Archive for steps
September 27, 2007 at 4:28 am · Filed under ballet, dance, american ballet theater, class, SANDI, steps, damian woetzel
No Picture to go with this post, but I have been terrified to try to get back to class- sooo out of shape. I haven’t stepped foot into STEPS on Broadway since I was going to PCS, and that’s a LONG time ago. So, a friend recommended Kathy Sullivan’s beginner class (I want to get in good enough shape to take from Judy Rice!) and I went last week. I could barely walk all weekend, but I went back today, and already felt better. Kathy is great for adults without much childhood training, because she really has eagle eyes about bad habits and will not let you get away with them.
Anyway, the point of this post is really what happens after my class, which is a go stare at the real dancers.. Gelsey Kirkland was subbing today, so I perched in the doorway and watched Julie Kent, Damien Woetzel, Dena Abergel (who I graduated with, but I doubt would remember me) etc.. doing beautiful adagio. I recognized some other faces, but couldn’t place names. Then changed next to Tess Reichlen in the dressing room, which will probably make you NYCB-ers laugh that this is a big deal to me. I feel like I know you guys from reading all your post. I almost introduced myself, but then I though.. hmm.. does Tess read The Winger? Another girl there was talking to Tess about Gwyneth and lunch and it made me giggle. I am so in awe of the discipline it takes to be a professional dancer. I mean, singing takes discipline too, but it is nowhere near as demanding in my opinion.
I am just amused at myself for being so enamored with the process that you guys live every day, especially after meeting fans/audience members who felt that way about what I do.
That’s all! 
Recent Posts by sandi degeorge
August 21, 2007 at 4:31 am · Filed under ballet, dance, teaching, history, abt, teacher, ballerina, style, steps, baryshinkov, TAYLOR
Posted by Taylor Gordon
(I’m a little late with this post seeing as Gelsey’s guest teaching finished last week, but forgive me…things have been crazy.)
One of the best (and sometimes worst) things about the ballet world is that it is so small. Especially in American ballet history, it’s easy to trace a lineage of teachers and see where we fall in the “family tree” of ballet education. With so few professional dancers and even fewer notable teachers, ballet is one of the few art forms where we can truly learn from the legends in a personal classroom setting.
I’m writing about this because recently Gelsey Kirkland spent 3 weeks teaching open classes at Steps on Broadway. Regarded as one of ABT’s finest dancers while under the direction of Mikhail Baryshnikov, she has been out of the limelight until recently. This past spring she helped to restage The Sleeping Beauty for ABT and also performed the role of Carabosse in the production.
And from July 30-August 17 she taught Professional Advanced level open ballet as a substitute for her mentor, David Howard.
First of all, it is ironic that she was teaching in the place of her former teacher, a legend in his own right. But besides that I think it’s wonderful that she, and many other brilliant dancers and coaches, dedicate their post-performing careers to passing on the traditions of ballet. It’s nice that there are well-trained dance educators in regional areas to provide solid training to aspiring dancers, but there is something truly special about learning from ballet “stars,” if you will.
What struck me most in Gelsey’s class was her unbelievable, purely classical porte de bras. Every combination she demonstrated was mesmerizing because of her upper body. She spoke a lot about the focal points a dancer should use, referring to the level of the eyes going up to the balcony, straight ahead, or into the orchestra pit, and emphasized their use even during barre exercises.
Though she taught in a more strictly classical style than I am used to, she wasn’t overly pushing for the class to maintain her specifications. Her hard-to-work-with reputation preceded her, but she was nice and a very effective teacher! I found myself deliberately trying to recreate the shapes she made with her upper body, no matter how unnatural they felt to me. I guess it’s something you learn by osmosis after a while: there are some things in ballet that just can’t be taught, but hopefully after observing that “special something” for a while it will rub off and in sink in to your own technique.
I was only able to take her open class twice, but I’ve found this to be true with other “legends” with whom I’ve worked. Cynthia Gregory, another ABT prima ballerina, was beautiful in her porte de bras as well when she set the 2nd Act of her Swan Lake on us at Ballet Academy East. Nikolaj Hubbe set a section of Bournonville’s Napoli on us as well, and from him I took away a strong sense of character in the Danish style. Both of them worked with us over a year ago, but it is their unique outstanding characteristics that keep the lessons I learned from each clear in my mind. Another, more recent experience was with Christopher D’Amboise, who gave me a new understanding of how to interpret movement and “make it your own.”
What is significant about Gelsey as compared to these others is that she taught open class, meaning that basically anybody could take it (though it was advanced level). That means that even those who are no longer in a pre-professional school with guest and master teachers could still have such an important experience. I think it’s so great that so many people could benefit from her wisdom in her class over the 3 weeks, and I hope she and other respected “stars” continue to offer the wider ballet community that opportunity!
Recent Posts by taylor gordon
May 29, 2007 at 7:07 pm · Filed under SLOAN, ballet, music, david hallberg, ny times, choreography, mirror neurons, brain, memory, diane solway, dr. daniel glaser, wired magazine, nova, learning, steps, numenta, jeff hawkins, htm, intelligence, frederic franklin
In an article in the New York Times this morning, Diane Solway takes a look at how dancers manage to remember all of their steps. Particularly in the cases of ABT or NYCB (for this article Diane watched ABT dancers - our own Mr. Hallberg included - learning parts), it really is a major part of the job. In the article she says that ABT will rotate through 21 works this season, by choreographers of varying styles, and I know NYCB usually falls in the 30-50 work range for an eight week season.
This article really interested me, as it touched upon a lot of things I’ve been curious about for a while. Personally, when I read about studies on the brain and then think about how it may apply to how my dancer brain learns, retains, and then spits out choreography, it totally fascinates me. I remember reading an article a few years ago (I think it was in the Times magazine) about mirror neurons, and how when we are watching a movie, or watching anything for that matter, there is a part of our brain that actually mirrors the actions we are seeing and thinks, in some respect, that our body is actually doing them. This is something that sounds so familiar to dancers. You know… You are watching someone else perform a piece of choreography that you know, and sometimes your muscles actually twitch in reaction to recognizing the movement. And the fact that you can be sitting down, watching someone perform a series of steps, while at the same time thinking about how your body would dance those particular steps, and then stand up and repeat them.
Dr. Daniel Glaser talks about dancers basically learning the choreography in chunks (he calls it “chunking” - a term I’m sure ballet dancers will love) and that they form these chunks based on things like rhythm or imagery, spatially, or even from an inner monologue. These chunks or phrases are what then become strung together to make one long movement.
Dance is a language. Once you learn the language, you can begin to predict what steps could come next based on combinations that have become familiar to you. This is obviously very useful when it comes to ballet, where when someone says “tombé pas de bourrée glissade assemblé” you aren’t thinking of each individual step on it’s own, because it’s a recognized sequence in your ballet vocabulary. For the most part, in classical dance, there are only so many steps that can physically link to other steps based on where your body, your weight, and your momentum are at that moment. The fact that you can predict, to some extent, a handful of next possible steps, greatly cuts the amount of time it takes to learn a full sequence of steps.
I started thinking more about the whole predicting thing when I read an article in Wired about Numenta, a new company formed by Jeff Hawkins based on theories from his book On Intelligence. One of the first things Numenta has created is a software that attempts to mimic the process of human thought, based on what they are calling Hierarchical Temporal Memory (or HTM). They describe HTM as “a new computing paradigm that replicates the structure and function of the human neocortex”.. If you feel compelled to read more about it, you can click here, but really, the way the process was described in the Wired article reminded me a lot of why it’s so much easier for a dancer to learn choreography than a non-dancer.
But that’s even with the music element stripped out. The second you add music, that’s’ just another layer that helps us immensely. It’s amazing how your boss can say, “So-and-so is out… I need someone for the first movement of Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet tonight. You did it at some point over the years… Do you remember any of it?” And at first you try to think of the steps, and you think. “No I definitely have no recollection of a single step in the entire piece.” But then you hear the music, and it’s all right there, like magic. In the NY Times article Ms. Solway mentioned Frederic Franklin, who while watching a pas de deux that he had performed at some point during his 93 years, says, “It’s all in here, when I’m watching them, I can feel my muscles doing it.”
Ok, so after all that blabbing on, while I was looking for links to all these things… I found on NOVA’s website, a study by Dr. Glaser (who I mentioned above and who is in the current Times article), where he did MRI’s of ballet dancers and capoeira dancers (as well as non-dancers, or “native subjects” as he calls them) while they watched ballet and capoeira. He basically found that the dancers’ mirror neurons where working most when viewing their known style of dance, but still worked more than a non-dancer while viewing the unfamiliar dance style. Any dancer could have predicted that outcome, but it’s still interesting that they chose to test dancers to explore their theories on mirror neurons. Glaser explains it well in an audio clip on NOVA’s website.
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
