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
Tom Welsh, recorder

Participants – Charlotte Furst, Pamela Hezzelwood, Emanuela Iacopini, Karin Jemsby, Ilona Kauppinen-Hukkanen, Jorinda Rietmulder, JoAnn Staugaard-Jones, Tom Welsh
(We offer our apologies to any whose names are not recorded correctly)

We started the discussion with the questions, but agreed not to hold narrowly to those topics, if the discussion leads us in a different direction. Here is a summary of our group's comments.

A. Science vs. Somatics Approach

• We concluded at the start, that no one was really recommending excluding either approach; for best effect they have to be integrated.
• To do the science of dance effectively, DKTs need access to biomechanical tools (like force plates, EMG, motional analysis, etc.), and many don't have access to such tools.
• We cannot push the science components too hard, or we may make our dancers resistant to its application.
• Dancer who take anatomy courses in other departments generally do not do well in applying the knowledge and skills from those courses to their work as dancers; dancers need dancer-specific anatomy and kinesiology courses.

B. Core information/skills

• One important purpose is to teach the why and how of warm-up and cool down, since they are so important to dancers' readiness to learn and to sustaining their health over an extended career in dance.
• We can give dancers a bag of tools they can take with them; our job is to help them make educated choices, and to help them integrate the variety of inputs to their preparation as dancers.
• We should tell dancers that their understanding will grow with experience; they will see the effects over time; some come back later and say, "Now I get it."
• We can show dancers that doing the same thing from different points of view can change their awareness.
• Cardio-respiratory training - Who's responsible, given our dancer's busy schedules and our programs' already crowded curricula?
• Specific training challenge - Bringing the armpit down.
• Young dancers use too much effort, so part of our assignment is teaching movement efficiency.
• DKTs teach and use a variety of somatic-based approaches (Alexander, Pilates, Gyrotonic, Floor Barre, Rosin Method, etc); one of the challenges we face is successfully integrating them in the classroom.
• Teaching dancers to trust their bodies and what their bodies are telling them, rather than letting teachers and choreographers push them to do overly risky movements.
• A major challenge is to help dancers not go back to an old habit that is, in some way, limiting.

C. Teaching/learning strategies

• Theory and practice must be mixed for maximum impact; too much reliance on one approach can get boring.
• Kines teaching should be layered on top of a movement experience.
• Dancers learn the various pieces of what they need to survive, gradually and throughout their training; we cannot rush it all in the 1st year they are with us.
• Consistency in skill develops over time.
• Trying to give our dancers too much information at once, will probably guarantee that they miss something important; our aim should be to convey the essentials.
• Integration strategy - Practice a new concept/skill during floor barre (for example) first; then explain its scientific basis; and finally get the dancers to use it while dancing.
• Readiness & Progression - One approach is to build a solid foundation and add to it systematically (e.g., Pilates); another is to just start moving and then refine the movement as you go (e.g., Gyrotonic).
• Some skills do not need to be "taught;” rather, dancers need a safe place to try on different somatic strategies so they can experience the effects on their movement.
• Some DKTs have had success with mini (20 min.) lectures embedded within a class devoted primarily to movement training.
• Technique teachers should be consistent and persistent in their teaching approach, so dancers can get a chance to feel the depth of the movement approach; this may be especially important when dancers are taking classes from and rehearsing with a number of different teachers and choreographers.
• There needs to be a balance between consistency and variety in teachers and training approaches.

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