Juliana Hardman

Principles of Somatics
Kate Monson
3 December 2015
Title
Ballet had been around for 400 years and while it has evolved with each generation, it
remains firmly rooted in its heritage. This keeps ballet recognizable as a distinct art form with
such notable qualities as grace, elegance, and etherealness as well as physical traits like long, soft
lines and external rotation of the legs. On top of these qualities and traits, ballet also remains true
in the way it is taught. Class follows the same structure of beginning at the barre with exercises
like plis and tendus before moving into the center floor exercises and finally ending class with
allegro work. Exercises are learned by the teacher demonstrating the movement and calling out
the terms of each step. Students are supposed to mimic the shapes of the teacher and are correct
if they can achieve the same look as the teacher. While this has led to many beautiful dancers, it
also leads to many dancers who can only assess their movement through its outward appearance
and have very little awareness of how to initiate and judge the success of movement internally.
One consequence of this lack of awareness is that the body is unconnected. Limbs are
placed where they need to be without examining how they relate to each other to support the
movement. This often leads to students appearing correct when they can look at their positioning
in the mirror, then having issues arise when they attempt to execute the movement without any
visual input. One of the primary areas that I observed in which students struggled was
maintaining a strong, reciprocal core connection through to the distal end of each limb. This lack
of a core/distal relationship stems from the lack of awareness of the body as dancers focus on

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external appearance instead of the relationships within the body that make complex movement
like ballet possible. Therefore, ballet dancers can achieve more effective and efficient movement
by gaining an internal awareness of how to create movement especially through a stronger
core/distal connection. Furthermore, it is the teachers responsibility to help students find this
connection as students will only become aware of internal processes as the focus is taken off of
external form and transferred to how to students can create the proper movement from internal
cues. Thus my argument will have two parts: first exploring what it means to have no core/distal
relationship in movement (both in ballet and everyday movement) and how gaining that
connection improves technique and artistry, then how teachers can give the exercises and
corrections in ways that promote internal engagement and correctness as well as proper external
shape.
Peggy Hackney states in her book Making Connections: Total Body Integration through
Bartenieff Fundamentals in her chapter on core/distal patterning that, Frequently, as movement
becomes complex, movers forget that their whole body is connected and begin trying to stick
their limbs into the right places to fulfill tasks in a sort of helter-skelter way, which leads to
Limbs [that] sometimes seem to fly away or get left behind, no longer connected to the alive
action, (67). This was evident in the observed classes, though the younger and less advanced
dancers tended to lean more towards fly-away limbs and the older dancers towards limbs that
were in the right place but were too controlled through shallow muscles with no connection of
the limbs to deeper support muscles.
There were also trends more common either to the upper or lower body. In the upper
body, it is apparent that the dancers think that the steps are performed in their lower bodies and
so stick the upper body movement on as an afterthought. The upper body is not thought of as an

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equal and active part in the movement, leading the dancers to neglect to connect it into the core
and to utilize it to enhance their movement. In the younger dancers, this meant that while the legs
were placed nicely, the upper body would be flung all over the place. It is interesting to note that
since the lower body tended to lead, the dancers would tend to throw either their ribcage or arms
into the backspace of their kinesphere to try counterbalance rather than using the upper body to
help carry the body forward too. This was apparent in a short pirouette section they repeated in
an exercise. In all the pirouettes (a pirouette in pass en dehors, a pirouette in attitude derrire en
dedans, and a soutenu en tournant), the legs would drive forward while the dancers shoved their
ribcages and arms back. This stopped them from being able to find a clear vertical axis to rotate
around. While they were able to force themselves around sometimes, it took much more effort
than necessary. With too much force, the dancers were unable to control the pirouettes and were
generally unable to land them gracefully and transitioned shakily into the next turn. The concern,
which in some dancers may have been more aptly called terror, was visible in their facial
expressions and also in sporadic tension throughout their body as they felt uncontrolled and had
no sense of where they were in space.
Another phenomenon that occurred, particularly in jumps, was that the dancers would
send all of their energy into their legs and so the arms ended up in random, spastic places. Either
they would be flung way over their head if there was a lot of tension in their body or would be
floppy and bent if there was no tension. One girl had an impressive whack to a full split in her
tour jet, but her arms were bent and lazy and so made her jump appear weaker. Another girl had
so much tension that as she did a saut de chat that the energy of her legs ricocheted up her body
and made her body jerk back as if she was on a bucking bronco. The leap lacked the grace and

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sustainment needed in ballet jumps as there was just too much force being wasted in throwing
the upper body backwards.
A final occurrence in the upper body that happened in both levels of dancers was that the
heads and arms may have been placed for the picture moments, but were forgotten during
transitions. During these moments, the arm pathways became unclear and weak and often created
shapes that were broken and stunted while head movement disappeared due to tension in the
neck as the dancers thought more about what the next important moment was rather than fully
dancing each moment to connect them all together. Another component to this is that the arms
were only ever placed; they were not responding and reacting to the body. This made them feel
sterile and as such severely limited the artistry of the dancers. For example, in the advanced
class, the dancers did balancs en tournant with their arms in fourth position. While they were
putting their bodies technically in the right position, the dancers stayed very flat with their arms
in the same horizontal and vertical plane throughout the movement, rather than dipping and
carving into more interesting transverse planes. There was no energy spiraling out from the core
through the upper body into the space and returning back to enliven the core. With no dialogue
between the inner core and the outer environment, there was no chance for the dancers to express
their artistry.
In the lower body, the types of problems varied from the upper body but still were due to
a lack of core/distal connection. The greatest problem was a break in the connection between the
distal edges and the core at the infamous dead seven inches. Hackney explains that this volume
of the body between the anterior superior iliac spine and and the lesser trochanter of the femur is
important because it houses the center of gravity for the body, the femoral joint (which is the
main joint for movement in the lower body), the bottom of the spine or tail that is necessary for

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full usage and support of the spine and head, many of the muscles that control posture, plus
important organs of the reproductive and digestive organs. She further adds that usually people
feel greater joy, success, and grounding as they activate this area of their lower body (121-122).
What I saw primarily in the classes I observed were that the dancers were unable to connect the
energy of their lower extremities through the femoral joint in the dead seven inches to their core
and so lacked the support they needed and were unable to coordinate the lower body with the
upper body.
One instance where this was noticeable was in the advanced classs petit allegro. It was
meant to be quick and lively with many fast weight changes, but the dancers tended to be more
sluggish and unable to move very far if at all. This was because they were moving their legs but
not responding in the core and upper body. They yielded into the floor decently but pushed
weakly off because they did not then reach and pull with their upper bodies to get that
sustainment in the air. This gave them little air time in which to show off their feet so it lost the
sparkly vitality sought for in allegro. The lack of connection and response also made it hard for
them to shift their weight as first of all they did not isolate and flex the femur but tried to move
the hip over as one joint. Rather than being able to stretch and reach with the leading foot to get
their body moving, they were trying to dump all of their body over at once, which was too heavy
and cumbersome to move all at once so quickly without properly articulating and sequencing
through the joints. Furthermore, they had no engagement of the core and so let that and their rest
of their upper body drag along after, pulling them backwards so they could not travel very far.
Similarly, in the everyday movement I watched, there was a tendency to lose the
connection of the upper and lower bodies through the core when moving upward. I watched
people sit in and stand up from chairs, plus walk up and downhill. It is intriguing that in

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downward movement, most people naturally lead the movement from pelvis and allowed the
upper body to naturally follow and counterbalance the movement. For example, when sitting
down, a person would first reach down with their coccyx, then let their femurs easily shift in
their sockets to laterally shift their pelvis above their chair and then finish lowering onto the
chair smoothly. The upper body would lean to offset the weight shifts of the lower body so they
could easily and with control sit down. However, when standing up, people would tend to leave
their lower body behind and rely on the weight of the upper body to propel movement. For
example, when students walked uphill, rather than driving up and forward with the pelvis, they
would leave their tail behind them and lean their upper body forward. While it did work to get
more of their weight forward to help them get up the hill, it also wasted energy as their pelvis
was dragging behind them instead of pushing forward too.
Though many different issues in dance and movement occurred, all could be improved by
a stronger connection from the core to the distal edges. Laura Glaser, a dance and movement
professor, states in her article for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices that part of the
process of gaining a kinesthetic awareness of self for improved movement is to begin with
differentiated parts, explore the relationship between them, and then bring them all back into the
whole (44-45). For students, this means they need to find each of their limbs by actively using
each in class, and then using the core as a way for them to communicate to all other parts and as
the anchor to keep them all working together as a whole. Specifically with the upper body,
connecting to the core will help to make the arms and head an equal part in the conversation so
they are neither neglected or tense but instead have their own life that coordinates with the core
and though to the lower body. This will bring stability to the dancers, enabling more mobility as
they utilize the stability gained through active engagement of the upper body.

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It will also give artistry to the dancers as they can connect their upper body into their core
to give a path for the dancer to give outwardly and receive inwardly. The upper body houses the
center of levity and is humans natural area for expression and to cut it off from a deep core
support is to kill any life there. As a student in Glasers class said, I think you can really tell,
you can see from the outside when someone ... really knows and understands what they are
doing...it engages you much more as an audience member, (Glaser 51). Dancers will understand
more of what they are doing to promote artistry and expression when the upper body is not just
along for the ride but actively a part in creating dance. Connecting it to the core gives the energy
needed to become aware and understand what is happening in the upper body as well as the
pathway for heart and mind to come together to both know and feel what the dancer is trying to
express for clearer, more meaningful movement.
For the lower body, finding the connection to the core will help dancers to properly
engage their lower extremities, particularly through the dead seven inches, to enable quick,
powerful, and gliding movement in the femoral and other joints. It will help the dancers to shift
their weight easier as they support the pelvis with the core so the hip joint can move freely to
transfer weight. Also, the connection through the core helps to keep the upper body moving with
the lower so neither gets dragged behind which slows down movement and distributes weight
inefficiently.
Now that the problems associated with a weak core/distal relationship have been explored
and what improvements can be made with proper usage, it is important to research how to get
these ideas to students in ways that they will understand and incorporate into all their dancing.
Donna Dragon, a professor in the Department of Theater and Dance at Bridgewater State
University, explains that teachers tend to teach in the way they were taught, repeating ideas and

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structures that they learned as students solely because that is what they are familiar with; there is
no thought as to how to change the curriculum to best teach and inspire technique and artistry
(26). This leads to problems especially in the ballet world as the focus in the past has always
been primarily on external shape and not correct internal feedback. As the next generation of
teachers arise, they perpetuate the same ideals of outside criteria. It is then necessary for teachers
to evaluate their teaching method and to decide if how they teach is based on how to best help
students or is just what they were taught themselves. Based on the students performance in class
and the criticism and comments given in class, the following are two ways to improve kinesthetic
awareness both specifically for strengthening the core/distal relationship and for more general
improvements.
The first to improve the core/distal relationship is to teach in such a way that
demonstrates how the body is related. For example, many teachers simply say phrase like, lift
leg higher or pull opposite shoulder forward in attitude derrire. These phrases encourage
students to think of their bodies as a bunch of disconnected pieces that move separately and
inconsequentially from each other. Instead instructions should be given that enhance the idea that
a change in the center changes the entire constellation, and any change [of the constellation] has
a resultant effect on the center, (Hackney 82). Teachers can do this by phrasing their corrections
like, pull the opposite shoulder and hip together, sustaining through the core to lift the body into
proper alignment or feel the supporting leg grounded down into the floor to support the
extended leg to lift higher. These will help the students to understand how engaging their core
and sensing the relationship through it to all parts of the body can improve their awareness and
thus make their dancing more precise and intentional.

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The second is to use imagery to help students be aware of what they feel inside so they do
not need to rely on external, visual cues for judging if their movement is correct. It is easy in
ballet to just call out short commands like point harder, suck in your stomach, or turn out more,
these commands often are not carried throughout the class into different types of movements and
exercises as the students only robotically obey without paying attention to how it changes what
they feel. Using imagery can help students realize the changes they are making in their bodies,
and to figure out how to apply those changes in different situations. One student of Glasers
explains after studying the use of imagery that, I can almost see an image of my body from the
inside. And it helps a lot, I feel much more connected, (Glaser 49). With a focus on helping
students to come up with their own images for core/distal connectivity, such as Hackneys
streams vertical throughness exercise (79) to connect the head to the tail through the core, they
can build physiological cues that help to regulate their own movement and make sure they are
always connecting the core to all the limbs and back in to the center.
Ballet is beautiful and inspiring to watch, especially when the dancers bodies are
working efficiently and effectively together to express the dancers inward ideas and to take in
experience from the outside world. They do this by maintaining a strong sense of relationship to
all parts of the body, centering through the core. This keeps all parts of the body active in the
expression, so nothing is left behind to slow down or muddle the clarity of the presentation.
Students will only reach such levels of maturity and individuality in their dancing if teachers
examine their teaching styles to make sure it is beneficial and insightful and not just habit. As
teachers improve their teaching methods, students will grow stronger and more vibrant, pushing
the limits of what ballet can be. Plus, they as the next generation of teachers, will have a better

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foundation to build on when they teach their students, leading to a snowball effect that will lead
to improved methods, technique, and artistry for ballet dancers and teachers everywhere.

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Works Cited
Dragon, Donna A. Creating Cultures of Teaching and Learning: Conveying Dance and Somatic
Education Pedagogy. Journal of Dance Education 15.1 (2015): 25-32. Web.
Glaser, Laura. Reflections on somatic learning processes in higher education: Student
experiences and teacher interpretations of Experiential Anatomy into Contemporary
Dance. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 7.1 (2015): 43-61. Web.
Hackney, Peggy. Making Connections: Total Body Integration through Bartenieff Fundamentals.
1998. New York City: Routledge, 2002. Print.