"like you want to hit something.."

It looks like we had fun--and we did--but it was more than just a killer fun class. IE/ID decided to do a Piloxing teacher training. Piloxing is the creation of Vivica Jensen and it's a rock- out class that combines Pilates, boxing and dance. IE has been taking the class at Bay Club Marin for the last year and even subbing periodically.

So while IE/ID has a pretty good handle on dancing, and to some extent Pilates, boxing is a complete stretch. On top of all, that learning how to structure a class combining all those elements seamlessly and making it a realworkout is a complete mystery. The more IE subbed the more she really wanted to know how to teach a class, and the only way to do that was to take the training.

Senior Master Trainer Jordan Ballard  loves what she does and it certainly shows.  She had us Piloxing 


from 9-5--with 45 min for lunch and a few sit-down minutes to write anatomical or musical tips and then she would say, “Ok, let’s get up and do it.”  Her favorite refrain was "booty back," to which we would all giggle, then relax and enjoy the process.

It made IE/ID think though: What does it mean to fearlessly stick your butt out?  Or to throw that punch “like you want to hit something.” It means dropping completely into the moment, and  being in the movements that are familiar as well as those that feel awkward, strange and even a little scary.
 

Here’s to learning new moves and finding them refreshing and fun.Then turning around and figuring out how to teach them, making it even more fabulous!

Thanks Vivica!!

IE/ID

Injury as revelation, part one, Gryokinesis

It happens to us all—the regular body doing its everyday chores, the super body doing its extraordinary 

feats, one day it happens

 Injury.

What do we do? What is an Inveterate Dancer (ID) or an Intrepid Exerciser (IE) to do?

Injuries craft the body as much as exercise. The trick is to let the information come and then to incorporate it into the “healed” body. When we utilize all the body's material, the painful and pleasurable, we gain our truest, fullest moving body. This is the first of several pieces on Pilates and Gyrokinesis, two modalities that show us how we can uncover our own unique body of knowledge: the one that comes from both injury and athletic striving.  

Gyrokinesis

Gyrokinesis founder Juliu Horvath  was an athlete and a dancer who suffered many injuries. For a well written in-depth history check out Kathy Van Patten’s article, history of Julio

 

He studied yoga, acupuncture, and a variety of other disciplines and developed a new way of looking at the body. It all stemmed from what he so eloquently stated, “I want music and poetry in my body, I want to be skillful without struggle.” 

What is so different for IE about Gyrokinesis is that it challenges the body and mind to think and move fluidly through all three dimensions.  See the below video for the opening exercises.

Class is taught in a circle on a stool for beginners.  They start by scooping the body forward and backward and then turn to one leg and dip the head. Then they begin to spiral, to the front, back and side. The breath feeds the fluidity, combining hollowing out breaths and small puffing ones.

As the class progresses you feel your body as a three dimensional tool, building a sense of what is behind you, above you, all around you. You begin to visualize and feel what is inside you and around you.

It is very natural not forced and simply comes upon one

Isadora and jooking

I went to Duncan class excited, I

couldn’t wait to learn how to dance like floating fairies or hell bent furies.

It looked simple.

Still how can you make that open legged gallop light as Botticelli’s “Primavera” and strong enough to travel across the stage?  I found myself inside a position and let it go from me. I looked in the mirror and wondered was that me? maybe not, maybe so. I chose not to know. Dancing the Narcissus for me was about feeling and not feeling: knowing your body hard and fast, and then yielding to a moment of flight.

It surprised me how it felt remembered and fresh, alive but ancient. The movement Isadora found and brought to us wasn’t just hers alone. It came from her body, but its source was beyond her. In her book, The Art of the Dance she said she wanted “..to bring to life again the ancient ideal, not to copy it, but to breathe its’ life, to recreate it in one’s self with personal inspiration, to start from its beauty, and then go toward the future dance.”

Isadora Duncan, The Art of the Dance p. 96

That’s what makes it beautiful in a way that is so simple it takes you by surprise as you think about again later. When you dance it seems simple and then something happens, a trigger goes off and you feel that you are inside a much larger place. Lois would say Isadora opened up a window. It’s still open, we continue to dance in and out of it.

Alistair Maculay, the dance critic of the NYT, wrote an article a few weeks ago describing how when he saw Lil Buck jooking he remembered a line of Isadora “I have seen America dancing."  He felt his notions of beauty art and society were extended when he saw these young LA dancers in rehearsal.

I thought it would be interesting to place clips of these two artists side by side. Examine their innovations, the dance they embody.

The clip of Isadora is the only extant verifiable moving film. It is very short so you have to watch it many times. But look at the utter abandon, the pure lift of the solar plexus and the heart. She yields her body to a great force that runs easy and free through her body. Her dancing body was like a tuning instrument channeling a clear and powerful grace.

In the Lil Buck video I see his desire to embody a form to his own method. Look at the turns with the leg crooked but extended, his feet on a forced point that sides over the side of ankle. His dying swan takes power form the ground and lifts from there and gets almost airborne,  especially toward the end where he see saws and spins into the horizontal mid-plane.

As YoYo Ma plays the music’s sorrow and desire for freedom, watch how it ripples though Lil Buck’s body, elegant and fluid like breath coursing into all the necessary places. Like Isadora I see a body making a dance that is natural to itself and yet in giving over completely to the melding of style and emotion becomes more than that.