dance musings

Below is the abstract of my  article entitled Somatics in Action: How “I Feel Three-Dimensional and Real” Improves Dance Education and Training. The article was published in the The Journal of Dance Education.

The contemporary dance world, both in academic and professional settings, asks dancers to consistently engage with increasingly complex conceptual and physical dance work. Dancers in both settings must assimilate complex movement patterns, combine the technical nuances of multiple genres, reflect upon and critically assess their dancing, and achieve optimal expression in a frequently reduced amount of creative rehearsal. In the professional arena budgetary constraints (the cost of rehearsal space and the cost of paying dancers for their time) impact the rehearsal process and in the educational environment lack of adequate studio space or accessibility to studio space impact dance programs that must share space with other programs. Somatics in Action: How “I Feel Three-Dimensional and Real” Improves Dance Education and Training details a pedagogical approach to preparing university-level dancers to become twenty-first century dancers. The article focuses on incorporating multiple somatic theories, such as Alignment-Based Yoga, Classical Pilates, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and Ideokinesis, into one cohesive movement practice titled “Somatics in Action.” Further, the article illustrates how to weave this movement practice into the fabric of a traditional modern dance technique format allowing dancers to become cohesive, fluid, and mindful movers.