Developing Listening Bodies in the Dance Technique Class

Abstract

JOPERD • Volume 78 No. 6 • August 2007 W hat does it mean to listen? The defi nition by Merriam Webster OnLine (n.d.), “to hear something with thoughtful attention,” can serve as a useful basis for this discussion. Body listening for dance is simply to attend closely to the processes, functions, needs, and intuitions of the body within the context of dance. Although the idea of body listening is not necessarily revolutionary or ground breaking, it is, nevertheless, a concept that has been under-emphasized in the dance technique class and should be revisited. The structure of a traditional dance class does not currently offer suffi cient opportunities for students to develop a sensitized relationship with their body. In the pursuit of technical training and virtuosity, manifested in “mechanical repetitions of movements,” many dancers have actually become “disembodied from their experience” (Fortin, 2002, p. 133) and may have diminished the delicate, open-looped channel of communication with their somatic voice. The purpose of this article is to provide a practical framework for infusing a more somatic or body-listening approach into the dance class. The article will briefl y defi ne somatics and describe and exemplify fi ve somatic components of body listening for the dance technique class. A somatic or body-listening approach—culled from a wide range of scientifi c, experiential, and creative domains—emphasizes a holistic conception of the body. Thomas Hanna (1993) fi rst coined the term somatics approximately 30 years ago, citing the Greek word soma, which denotes the dynamic, living body that exists in space and time. According to Hanna (1995), somatics refers to a study of the body “from the fi rst-person viewpoint of his own proprioceptive senses” (p. 341). In recent history, the somatic perspective has been increasingly used as a tool in the dance class. Martha Eddy (2002) poignantly stated, “When the dancing body is approached from a holistic perspective, which involves experiential inquiry inclusive of physical awareness, cognitive refl ection, and insights from feelings, the dancing is somatic” (p. 119). Eddy went on to clarify that some forms of dance education are overtly somatic, and others are implicitly somatic, in so far as they focus in varying degrees on the whole person, including emotional, psychological, and even spiritual components. It is important to acknowledge the difference between the specifi c somatic-based knowledge, tools, and skills of professional practitioners in “codifi ed” modalities— such as Alexander Technique, Body-Mind Centering, and the Feldenkrais method (which Hanna studied)—and the way that the term somatic is used in this article, as it might be applied by most dance teachers. The established somatic modalities are quite in-depth and require many hours of prerequisites and specialized study. However, the most basic common denominator of these practices is the importance of the fi rst-person, experiential approach, which emphasizes awareness of sensation, Developing Listening Bodies in the Dance Technique Class