Contemporary Dance V (Self assesement)

‘The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body’. As Martha Graham said, our body is our tool which helps us to experiment and explore ourselves as well as other creatures. Experiments and explorations are the part of personal development. I think that every student wants to achieve as much as it is possible during all the classes in order to be able to assess himself as well as to be assessed by a tutor. Unfortunately, I believe that it is impossible to become perfect in everything during such a short time. According to that, I set myself a few goals in the beginning of a term.

The most important goals are to improve my flexibility, to discover the flow in my movements, to get rid of tension in my body while I am moving, to develop the ability of coordination and to be always present in space in order to catch the information as quickly as it is possible.

First of all, during Contemporary Dance V I pay a lot of attention to my flexibility. Some people have built-in flexibility since they were born; however, others have to put more efforts to become more flexible. I have noticed from before that turn outs from the hips are very challenging for me. Since my first lesson in University of Nicosia, I kept reminding myself to relax my hip joints in order to let the turn out to be more opened. In fact, hard work needs to be done in order to succeed. 

Second but not less important goal is to discover the fluidity in my movements as well as to exclude tension where there is no need to use it. I have noticed that I start releasing my tension only then when I am confident in what I am doing. As soon as I know the sequence by heart, I start to pay attention to how my body responds to the movement without thinking about what is following next. I strongly believe that low self-esteem might be a reason for tension to appear. However, in the course of these two months, I have achieved satisfying results. I have to admit that it was hard to switch from Coventry University’s teaching approach to Nicosia’s University approach but now I feel the difference in the posture of my body and in my way of moving. I started to release the shoulder blades and I started to feel that the shoulder joints gave the appearance of having space in them. All those changes gave freedom to my hands and arms to perform wide range of functions with less effort and without thinking.

Ability of coordination is another goal which needs to be eventually succeeded. It is ongoing process, even though results can be seen by now. Coordination of one’s body means the ability to control your own body. I find it difficult to coordinate few body parts at the same time. The bad habit is to be concerned about specific body parts. I understand that I have to take care of my body and no one else will coordinate it instead of me. I am aware that body coordination depends from nervous coordination and hormonal coordination. What is more, muscular, skeletal and nervous systems have to interact in order to create a secure coordination of my body. Nevertheless, it is my personal responsibility to work on it.

The last goal which I have set myself is to be always present in space and to be opened as well as flexible to any changes that may occur during the creative process. I strongly believe that I am always present in space and my ability to follow the sequences is getting better during every lesson. I had to switch immediately from release based techniques and improvisation to set material and practices drawing on techniques of Cunningham and Lewitzky. This challenge has given me the opportunity to learn new things and ways of moving using the images of my skull and spine connection.

Finally, this practice helps me to develop my sensory awareness as well as kinesthetic awareness. This method of teaching, where human anatomy and dance are introduced as one unit, provides the possibility to develop not only as a dancer but as human being too. The perception of my body is constantly changing and revealing the progress of my body and mind. Knowledge about all bones, tissues, muscles and joints has influenced my attitude to my own instrument – body. There are a lot of things I would like to change or be successful in as a dancer; however I have chosen these goals, mentioned above, because they have a great impact on my body, personality and my mentality.