At the
opening of the Olympics, the words ‘faster, higher, stronger’ were in the air. Having just returned from 2 weeks of moving with Lisa and Vicky, I pondered these words as they relate to my dancing.
My first revelation came when, in 1972, I met Pytt (Gerda Geddes) and started attending her T’ai Chi classes. In his book, ‘Dancer in the Light, the life of Gerda ‘Pytt’ Geddes’, Frank Woods quotes Pytt speaking about former Graham dancer, Jane Dudley, who was Lisa’s first dance teacher: ‘Jane used to teach in Studio 3, just above me, and I would hear her shouting: ‘Faster, faster, faster; jump higher, higher, higher,’ whilst I would be saying: ‘Slower, slower, slower; breathe deeply, sink down into the pelvis, and relax.’ . . . . Jane ‘was part of the dance training which was physically very, very hard. We discussed it and we always disagreed about the rigour of what she was doing against the softness of t’ai-chi. But Jane already had arthritis by then. . . . . . . I kept on saying to her, ‘Do be careful, listen to yourself, listen to your own body.’ But she would say . . . ‘oh no, you can’t be a dancer without using force, you have to use lots and lots of force, and this softness is no good.’ We had endless discussions. . . . . . Then she started coming to my classes and became very enthusiastic. I think she saw something in this softness, the yielding part of my movement. It was against her way of thinking, but despite herself she saw something important there.’
With many years of T’ai Chi practice behind me, I’ve found that when I slow down, I understand the subtlety of each moment in the pathway of a movement, its logic, its initiation, in a way that I can never perceive when I move fast. This slowing down and resulting deepened understanding then allows me to play the movement along the whole spectrum from slow to fast. With less effort.
Slowing, softening and deepening are words I use frequently when I teach.
Bruce Frantzis, in his book ‘Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body’, writes, sinking your chi ‘means a complete release, a complete letting go of any sense of control, contraction, strength or binding inside your tissues and nerves, until holding of any kind is replaced by a complete sense of openness, space and comfort . . . . . . In terms of working with chi, feelings of strength indicate blockages, places in your body where chi is not circulating in a healthy, steady flow. The paradox is this, the more you feel strength, the weaker your chi.’ Through this kind of letting go, ‘hard, stiff, tight muscles will become softer but with significantly more tone.’ One discovers ‘An easy, relaxed, and effortless power that cannot be gained by any amount of physical training or weightlifting.’
Lisa, Vicky and I, all share the experience of dancing with Trisha (Brown). In her liquid, easy style, we learned to smooth the edges. You can’t do this kind of dancing by pushing. Rather, the movement is ‘allowed’ to happen.
In her essay, "Dance and Art in Dialogue 1961-2001" Marianne Goldberg says,
‘Brown released the dancer's "set," a particular tensile way of holding the body in the forties and fifties, which she had learned through studies at Mills and at the Merce Cunningham Studio after she arrived in New York in 1961. Through Alexander and also intensive, long-term study of another emerging form, Kinetic Awareness, founded by the Judson choreographer and filmmaker Elaine Summers, Brown began to initiate movement from very different kinesthetic knowledge. These newly surfacing somatic ideas offered alternatives to how to hone her body for dancing. She shed the stylized use of her muscles and the tensile alertness through the spine and skin. Focusing instead on subtleties of elegant, relaxed alignment of her spine and limbs, she moved with ease and a spatial clarity that stemmed from innovative inner imagery. Brown looks at home physically in these moves, and a different virtuosity and creativity emerged, grounded in anatomically clear and efficient action. New sensations, perceptions, and energy developed within her body and between body, space, time, and geometry. . . . . . When she formed her company in the early seventies, she chose performers who also reconceived the human structure and the meaning of physical skill.’
All three of us, Lisa, Vicky and I, have traveled the path from hard to soft.
Vicky tells us stories about her Russian ballet teacher who used to tell the class to get their legs ‘higherrr, higherrr’. I watch Vicky now as she dances. Her ‘father’ dance is beautifully crafted. She unfolds stories within stories, threads opening, returning, weaving; humor, sadness, pain. She moves with a delicacy and fragility, a vulnerability that mirrors her speaking. But there’s also strength, visible in the clarity of her moving, her angular shapes, loose and weighted, abandoned, subtle yet compelling.
While Lisa and I were teaching together at EDDC, our children were still young. I became more generous with my acceptance of the shifting quality of time and space after I became a mother. My intuitive sense became honed to respond to my child’s needs. This quality entered my work. I watched Lisa’s dancing also soften during this time. Her ‘straight lines’ yielded more, her edges became more permeable. Watching her perform, I was able to drop even deeper into her inner self, her life blood, her source. Watching her now as she moves through her ‘father’ dance, I’m touched, both Vicky and I are touched, by her honesty, her passion. Her moving is laced with gestural detail, has intensity, is charged and totally committed. Her movement material is so undeniably her.
opening of the Olympics, the words ‘faster, higher, stronger’ were in the air. Having just returned from 2 weeks of moving with Lisa and Vicky, I pondered these words as they relate to my dancing.My first revelation came when, in 1972, I met Pytt (Gerda Geddes) and started attending her T’ai Chi classes. In his book, ‘Dancer in the Light, the life of Gerda ‘Pytt’ Geddes’, Frank Woods quotes Pytt speaking about former Graham dancer, Jane Dudley, who was Lisa’s first dance teacher: ‘Jane used to teach in Studio 3, just above me, and I would hear her shouting: ‘Faster, faster, faster; jump higher, higher, higher,’ whilst I would be saying: ‘Slower, slower, slower; breathe deeply, sink down into the pelvis, and relax.’ . . . . Jane ‘was part of the dance training which was physically very, very hard. We discussed it and we always disagreed about the rigour of what she was doing against the softness of t’ai-chi. But Jane already had arthritis by then. . . . . . . I kept on saying to her, ‘Do be careful, listen to yourself, listen to your own body.’ But she would say . . . ‘oh no, you can’t be a dancer without using force, you have to use lots and lots of force, and this softness is no good.’ We had endless discussions. . . . . . Then she started coming to my classes and became very enthusiastic. I think she saw something in this softness, the yielding part of my movement. It was against her way of thinking, but despite herself she saw something important there.’
With many years of T’ai Chi practice behind me, I’ve found that when I slow down, I understand the subtlety of each moment in the pathway of a movement, its logic, its initiation, in a way that I can never perceive when I move fast. This slowing down and resulting deepened understanding then allows me to play the movement along the whole spectrum from slow to fast. With less effort.
Slowing, softening and deepening are words I use frequently when I teach.
Bruce Frantzis, in his book ‘Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body’, writes, sinking your chi ‘means a complete release, a complete letting go of any sense of control, contraction, strength or binding inside your tissues and nerves, until holding of any kind is replaced by a complete sense of openness, space and comfort . . . . . . In terms of working with chi, feelings of strength indicate blockages, places in your body where chi is not circulating in a healthy, steady flow. The paradox is this, the more you feel strength, the weaker your chi.’ Through this kind of letting go, ‘hard, stiff, tight muscles will become softer but with significantly more tone.’ One discovers ‘An easy, relaxed, and effortless power that cannot be gained by any amount of physical training or weightlifting.’
Lisa, Vicky and I, all share the experience of dancing with Trisha (Brown). In her liquid, easy style, we learned to smooth the edges. You can’t do this kind of dancing by pushing. Rather, the movement is ‘allowed’ to happen.
In her essay, "Dance and Art in Dialogue 1961-2001" Marianne Goldberg says,
‘Brown released the dancer's "set," a particular tensile way of holding the body in the forties and fifties, which she had learned through studies at Mills and at the Merce Cunningham Studio after she arrived in New York in 1961. Through Alexander and also intensive, long-term study of another emerging form, Kinetic Awareness, founded by the Judson choreographer and filmmaker Elaine Summers, Brown began to initiate movement from very different kinesthetic knowledge. These newly surfacing somatic ideas offered alternatives to how to hone her body for dancing. She shed the stylized use of her muscles and the tensile alertness through the spine and skin. Focusing instead on subtleties of elegant, relaxed alignment of her spine and limbs, she moved with ease and a spatial clarity that stemmed from innovative inner imagery. Brown looks at home physically in these moves, and a different virtuosity and creativity emerged, grounded in anatomically clear and efficient action. New sensations, perceptions, and energy developed within her body and between body, space, time, and geometry. . . . . . When she formed her company in the early seventies, she chose performers who also reconceived the human structure and the meaning of physical skill.’
All three of us, Lisa, Vicky and I, have traveled the path from hard to soft.
Vicky tells us stories about her Russian ballet teacher who used to tell the class to get their legs ‘higherrr, higherrr’. I watch Vicky now as she dances. Her ‘father’ dance is beautifully crafted. She unfolds stories within stories, threads opening, returning, weaving; humor, sadness, pain. She moves with a delicacy and fragility, a vulnerability that mirrors her speaking. But there’s also strength, visible in the clarity of her moving, her angular shapes, loose and weighted, abandoned, subtle yet compelling.
While Lisa and I were teaching together at EDDC, our children were still young. I became more generous with my acceptance of the shifting quality of time and space after I became a mother. My intuitive sense became honed to respond to my child’s needs. This quality entered my work. I watched Lisa’s dancing also soften during this time. Her ‘straight lines’ yielded more, her edges became more permeable. Watching her perform, I was able to drop even deeper into her inner self, her life blood, her source. Watching her now as she moves through her ‘father’ dance, I’m touched, both Vicky and I are touched, by her honesty, her passion. Her moving is laced with gestural detail, has intensity, is charged and totally committed. Her movement material is so undeniably her.
Even now, in our 50s, our bodies are resilient, our dancing is strong. We can call up integrated speed, and we can plumb our depths. I return to the words, ‘faster, higher, stronger’ and think no, I’ll stay with slower, deeper, softer, and more powerful.
(Eva)
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