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Body Processes Awareness

This is an excerpt from Discovering Dance-2nd Edition by Gayle Kassing.

Focus on becoming aware and sensing your body processes, breathing, and breath phrasing while moving (sensing your personal space and the dance space environment, the connectivity of parts of your body to each other and to the ground, and initiations of movements). Initiate these processes and then integrate them into dance movements. Dance teachers often incorporate these practices into technique classes. There are four principles to explore and integrate into the processes of learning dance movements:

1. Breathing and breath phrasing are the first steps to attain body awareness, beginning with the warm-up, continuing through the dance technique class, and ending after the cool-down at the end of the class.
2. Sensing your body in the environment begins with you locating your personal space within the dance space and engaging the senses of seeing, hearing, and touching parts of the space (floor, walls, and people). The information you receive from your senses should converge into your processes of moving in the space and with other people.
3. Connectivity within your body and with the ground amplifies how you concentrate on your body’s resistance or yielding to the ground as you move.
4. Initiation of movement begins with understanding the origin of a movement and the expansion of the movement through a part of the body or the entire body for learning the accuracy and efficient execution of movement.

Collectively, these processes applied to dance movement create a new sense of the body by promoting and enhancing body functions to improve ease of movement and prevent injury by creating a strong connection between the body and the mind (Brodie and Lobel 2004).

Brain-Based Learning

Brain-based learning has been embraced by the arts and dance as important avenues of physical expression and emotional connection. Deep meaning comes from social, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual parts of your life. Neuroscientists focus on how dancing coordinates complex movements to feed the brain, convey meaning, and express emotion, which transfers into enhanced learning by the dancer (see figure 2.5). As kinesthetic learning, dancing uses the movement center of the brain to fuel moving and thinking, which, in turn, improve thinking and coping with stress.

Brain-based learning applies to dancing and dance making. As you engage in your dance studies, you will navigate learning and application of new information and processes to gain fluency in multiple dance forms and their vocabularies (Hanna 2016). Brain-based learning provides ways to interconnect many of the brain processes at work while you experience your dancing, dance making, and dance appreciation.

Stress is part of everyday life, which often includes demanding situations. Negative stressors are causes for distress, while positive stressors can lead to eustress. Eustress is a heightened sense of excitement you can get from demanding but positive situations such as participating in adventure activities, the arts, and dance. Negative stressors can be physical, emotional, social, or environmental, such as a difficult breakup, not getting enough rest, or being sick. Deep breathing, relaxation exercises, regular physical activity, and laughter are some ways to cope with distress.

More Excerpts From Discovering Dance 2nd Edition

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