Dance Kinesiology Special Interest Group Meeting
International Association for Dance Medicine and Science Annual Meeting
Stockholm, Sweden
November 2005

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Small group results
Jane Baas, recorder

Participants: Jane Baas, Janet Karin, Donna Krasnow, Amy Markgraf, Mona Nixon, Claire Porter, Eva Powers, Reetta Ronkko, Nathalie Schulmann

Disclaimer: Comments are paraphrased. If a comment attributed to you is inaccurate, please send corrections to the site webmaster at the following emai: jane.baas@wmich.edu

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?

• Donna Krasnow: classes used to be small and you could go back and forth more easily between scientific analysis and experiential somatic work. This is harder to do when class sizes get too big. Ripped apart by administrative problems and budget concerns. Views self as being able bridge connections between science and somatics. Very frustrating when class size gets too large to be effective.
• Janet Karin: gets to work one at a time so can really work with both areas equally. Biomechanical understanding is good, but finer points are not good. Prefers somatic approach in the one on one approach.
• Reetta Ronkko: Very different culture. Very internal way of teaching modern dance technique in Finland, so need to provide the science. Gives them a language to speak about it.
• Donna Krasnow: The balancing act is key…..focus will shift based on needs of class.
• Nathalie Schulmann: Exteroproprioception—how the information from the environment affects the inside. Look at the study of Hungarian children and use of space. Relationship of child’s motor skills to the professional dancer. Manipulation of space in upper and lower body. Same tools working regardless of discipline.
• Claire Porter: As a learner, I need to embody something. To best learn I have to create something with the information I am studying, whether it's plies or the weather or muscles. (Namely Muscles, e.g.).
• Eva Powers: 1/3 or class turned on by the science, the rest need the lab experience.
• Jane Baas: uses a TA to assist in the process.
• Reetta Ronkko: Not even using a classroom anymore so she can move as needed.
• Donna Krasnow: World seems to be moving toward “blurring.” Somatics used to be distinct…becoming broader. The sensory work has been lost in doing “exercise”—students are becoming unclear what somatics really is about. “If it is more it must be better…”

What core information is critical for dancers to understand in order to remain healthy? Are the models getting an ideal model do you have conform on this ideal model or can it be individualized?

• Donna Krasnow: understand that the journey they are on is not towards some objectified goal. The journey is to find what is the best that their body/mind/spirit can be. What is your potential? Define goals from a personal perspective.
• Eva Powers: What does your body need more? Strength, flexibility? Dancers are expected to look the same in technique. We try to understand and respect differences.
• Mona Nixon: Must embrace and understand differences.
• Reetta Ronkko: The journey itself can be a good goal. Have to be interested in the body and the moving body first of all. Need to communicate with health professionals to be able seek help as needed. Need to help educate the health professionals.
• Jennifer Deckert: An individualized journey—this is our biggest challenge, getting the dancers to recognize it is in themselves. Opportunities to work one on one are important.
• Claire Porter: As a choreography teacher, I often find the beginning dancer creating more interesting movement material than the trained dancer. It seems that trained dancers often have the life trained out of them. They prefer what they know or they prefer to do things correctly. More work is required to encourage creativity and expression. I imagine the expression can get lost with too much emphasis on technique and not on presence in performance. Technique needs to include bringing life to the movement, bringing discovery and action to the moment and not be focused on doing it “right.”
• Jennifer Deckert: Hard to get university students back to that immediacy.
• Donna Krasnow: Need to nurture expression. Motor learning hat: Everything we are trying to impart about movement skills, that it is not a muscular event but a neuromuscular event. Need to sense how much of movement is about how the brain is talking to the body. They get in the way of the neurosystem’s ability to organize movement by trying to control individual muscles too much.
• Amy Markgraf: Where does the bridge happen….how do you get it to happen?
• Janet Karin: If you can set assessment items which require an integration of those things, the bridge the journal.
• Donna Krasnow: Might be helpful to see how everyone is assessing this information (Jane offered to put this on the web) regarding dancer’s evaluation of the artistic process. Where is the line between doing everything that the choreographer wants and when it is OK to say no because it is truly damaging.

What components do you feel your students enjoy and are able to master? With what components do they struggle?

• Eva Powers: some students love the cognitive work.
• Donna Krasnow: My students struggle with “shredding their heroes.” To deal with learning their beloved teacher gave them some misinformation…..a lot of uninformed teaching going on at the studio level.
• Reetta Ronkko: Finland also has this problem. It is a way of thinking, “How do I approach this problem?”

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