Disarticulation Part 1, questions for Tuesday, May 4th 11:59 pm PDT (for Karola that's

Wednesday, May 5th 8:59 am)

 Instructions: Choose only one of the 2 questions below and respond as indicated
in an essay format.
 Although the time to complete this essay is within a 8 hour period, remember that
the goal is not to write for 8 hours but to use your time effectively to reflect,
consult work you have done previously, and respond in a measured way.
Quality is more important than quantity, and your written synthesis of work
you have done previously is the goal of this process.
 Upon completion, within the time constraints (8 hours), send the answers as an
electronic document, preferably in Word, to Marian Bilheimer
(mlbilheimer@ucdavis.edu) and your committee members: ravetto@tft.ucla.edu,
lhunter@ucdavis.edu, joe.dumit@gmail.com, jehousefield@ucdavis.edu
 Each answer should be approximately 2500-3000 words. The answers you give
should reflect your historical, theoretical, critical and methodological research in
preparation for the examination, and you may draw on any other research you
have done, in particular that for your dissertation.
 Each question you answer should make direct reference to at least one and
preferably two areas of performance in any medium, preferably those mentioned
in your examination lists, but you may use others, including your own, but not
exclusively your own (unless directed to do so by the question). Demonstration
of detailed knowledge and ability to analyse actual performance examples is as
important as demonstration of general knowledge, theoretical perspective, and
critical skill.

2. You define ‘disarticulation’ as violence that affects the anatomy and

physiology of dance practices. Working from your own experience or from
observation of others’ experience, give clear examples of violent practices in
dance training. Then discuss the way that teachers, peers, and colleagues
visit this violence on dancers they work with, and think about whether they
are aware of it. Perhaps also talk about whether dancers internalize this
violence as necessary to dance, and visit it on themselves.
Never good enough: Undoing the Physical Self
In concert dance, we are never good enough. Our bodies are too fat, too old, to tall, to big-
boned, too soft, too feminine, to wide hipped, too muscular, too late, too early, not dedicated
enough, too resistant to correction, too sway-backed, not turned-out enough, too weak, too
susceptible to injury. The list goes on. Many of those things I have been told in my time as a
dance student in college. There was a teacher at my school that would come into the studio
and tell her ballet students "Some of you are too fat, you know who you are." My teacher came
up to me, pinched a, in hindsight tiny, roll of skin, while I was folded over, so rolls of skin do
protrude in this position, and said "What is THAT?". How often have I been told "You have to
try harder. You are not trying hard enough. If you tried harder you would have more turn-out
by now." I was actually held back a year in college because I did not have enough turn-out.
They believed that if I just tried harder it would change. The ignorance about anatomy of all of
my teachers is dumbfounding. Turn-out refers to the external rotation of the femur within the
socket of the hip bone. Several teachers proceeded to lay me down on the floor and push my
leg into external rotation to demonstrate that I really had what I seemed to not be able to
produce. It hurt, it felt humiliating, and frustrating that nobody was able to either believe me
that it didn't work and that I did try very hard, or could tell me why it wasn't working.
Orthopaedic doctors were no help whatsoever other than giving the vague, non-explanatory,
diagnosis of 'hip dysplasia' which really just means the hip isn't 'normal'. However this
diagnosis was ignored by my dance teachers.

I think the bottom line is that most people really don't care when you are not like everyone
else, you just have to try harder to become like everyone else. Dance is a game of
distinguishing and fitting in. Although the school marketed itself as supporting creativity and
developing the uniqueness of each person, that is not what the goal of this education was. I
believe that this is a common thread throughout much of education as I have witnessed it so
far, as a student and as a guest teacher in many institutions of middle and higher education. it
is not about individuality In a true Foucault'ian sense it is about forming each person into
something that conforms and functions well in the existing status quo. Insofar, by various
means as I will outline below, concert dance embodies several techologies of the self as
proposed by Michel Foucault.

Concert dance is a catalyst for the mechanisms that govern our society, and thereby it
becomes a mechanism for the perpetuation of its violent structures. Michel Foucault outlines
the following Technologies of the Self:"(I) technologies of production, which permit us to
produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign systems, which permit us to
use signs, meanings, symbols, or signification; (3) technologies of power, which determine the
conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the
subject; (4) technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or
with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls,
thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain
state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality."
Jill Green correctly concludes in her article 'Foucault and the creation of docile bodies in dance
education': "This study revealed the existence of the last two types of technologies—
technologies of power, and technologies of the self—operating within the field of dance. But
while I expected technologies of power to play a large part in dance training, I was surprised to
find how much technologies of the self played a role. What disturbed me the most was that
Missy and the other four participants had on several occasions indicated that they enjoyed the
harshness of dance classes and what they perceived to be the strength and reward of
shaping their bodies into dancers. For them, the ideal dance body was a way to happiness
and perfection. There was much resistance when I pointed out t h e h e a l t h r i s k s o f
d i s c o n n e c t i n g f r o m t h e i r b o d i e s a n d attempting to force their bodies into an
aesthetic ideal. It seemed t o m e t h a t t h e d a n c e w o r l d h a d s o m e h o w
c r e a t e d a n environment whereby teachers were no longer responsible for directly shaping
student bodies but rather utilized a “science of dance training” which requires students to
develop skills and a t t i t u d e s t h r o u g h s e l f - a n a l y s i s , s e l f - j u d g m e n t a n d s e l f -
evaluation according to the attainment of a specific ideal. From a Foucauldian perspective this
shift from the direct shaping of student bodies by the teacher to a science of dance
training creates a culture of silence rather than one of creativity and action where students
constantly observe, judge, and correct
themselves. In such a culture, students are unable to take ownership of their bodies or
to explore their creative processes. But it also creates the illusion or “truth game” of happiness
and success in the attainment of the goal."

DESENSITIZING: Ignoring the Signals of Oppression

Frey Faust, founder of the Axis Syllabus, stopped class because his sleeve buttons became
undone. "It's very unpleasant...." As he finished buttoning them up he added " It's the downside
of becoming more sensitive."
I went through a phase where I found clothes to be unbearable at times. I felt how they
hindered my skin from reacting freely to my movements. I became extremely aware of the
restrictions that the slightest hindrance would pose. I am bringing this up, because I think that
we are aware of the violences in ourlives to different degrees. Through mindfulness and
sensitivity training we become more aware and begin verbalizing the mechanisms of
desensitization. Things I find unacceptable these days never occurred to me as such 20 years
ago. Some things considered minor offenses by others have become completely unacceptable
to me. This is the premise from which I teach and I hope to sensitize students to their own
needs and make decisions for themselves as to what is good for them.

By making the perception of struggle and effort the guiding principle in whether dancers are
'doing it right' we un-train built-in reflexes and protective mechanisms, such as pain, struggle,
wiggeling while trying to balance, bumping down onto the ground when sitting down, bruises
on the acromion (top of the shoulder) as signs for risk taking, all the way to injuries, back pain,
knee pain, ankle sprains, and stress fractures. Many dancers no longer have the patellar reflex
(https://images.app.goo.gl/JSTYbJPu5gyq2mtD8) also known as the knee-jerk reflex. That's
just one pretty major example of the power of persistence in training.
Un-training and desensitization is taking place in concert dance training in many ways.
Generally speaking it targets just about everything that the body suggests. When observing
the body and examining it's structures, it suggests a certain paradigm, one of obliqueness,
triangulation, of helical, spiraling undulatory full body, compensatory movements. It is shaped
to move, and to negotiate falling in multi-directional creative ways. A myriad of concepts
support this that I will investigate in my effortlessness essays. Concert dance generally
speaking uses a simplified, greatly aesthetically stylized concept of movement principles that
are founded on linear, geometrical, single plane motions, isolations, individual strengthening
of specific muscles or regions that are superimposed onto the body and reinforced through
repetitive practice.

The motto in concert dance still remains mind over matter. One would think that a body based
practice such as dance is a body over mind practice, but I find the opposite to be true. It leads
to the conclusion that it, while featuring the body in adoring ways, it also hates the body. The
practice of dance, and many sports, wants to undo it's natural ingenious paradigm into
another, man-made one. We adore the transformative potential of the body. That we can
shape it. Why do we have this strong desire to overcome the body? I have talked to a professor
of exercise science at UCD that believes they can design a better knee joint. He is not the only
one. We think that we can create the world better than we found it. We are working on going
to outer space, or developing systems that replace the forest we are destroying. So, the
problem of ignoring what we have, instead of honoring it and allowing it to teach us, is
epidemic and lies at the heart of concert dance practice.

UNDOING ALIGNMENT: Inhibiting response, communication, flow,

and agency
Concert dance practice ultimately un-does alignment. Alignment is a highly contested term.
Many people use it. As evidenced by the answers I got from students in my dance class that I
taught last Wednesday, where I asked students to define alignment, the term comes with
words such as 'proper', 'good', 'right', or 'wrong', 'bad', etc. Notions of 'we need to have good
alignment' are spoken without any real understanding of what it means to have good
alignment. People appear to practice good alignment without really understanding what it is
they are asking their bodies to do. Even after discussing alignment, these overly simplified
notions persist. Usually they orbit around a straight spine, having your knees track straight
over your toes, or placing your head over your shoulders, over your hips, over your feet. What
happens when we begin moving? people perpetuate an understanding of alignment that
applies to more or less two activities: standing and sitting. What about rolling around? Since
that doesn't fall under the category of bad alignment, should we not roll around?

My definition of alignment is strongly influenced by studies with the Axis Syllabus since 2011
and its founder Frey Faust, who was the first teacher to encourage understanding the body's
functional and structural parameters and individuation, which translates to a sense of freedom
and being myself. I don't have to twist or bend myself into superimposed molds of movement
ideals. I am just fine the way I am built.

Alignment is the 'marriage of surfaces'. Alignment applies to and can be maintained in all kinds
of positions, inversions, tumbling around, laying down, standing on our hands, doing
cartwheels, pushups, running, and falling; as well as sitting and standing. Alignment is
determined by how well all joints of the body can respond to one another and maintain their
integrity. Alignment begins with joint-centration which establishes the placement of the joint,
generally referred to as zero or neutral, where the articular surfaces of the joint optimally face
one another while ligaments, tendons, and muscular tissues around the joint are in a balanced
situation. All effort is equally distributed among all members of the system. Movement at
joints usually then takes place within a moderate range around a joint axis that allows for
articular cartilage connection of the two articulating bones to be maintained. A great range of
creative movement is facilitated by the unhindered compensatory communication among all
parts of the whole. Due to the irregular shapes, angulations, and the asymmetrical biases of
the body, movement of the body generally expresses itself in undulating, wave-like, spiraling,
helical fashion. Concert dance very much impresses the simplicity of the Cartesian grid onto
the body and asks the dancer to perform mono-planar, bilateral movements that do not allow
for the constant undulating, shifting of weight and compensating of the body's parts. The
natural desire to compensate is suppressed in concert dance. Shifting of weight is suppressed.
A prime example of this is Cunningham Dance Technique. This link shows the typical
Cunningham Class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTSHFI_wT5c . The dancer begins
class in a position that is already not allowing for a neutral starting point. A neutral starting
point would be where the average dancer is standing, feet gently splayed outward (depending
on your neutral position of your hip; my hip is configured in a way that does not rotate out in
neutral), hip gently flexed, knees gently flexed, arms hanging off the shoulder girdle allowing
for the obliqueness of the scapula which causes the arms to be slightly in front of the torso. The
dancer would be still able to extend and straighten up from this position, whereas in
Cunningham class the dancer is asked to stand in a parallel position, with fully extended knees.
Shoulder-blades should be pushed back and down, which in itself requires muscular effort to
produce. Overall the dancer is asked to perform a series of isolated activities that restrict the
body from compensating 'naturally', from compensating appropriately in order to distribute
the effort evenly onto all members. The result is that certain muscle groups and tissues work
harder than others and that they become overused, or strained. This also causes the body to
respond by building bone, fascia, etc to facilitate these kinds of movements. This way of
moving becomes familiar and more easy to the more it is practiced and the more the body
'helps us out' by providing the tensegral support.

TENSEGRITY
In many areas of movement education and in the public view, generally speaking, bodies are
often compared to compression structures, such as houses. Lower back pain is thought of as
resulting from the bottom 'bricks' having to bear more weight than the top ones, even though
this model quickly falls apart, literally, upon closer scrutiny and as soon as the body begins to
move and the relationships of the securely stacked "bricks" begin to change. A more complex
model has been introduced some time ago that offers many more satisfying answers to
questions around human movement and cooperation. instead of compression, the body is a
tension structure. The word TENSEGRITY describes a structure whose integrity relies on
tension. The body, a bio-tensegrity, is composed of semi-rigid compression elements which
float in a visco-elastic network of tensional elements. The bones inside the network 'float'.
With the right amount of tension they are able to delineate and are able to give each other
room for expression. In a bio-tensegrity that is designed to be able to change its shape and
move about, all contributing elements need to be able to fully articulate themselves within a
specific range of possibilities in order to not be damaged and remain able to efficiently
cooperate with one another and contribute to the life and movement of the whole. The system
by design resists notions of hierarchy and rather expresses itself in a manner more kin to
relational, considerate, responsive, inter-dependent, anarchic systems of self organization.
The relational articulation, such as the one that a tensegrity structure facilitates, manifests in a
shared response-ability; and in the case of free-flowing cooperation, it manifests in the
experience of effortlessness.

The body responds to demand. If we jump and bounce the piezoelectric stimuli signal the
osteo-blasts (cells) to make more bone. Fascia is signaled to build more fascia. Fascia is trained
to remain elastic. We need to look at the movements that nurture the cells and structures of
the body and allow for these movements to take place to support the body. Cunningham
technique and others train dancers to loose their alignment, their sense of alignment, and their
natural reflexes.

In the bio-tensegrity, communication is provided by balanced relationships and tension within

tissues that transmit information. If this system is disturbed, information can not be
transmitted and everything needs to be governed top-down. If the individual agents do not
have the ability to make their own decisions and are not trusted to make their own decisions, if
they can not respond to one another, then a government, the brain, has to lay out all the rules
and command everyone to behave accordingly. Then you have a system that constantly needs
to be regulated and maintained. This is the situation we have in concert dance, in argiculture,
in politics, everywhere. So concert dance is just another manifestation of a domination
structure.

By insisting on mono-planarity in movement, we are introducing shearing/compression and

other potentially injurious conditions intentionally and habitually. By disallowing the structures
to compensate they have to struggle to maintain equilibrium for the whole and eventually fail.

Example: the hip joint

The hip joint follows the body's paradigm of triangulation. The pelvis in its orientation is facing
at an oblique angle to the frontal plane. The acetabulum, the structure that received and
articulates with the head of the femur is oriented at oblique angles, varying from person to
person, sometimes more inferiorly (down) or laterally (to the sides) orienting the interting
structure, the femur more anteriorly or laterally, causing the hips to be more or less externally
rotated in their starting position. The socket is sometimes more shallow and sometimes
deeper allowing for more movement or more stability. The head of the femur is attached to
the neck, which is oriented obliquely to the horizon, slanting down to wards the greater
trochanter, where the femor takes a turn, changes direction and angles down toward the knee.
It is not hanging straight down with the plumb line, it angles inward. The meeting of the femur
and the tibia represents an angle again, where the femurs are closer together a the knee than
they are at the hip. the patella is typically facing forward in the standing position, where the
feet are splayed outward. All these are conditions that concert dance first pathologizes and
then seeks to correct. Any movement at the hip, knee and ankles, for example as in a plie ( ),
the movement is forced into straight lines, with the idea of keeping the knee over the second
toe at all cost and in any position, as an injury prevention method. In fact, forcing the knee into
this linear movement vector, and disallowing the naturally occurring arced trajectory from
facing forward to facing outward ever so slightly to find their placement over the second toes,
introduces torque at the knee and shearing forces through the ankles. The femur, when
swinging back, when it is going into extension, as indicated by joint shape, joint centration, and
balanced forces of the ligaments, and muscular tissues around the hip joint, wants to internally
rotate and abduct (go away from midline), which is the exact opposite of what concert dance
practices teach. The leg is forced into external rotation when in extension, which exposes a
great deal of the articular surface of the head of the femur on the anterior portion, which
decreases stability and requires more muscular effort to achieve and maintain. This forces also
the knee to be medially stressed and the arch of the foot and the big toe side of the foot to be
flattened to the ground, eliminating the arch and reducing the shock absorbing and propelling
facilities of the foot.

These are all micro-actions that summate and lead to overall dysfunction. A large number of
injuries in female ballet dancers occur at the labrum of the hip, which tears from over flexibility,
working on end ranges such as I have just described and from targeting joint integrity in
general through movement technique and stretching habits.

BREATH
Breath in concert dance is used to achieve specific movement goals: inhale on rises and exhale
on effort. I was taught to breathe laterally and into the back of my rib-cage, so that audiences
would not need to be bothered with the ugliness of my 'panting'. An illusion of effortlessness is
created that is paid for with pain and dysfunction.

By training specific coordination patterns, gait mechanics are changed significantly. Not to
mention point work, which puts the body's weight onto the big and second toes, which are not
designed to sustain that sort of impact persistently. The foot is bound into a narrow shoe that
inhibits natural function and induces injury all along the functional joints of the body. My
friend's daughter just had foot surgery because of point work. It's great that we have these
technologies but we are abusing our bodies even more light-heartedly because we have even
better methods of fixing injuries. But as any fascia researcher will say, any cutting into the
fascial system is ultimately causing an imbalance that is hard to recover from.
UNDOING THE BODY'S ARCHES
An important part of alignment are the body's arches. These areches are developed through
movement in engagement with the environment in early life. Concert dance training seeks to
flatten the curves for aesthetic goals and applies different notions of alignment. Ballet strives
towards defying gravity and achieving straight lines or reversed curves. This gives greater
illusion of flexibility and 'having no joint'. The curves are our shock absorbers. We need them.

The arch of the foot is targeted in ballet: the goal is to increase the arch for aesthetic purposes.
Machines can be bought to increase the arch of the foot (TwinTalksBallet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5axxiDSloQU, review of foot stretcher). The foot is trained
to arch more and to 'wing' more. The foot is built to supinate just slightly, which is the opposite
of what dancers call 'winging' the foot, which is called eversion. Aesthetics drive this practice.
The spinal curves are flattened through practice of elongation and inversion. Notions of
alignment, injury prevention (ironically), and aesthetics drive this practice. often class in
modern dance is started by pressing the lumber vertebrae against the floor when lying on the
ground. Reason enough for me to leave that class immediately.

NEW NEUTRALS
New neutrals are established as starting points which introduce struggle into the practice from
the very beginning. By bringing he body out of neutral into a new neutral, that is not neutral,
such as externally rotating the legs or insisting on parallel positions in extension and flexion, by
flattening the curves, by internally rotating the gleno-humeral joint (shoulder) when the arm is
lifted out to the side, abducted), by raising the elbows and by 'sucking' in the gut, the starting
position for concert dance is a reduction of function: blood flow, joint integrity, breathing,
digestion are all compromised. Compensatory movements to fix this situation are inhibited,
reflexes are un-trained, pain is overriden as a sign for doing things correctly. In that regard they
are correct: if you feel pain then you know you are doing concert dance right.

INDUCING HYPEFLEXIBILTIY
Flexibility is highly sought after in concert dance. The more the better. From an early age, the
flexibility is achieved by targeting ligament integrity. Ligaments are meant to stabilize and
keep the joint together in a relationship where they can communicate with one another, and
effectively transfer forces while allowing for movement. If the range of motion of a joint is
expanded beyond functional range rigorous strengthening and constant training are needed to
keep the dancer 'together'. Pain and inflammation and stiffness are the result of increased
hypermobility. Stiffness is countered with more stretching, which causes more stiffness.

DANCING THROUGH INJURY

Dancers are expected to dance through injury. Dancers are often replaceable commodities that
need to sacrifice themselves and their health in order to keep their jobs. In the theater they are
still the lowest paid member.

DISABILITY
One of the problems of concert dance causing disability could be specialization. The body is
trained to specialize, the joints are spacializing in particular actions, in particular ranges of
motion. I am resonating a lot with Sunaura Taylor's work around animal and disability
liberation. In a talk that she gave at UCD I wrote down a quote from her: "Animals in fur farms
are inbred for specific colors, causing severe abnormalities, and illnesses. Animals in research
labs also experience such fates." Taylor continues. "But, again, it doesn't stop there either, it's
not like we don't see that the animals suffer, we actually ignore it. Why
are we so sadistic?" Again, concert dance is only one of many markers of the dysfunctional
ways of being with the other and with or rather against the world. We see the violences that we
engage in, not always, but many of them we see and we ignore them. We allow them to rule
our lives. Gabor Maté defines addiction as "any behavior that a person finds temporary
pleasure or relief in and therefore craves, but suffers negative consequences from, and has
trouble giving up." We are desensitizing ourselves to the signals and the attempts that our
body and the bodies of others make at communicating with us. To stop the abuse. But we carry
on. We make excuses. Constantly shaping and altering your body, obsessing over how you
look, seeking the pain of dancing, the rush of achievement and overcoming pain and anxiety,
the constant performing for self and other, and always criticizing yourself, could actually be
considered an addiction. Because it gives the dancer a sense of control and belonging that they
can not get anywhere else, because of neglect and violence in our society.

Often young dancers talk about how dance is their 'home away from home', or the
replacement for a home they do not have. Dance and the connection to the dance
environment becomes a new life for these young people. Dance studios provide a unique and
important outlet for social and personal ills, an anchor. Teacher and the peers are considered a
home and family. However, if the techniques and ideology transmitted in this new 'home' is
one that further asks the student to give of themselves and sacrifice themselves, the more will
it undermine the psychology of the dancer in the long run. Instead of learning to love
themselves for who they are and how they are, which most likely is something they are being
denied in their homes, school and society, they learn to change themselves, to overcome the
'norm' that they find in their actual homes and become super humans. Changing to be stronger
than others, better than 'normal' people, to survive abuse, are important mechanisms in
concert dance and, from my experience, it severely undermines the dancer's emotional
stability. Especially if notions of competition among peers enter this picture, the end result is a
lonely person that hates themselves.

The teacher and the peers are most likely not consciously aware of the violence of the
environment they are creating. They believe that they are helping the dancer be the best they
can be and prove themselves to the world. Violence is part of our society and accepted.
However, proving oneself or having to prove oneself, I think, is already violent because it sets
the premise of imperfection as a starting point and often makes the person do things they
would not normally want to do, just in order to gain someone's love or respect.

The whole field is built on a reward and punishment system that Alfie Kohn outlines in his book
Punished by Rewards. he writes “Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to
justify the use of control.” I think that the motivation for struggling so hard in class and putting
yourself through these regimens is to have a sense of self control, a mechanism that also
strongly plays a role in anorexia/bulimia, which is common among young concert dance
practitioners.
Because everyone is engaging in these practices, because it is obviously respected and admired
by the greater public, and because it takes a specially dedicated and strong mind to go through
with this, it promises reward in the form of recognition, respect, adoration, love, etc. Dancers
just practice what everyone else is practicing, or so they think. Pushing yourself beyond your
limits is admired and often required.

It is the broader ideology of our society, that created the problem in the first place, that is
perpetuated in these dancers. This ideology rests on notions of achievement, proving oneself,
punishment and reward, behavior-oriented methodologies that seek to correct people's
actions, distrust in the young as being irresponsible sub humans with not fully formed brains
and a propensity towards crime, the notions of crime, the notions of obedience, and generally
speaking a domination system. By trying to escape the domination structure of the home, they
enter another domination structure that highly militarized in its methodology but promises
that the individual can be at the top of the pecking order, not the bottom. So there is no
escaping from the problem. in order to break the cycle the entire society has to change. In
order to liberate the oppressed the oppressor has to be liberated as well. Both share the same
mentality and live according to the same paradigm, reward and punishment are two sides of
the same coin.

EDUCATION & THE BODY A EDUCATOR

Paulo Freire talks about the banking concept of education. Here the teacher 'deposits'
knowledge into the student, who accepts it as fact. Education becomes ‘an act of depositing, in
which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor’ (p.53, Pedagogy of
the Oppressed). Concert dance is taught in this fashion. The methodologies of education and
conditioning that are characteristic of the banking concept indoctrinate students to the ‘world
of oppression’ (59) and regulates the way they ‘enter into’ the world (57). Furthermore, the
dancer acts as the 'teacher' for their body. Information is being deposited into the body and the
body is expected to absorb and execute the orders given by the dancer. The teacher does not
ask the student and the dancer does not ask the body for feedback or agreement.
‘Liberating education’, Freire writes, ‘consists in acts of cognition, not transferral of
information’ (p.60). Freire's offer for education is another kind of relationship between teacher
and student, and in my analogy, a different relationship between dancer and body: ‘The
teacher is no longer the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the
students, who in turn while being taught also teach’ (61). What this means is that in a more
Freirian way of training dance, the dancer would learn from the body, listen and respond to the
body's signals. This is a method that the Axis Syllabus apply to movement training. The
'teacher' is a guide, a facilitator for inquiry. This role is not easy to hold, one, because of all of
our propensity towards wanting students to do as we say (perhaps because that's what we are
used to and have been taught ourselves) and because many students demand the 'banking'
system. They demand that the teacher take the authority role and demonstrate leadership,
knowledge and authority in the classroom. Responsibility for order and learning is not
something that students want to share with the teacher. I think that this is a crucial point in
movement training and I come up against this authority demand all the time.

Concert dance is practiced in a way that gives teachers the power over the students' bodies.
Jill Green writes in her article "Foucault and the training of Docile Bodies in Dance Education"
(2003): "I contend that dance training is another example of a practice that moves from
repressive control to the implementation of a system that requires subjects to be observed and
corrected through the ritual of dance technique classes. In the conservatory-style system
student dancers’ bodies are docile bodies created to produce efficiency, not only of movement,
but also, a normalization and standardization of behavior in dance classes." (p.100) on page
102 she continues: "... western culture creates the myth of a body/mind split. This split does not
simply separate our minds from our bodies and favor mind over body. Rather, there is an active
obsession with the body as an objective, mechanical entity. This split removes us from the
experiences of our bodies and often results in disconnecting us from our own inner
proprioceptive signals and from our somas as living processes.... By disconnecting people from
their sensory and sensual selves, through the imposition of external models of “ideal bodies,”
or standards of what the body “should be” and how it should act, the dominant culture
maintains control as people in oppressed groups distrust their own sensory impulses and give
up their bodily authority." I think that the dancer is uniquely positioned to want to listen to
their body and derive input and guidance from the body and therefore, the dominant
technique of ballet and concert dance at large play an important censorly and punitive role in
society for the prevention of disobedience. Taming the shrew. one could easily tension the
bow here to Silvia Federici's theories around misoginy as rooted in capitalist agendas. Most
students in dance schools around the country are girls. It begs to question to what degree the
practice of dancer "production", and this term is used by dance departments/shools, is a
practice of citizen production within the gendered capitalist system.

Gender plays a role more so in Ballet than in other concert dance forms, where often an un-
gendered body is desired. However, while some traits of femininity are highly idealized others,
such as wider hips and adipose tissue around the belly and thighs is thought of as disgusting
and a symbol of laziness.

According to Marshall Rosenberg, power and domination are the foundation of our language
(English, German) and our socialization from early childhood. Rosenberg, founder of
"nonviolent communication" argues that we struggle to be in touch with and to communicate
our unmet needs. This in turn is at the core of interpersonal misunderstanding, personal
unhappiness, shame, violence, and in the end: war. We have learned to communicate in violent
ways that reflect on belief systems that are based on moralistic judgments, domination, and
notions of justice.
We have been socialized to believe that the human is a selfish, opportunistic creature that
needs to be controlled to achieve higher states of goodness. We have not learned to listen to
our needs, and to the needs of our bodies. rather we learn from the beginning to dominate and
control self and other. Dancers are people being indoctrinated into a society. An alternative
path is not readily available in main stream education.

I am also thinking of our NEED to dance. We, people, love dancing. Dancing allows us to
express ourselves, to be joyful and learn about the world in meaningful ways. The body is built
to move, to move creatively. I think that the body has the need to move like this. The way the
body is built, suggests that dance is what it wants to do, at least every once in a while. To roll,
to crawl, to twirl, bounce and play, to explore different qualities of movement. Some of us
want to do nothing else, and become professional dancers. And if we are told that this is what
it takes, this is what the world is like, if you want to do nothing but dance, then you have to do
it this way. A combination of rewards, parameters and guidelines are mixed with social and
political motivations. Dance becomes an amplifier for our society at large.

UNDOING RESILIENCE: Un-training rhythmicality

Rhythmicality is intrinsic to the body. Rhytmicality can be an indicator for alignment. Of course
it is primarily an indicator for how elastic the body's tissues are. All tissues are elastic, but to
varying degrees. Ligaments are meant to provide stability and restrict range of motion, so they
are less elastic than for example tendon or subcutaneous fascia. When movement takes place,
body masses are moved and Elasticity is felt all throughout the body, undulations, migrating
waves, swinging arms and legs, shifting weight from foot to foot, etc, etc... polyrhythms are
emerging all throughout the system. There is a musical interplay among the body's parts that
orchestrates to a song if alignment is established. in alignment, all parts are connected and can
respond to the signals from the neighboring part. Elasticity of tendon, for example, makes up a
large degree of our ability to jump. When we jump, or when gazelles jump, or frogs, kinetic
energy is stored in the achilles tendon (among other tissues) by stretching it which is released
upon recoiling, which propels the jumper into the air. Upon landing the tendon again stretches
and so on. Muscular power is only used minimally to augment the system to keep it going. The
calf muscles remain fairly contracted to allow the tendon to stretch and recoil. In Concert
Dance technique it is common practice to bring the heels down onto the floor in between
jumps, on the landing. This is taught as a measure to prevent injury, where in fact it increases
the likelihood of injury to occur because it interferes with the body's system of allowing the
tendon to do most of the work. It also asks the calf muscles to extend and contract more than
usual and work harder. Each time the heel is brought down to the ground the natural rhythm is
broken and the dancer needs to find another wave to hitch a ride upon to get up into the air or
muscle their way up. Such practices un-train rhythmicality of the tissues and of the dancer. the
dancer ends up working much harder and artificially creating the illusion of rhythmicality. The
system is less resilient, because it is asked to work in ways that it was not designed to do.
Concert dance is changing the intrinsic structure, function and mode of functioning of the
body. My teacher Richard Kuch, who danced with the Martha Graham Dance Company, said
'we have to take you apart first and then put you back together'. Thing is, they never do put
you back together.