In a previous post, it was posited that those who cannot do, teach.
CORRECTION: This recently proven corollary was accidentally left out:
Those who cannot do, learn; and those who cannot learn, suck.
Alex Davison regrets the error.
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All posts tagged “Dance”
The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Proper Shampoo
While stretching, many young dancers realize that lessening the tension in one area of the body will lessen the tension in all areas. Russia, which has historically been on the forefront of dance excellence, quickly realized the potential to extend this lesson to all areas of life.
If you want to achieve your dreams; if you want to be flexible and successful, start with your shampoo.
Injury Prevention
I get many questions about avoiding dance injuries. In a highly competitive and increasingly physical field, many dancers find it difficult to balance their desire to go hard with their desire to enjoy a lasting dance career. Advancements in sports medicine, physical therapy, stretching, and our understanding of technique have proven to be a double-edged sword: Dancers are now capable of movements that would have been impossible without these improvements, but such movements continue to increase the need for ever more advances.
Rather than committing to a cycle like that, the most effective way to avoid injuring yourself while dancing is to injure yourself doing something else entirely.
Why else would this woman, ostensibly charged with the physical well-being of her student, be performing such a stretch?
Obviously she is making sure that her student will never injure herself dancing by making sure that her student will never dance. What pragmatism! By preventing the problem before it ever has a chance to arise, this woman should be held up as a teacher who truly cares about preventing dance injury.
To be fair, she is far from the only one. Feel free to comment with stories and pictures of other teachers who are also highly motivated to prevent dance injuries by preventing dancing.
Listen to Bob Hope
When considering whether to learn a new trick or learn how to dance, take a moment and remember what Bob Hope would say.
Practice Dance Safety
#4: When considering dance safety, always keep in mind the physical limits of a dance space-width, depth, and HEIGHT. While your dance space might have a high ceiling, remain aware of any hanging lights.
A Good Attitude
I see a lot of students with bad attitudes. This is funny because right now dancers are imagining one thing while non-dancers are imagining another. You are both correct. I see a lot of students with bad attitudes and bad attitudes, and its time to address both. But I am only going to address one.
There is only one perfect attitude to have in class. In fact, cultivating this attitude will do wonders even outside of class. The perfect attitude looks like this:
It can also look like this:
And sometimes this:
And definitely this:
Just fill yourself with wonder and you will be all set.
‘But teacher, how can we fill ourselves with wonder about movements that we have done thousands of times already?’
Obviously, this baby is not like the other babies. Do not fret. Everyone’s baby has wonderment inside just waiting to be discovered. Just let your baby be constantly amazed.
Difficult? Yes. But all you need to remember is that “Your attitude almost always determines your altitude in life,” meaning that no matter how impossible it may seem for you to master a specific concept, it is not impossible, because someone more advanced than you has already figured it out and boiled it down into a cute, folksy aphorism.
Dance in art
Dance is the best art form. This is why artists of other genres continually attempt to capture the incomparable beauty of dance in their own works. We see dance in paintings, sketches, sculptures, and masterful film documentaries like the contemporary ‘Black Swan.’
These various depictions of dance are alright. Of course, we can all agree that they are not as good as the dancing itself, but they are rather cute in their own little ways. Because of this cuteness, I am putting together a series of dance depicted in other mediums. To start with, I have the famed French impressionist painter Edgar Degas.
Edgar Degas looks vaguely annoying
(As a brief aside, Degas apparently rejected the label ‘impressionist’ during his lifetime. However, now he is dead and, like, every art book says he was definitely an impressionist, which goes to show that if people hear something enough it becomes true. This blog is fantastic!)
Degas, whose name is pronounced to rhyme with ‘Vegas,’ was unable to dance and so resigned himself to using his other talents to depict dance instead. All told, more than half of his works feature dance and dancers, pointing to a powerful obsession that Degas never overcame.
While it has been claimed that this obsession was simply with the beauty of dance, the benefit of looking back through history lets us see that he was actually grappling with an overwhelming bitterness towards the entire dance world. This is shown in his many paintings and sketches that depict leading ballerinas with silly port de bras, low extensions, and poor turnout.
What are they even doing, Edgar?
Do not be fooled by those who maintain that Degas was faithfully portraying the level of ballet technique at the time. His brush with dance left him bitter and broken, and he was deliberately satirizing the famous dancers of the time. And in doing so, he captured the true power of dance.
Drinking Disclaimer
When drinking, drink responsibly. No one wants to spend the night sleeping on his face and hanging halfway off the bench outside.
Irresponsible drinking leads to what will probably be severe neck pain
Dance Anatomy
With constant searching, I have finally found a picture that clearly shows the primary muscles a dancer uses. However, I realized that some of the names for the various muscle groups were too technical for many students. Therefore, what follows is an explanation of each technical term.
As we see, basic dance anatomy consists of five primary muscle groups used by every ballet dancer. First, and most important, is the body sweater. The body sweater comprises all core muscles and keeps the dancer’s spine in alignment.
Next, we have the tutu, or pelvis. While not a muscle, the pelvis must be kept in alignment to dance properly. Further, it houses muscles that are essential in avoiding embarrassing accidents: the pelvic floor muscles.
Attaching to the pelvis are the tights, which in English we call ‘legs.’ The legs are used often in dancing, and must therefore be very strong.
Supporting the legs are the ribbons, or ‘ankles.’ Dancers must cultivate strong ankles in order to perform cool moves like relevé.
Finally, all of the dancer’s weight is often supported by the toeshoe, or the collection of small tendons and ligaments in the foot. These must all be extremely strong in order to give the dancer stability and control, but cannot be too tight, or the dancer will suffer pain and even toeshoe syndrome (plantar fasciitis).
Claire Davison
Potentially more fun than being famous is being close friends with someone who is famous. This garners all of the status increase without any loss of privacy. To that end, I present Claire Davison. Claire is my sister and is currently dancing with American Ballet Theater in Manhattan. She is also killing it in Ballerina Project photo shoots around the city. If you have not visited the Ballerina Project, I highly recommend that you check it out. In phase two of the project, they aim to use the data collected from photographing hundreds of ballerinas to create one super ballerina with genetic enhancements.
Till then, we have a plethora of delightful pictures to enjoy, such as the one below. Please admire it and don’t forget that I’m her brother (Alex Davison). Enjoy!
