) to settle into the neighborhood in which I am staying.  

Processing Part 2

My intentions were good, but my week (since Tuesday) was so about home and family, that in the final analysis, there were no real times that worked for my life as a "blogger/artist".  That is the reality of life as a wife and mother for many women, including myself.  It illustrates clearly why the TAA program is so crucial to teaching artists in the Boston Public Schools.

Talking about the skeleton

Today as I roll along bus, it feels as if the "stars are aligned".  Not only did I get up with a surplus of energy and good-will,  my family, who is going on this weekend of the fellowship, also got up early and full of eagerness.  We arrived at the terminal an hour ahead of our bus's departure and were able to take the earlier bus.  

So today I want to reflect on Anastasi's workshop last weekend.  There were many lessons and understandings that will continue to shape my work throughout the year.  Here are the three main concepts which I will cover in my next three posts:

1. the elegant foot as tripod (see the page link to right)
2. our breath
3. alignment

Within these categories,  a fuller understanding of these concepts was gained through the experiential work we undertook.  These are "techniques" I can grapple with and use all year long.  Looking at the foot I learned:

1.  Irene Dowd is a direct link to Lulu Sweigard, a pioneer of the ideokinesis movement.  Ideokinesis, one of the oldest mind/body training techniques was developed by Mabel Todd, a New York voice teacher, whose back injury (which impaired her ability to walk) served as the impetus to find a new way of using muscles and imagery to correct her limitations.  

As Mabel discovered her own methods, and began to move with extraordinary grace and skill, her emphasis switched to teaching other these mind-body methods.  She continued to coach voice students, and the combined practice took her to Boston.  In the 20's she moved back to New York, where she wrote her first book, The Thinking Body.  Here is a video excerpt of that work.

So Irene as that link,  has synthesized Todd, Sweigard and others.  We spent a large portion of day one on the architecture of the foot which Dowd refers to in her book as "elegant".  Here is an exerpt from the book, Taking Root to Fly:

Dowd says that

The foot itself is composed of lengthwise and crosswise arches so that each foot is somewhat like a dome with a triangular base. Ideally, when we are standing still, the weight of the leg transfers from the ankle equally forward and back, one half of the weight going through the heel and one half going through the ball of the foot. (p. 30 in Taking Root to Fly).

As a class we experienced this "tripod of support" through a series of deep muscle movements in not only the foot, but the leg, hip and abdominal muscles, as we learned through our  exploration, no muscle works by itself. Look for the lesson, Tripod 3, under my resource links.

Much of our work was based on Feldenkrais practices, which opened my eyes to a more whole bodied approach to both dancing and injury prevention and treatment.

2. Another experiential lesson we attended to was one concerning our breath.  We looked in depth at the myriad of muscles and connective tissue that were involved and our focus was on the different muscles we could train ourselves to feel and utilize.  I will talk about this more in depth later.

3.  Finally, we spent time discovering and manipulating our own alignment through the visualization of our spinal column, shoulder joint, upper, mid and lower back muscles as well as the nerves, fascia, tendons and ligaments.  

 This weekend is about Irmgard Bartinieff, another pioneer of the mind/body movement, and a contempory of Feldenkrais.  She studied with Rudolf Laban before fleeing Europe to the United States, and I will be very excited to post what I learn about her method on Saturday and Sunday.

Until my next post- ktk