I breathe, you breathe, we all breathe.

This post will primarily reflect on the most recent modern class, however, I want to give a brief overview of the ballet class last week.

Now, my tendency is generally not in favor of ballet.  Don't get me wrong, it is beautiful and an incredibly difficult form of dance.  However, it is not my first choice of dance forms to participate in.
Having said that, I have done ballet for my entire dance career so I am pretty used to it. But not like this.

This ballet class was the bare basics.  The stuff that once you have been dancing for a few years, you don't really think about anymore.  But that's just it.  We were supposed to think about those things.  The connection with the floor, fluidity, aggressively pointing our toes, keeping our hips square, etc.  It really made me think, "When did I stop thinking about these key parts of dance?"

It definitely made me check myself... and kind of overwhelmed me with everything you have to think of in one instance.

But back to modern.

Breathing.

We all do it.

Everyday.

Dancers especially.

But have you ever really thought about it? Thought about the parts of you that your breath moves? thought about the depth of your breath? Moved with your breath?

Well, that was our challenge this week.  Do not stop thinking about your breath. If you do, stop and start again.

Enhancing our dance through breath.

So what is it like to move with your breath? Well, it starts with taking some REALLY deep breaths.  I recommend you try it now.  Breathe as deep as you possibly can and make it last.  Now do the same, but expand your abdomen, your chest, and under your armpits in that order while you breathe in.  Now do it again, the same, but reverse it as you exhale, armpits... chest... abdomen. So that's what we did and what we thought about.  And then we added movement.

Now this part was honestly not my favorite.  We started out with your basic leg swing.

(If you aren't sure what that is, watch this video.)

Then we added arms.  Then we added knees.  Finally adding standing up.  Now, you might not know this but I really hate being on my knees for dance.  I'm like a pretty bony human being, so it is pretty painful to roll around on my knees.  And then to add standing up?!?  Yeah, I wasn't really about that.  But this was more about the breathing than the movements so I guess I can let it go.

From there we did another combination that was supposedly focused on breathing.  But I'll tell you a secret, I might have thought about breathing all of about 5 seconds.  This combination was less painful though so I was happy. :)

Then we started more of the seemingly (if being viewed by an outsider) random movement.  This began with tapping into different emotions, then was more of what we did last week (tempo, shape, architecture, etc.) or what is known as the viewpoints technique.  If you want some idea of what this looks like, check out the video below.

From there, our director started pulling people out to watch and see what stories might be going on.  This was especially cool to see when she yelled freeze and those dancers sitting out would talk about what dancers could be telling a story with how they were frozen.  I really enjoyed this exercise.

This really got me thinking about choreography and how I could incorporate this type of improv movement or frozen movement in a dance piece.

I guess we will have to wait and see... choreography proposals are due next week! For now, I will just wallow in the intense soreness I am experiencing all over my body.