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ANSWERED FOR CORPUS BY ANDREY ANDRIANOV, ROSEMARY BUTCHER, JULYEN HAMILTON, SUSAN T. KLEIN, JEREMY KRAUSS, STEVE PAXTON, AND LINDA RABIN
Questions: Sabina Holzer and Katrin Roschangar
“If we believe that a communication is kinesthetic, this need not mean that there is a special input sytem, but rather, that something happens as normal perceptual information which relates it to the movement system of the observer,“ writes Mary M. Smyth in her text about Kinesthetic Communication in Dance.[i] This was in 1984. Nowadays, when including Giacomo Rizzolatti and his group of scientist’s discovery of the so called “mirror neurons” we may understand a bit more about that “something” which happens in kinesthetic communication. To find out what kinesthetics means for dance practitioners and pedagogues, corpus made a little survey on the topic. Here are the reactions.
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Andrey Andrianov
corpus: When and how did you first get in touch with kinesthetics?
Andrianov: If we speak about kinesthetics as a word for marking phenomena of feeling and experiencing movement and body from “inside”, then, I suppose, from the very beginning of my life. The question is why this part of my experience became so important to me that much later I decided to become a dancer? For many other people it was not so interesting. Probably some zones in my brain were by chance too strongly connected. That’s one possibility …
corpus: When was the first time you heard the term?
Andrianov: Oh, much later than I got in touch with it. And of course, “the idea” itself always was there when we were experimenting with movement and body in our improvisation classes in the 1980s. We just did not have a term.
corpus: What is your idea of kinesthetics?
Andrianov: I guess kinesthetics is a term to describe a phenomenon when we are united, “together” with our body, or when we are just watching someone who is “together” with his (her) body, and it gives us a possibility of “mirroring” his (her) state in our own body. It is not a matter of “knowledge” or “skills”.
It is in our “hardware”. Scientists already discovered “mirroring” neurons – it means that we literally “feel” in our own bodies what we see around, only some mechanisms in our brain block this “unnecessary” information to avoid confusion. But we want to be confused sometimes.
corpus: Why and how do you apply kinesthetics in classes and your practice? Why not? Can you give an example?
Andrianov: I don’t know. In my practice I always try to get in touch with my body first and then “do” something, not the opposite way. Maybe because the opposite way does not feel so pleasant, and I am too lazy. Of course, I can see that in contemporary dance performance it doesn’t matter how you start, it is more about the “drama of ideas”, but I am trying to stay more natural, jogging around like a dog, keeping my eyes open, relaxed, not thinking much, but ready for everything, kind of old school. :-)
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Rosemary Butcher
corpus: When and how did you first get in touch with kinesthetics? When was the first time you heard the term? What is your idea of kinesthetics? Why and how do you apply kinesthetics in classes and your practice? Why not? Can you give an example?
Butcher: When first in touch with kinesthetic: Dartington College 1965. Joined a dance/drama course – Encountered for a short while Laban teaching by Diana Jordan. Not really aware at the time in those early days and the time spent with Laban’s theories was short but remember now that I was thinking about how the body works and how it is moving in relation to oneself. This seemed to be part of the Laban construct. I know now since I have worked at Laban Centre in London that there were many other aspects to the work but certainly I had some foundation.
I came to relate to it differently when I was studying in New York in 1969/70. I worked with Elaine Summers at her Intermedia workshop and studied Kinetic Awareness with her for about a year. She gave me the real body information that I have taken with me into my practice as a choreographer.
The first time I heard the term in a more definite way was when I studied with Elaine in 1969/70. I studied in one to one classes with her.
How I use this in my own practice? It is primarily about the transference of information.
How I understand the physical information that I give to a performer? My understanding of kinesthetics is the way I understand the intuitive sensing of a body movement and in this way I am able to “feel” the way a work is progressing, as if I was a performer. It is my most important tool.
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Julyen Hamilton
corpus: When and how did you first get in touch with kinesthetics? When was the first time you heard the term?
Hamilton: A release class with Mary Fulkerson in 1974.
corpus: What is your idea of kinesthetics?
Hamilton: The body's way of sensing movement via sensing the interrelatedness of actions in different parts of the body.
corpus: Why and how does the concept of kinesthetics influence your artistic practice?
Hamilton: Without kinesthetics an artistic practice would be nearly impossible as the creativity through the body requires a refined ability to move and sense the details of the movements being done; especially for me as the choices made, are not simply those selected from outside (via an “outside eye”) but choices made from the proprioreceptive abilities within the body as it senses itself and its environment.
My work is often concerned with the space and context in which my dancing occurs and this spacial sense is highly informed through the kinesthetic sensing of the inner body.
corpus: In what way you think does the concept of kinesthetics influence the relation between performer and audience?
Hamilton: It allows performance to be not simply a visual play received by the eyes and sight, but a radially spatial event permitted by the public and performers’ sharing of space. When the performer refines and works in this way, naturally these abilities are sensed by the public (consciously or not) and this offers a further and more 3-dimensional experience for the public.
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Susan T. Klein
corpus: When and how did you first get in touch with kinesthetics? When was the first time you heard the term?
Klein: The first time I heard the term kinesthetics was in the mid 1970’s. I was about 25 years old and in the early stages of my exploration of the body as a result of a severe injury to my left knee. I have a vague recollection of hearing the word while I was teaching in my studio on 56th Street and Broadway in New York City. At that time I was teaching and running my studio and also studying Laban Movement Analysis at the Dance Notation Bureau located at 16th Street and Union Square West.
When I first became aware of the term I had already been dancing for about 20 years and had reached a level of significant technical proficiency. I remember being intrigued with the idea that the body had a feedback system which could be named and understood based on the nervous system relaying information from the muscles and bones back to the brain to orient our body. I remember thinking how interesting it was that we had this feedback system that informed our body as to where it was in space and how it worked. I did not realize how truly profound and to what depth I would, in the next 35 years, develop and teach this sense.
Since being asked to write about kinesthetics I have realized how interesting and important a concept it is. My initial reaction to the idea of writing about kinesthetics was very simplistic. It was as if I was back 35 years in my practice and was simply thinking about kinesthetics as a feedback system that allows us to know exactly where all our body parts are in space, the shapes we are making, and allows us to monitor the quality of our movements, our sensations. Early in the development of my work, I dismissed the concept of kinesthetics as not useful to me. I rarely, if ever, use the word kinesthetics in my teaching or in my writing since I have never taught through imitation of form or through the feeling of sensations. However, since being invited to write about it for Corpus, I have come to understand kinesthesia as a much more profound concept than I very casually assigned to it many years ago.
corpus: What is your idea of kinesthetics?
Klein: My idea of kinesthetics is concerned with the concept of experiencing, with a high degree of sensitivity, what we are doing, bringing to consciousness the precision and understanding of how the body is moving as a whole and how the parts exist in relationship to each other. For me kinesthetics is not dealing with the sensations of movement or how the body feels, but rather with the active search, through attention and sensitivity, to where the body is in space and how the body connects in relationship to itself.
Kinesthetics is related to my idea that there is a body-felt understanding, an internal knowing that can be developed in the same way we develop or fine tune our other external senses; sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Kinesthetics would be our 6th sense, the sense that tells us where and how we exist in our internal environment and how we connect and relate to our external environment. It needs to be developed in the same way we develop all our other senses. Most of us move without paying attention to the precision with which we are moving, just like we see without noticing detail, taste without discerning the depth and layers of flavor, hear without sorting the nuances of sound, or touch without discerning the qualities of what we are touching. In general we move mindlessly through life and dance mindlessly through imitation. For me the beauty and excitement in kinesthetics is bringing a body-felt understanding of movement to consciousness. It is fine-tuning our ability to feel, on subtle levels, our soft tissue and bones, to be able to bring to consciousness and full body-felt understanding, how our body functions. Kinesthetics is our tool to bring the body into a deep state of balance, to its optimal state of movement potential.
I have come to realize kinesthesia is actually a crucial aspect of my work. The concept of kinesthetics has explained to me why my work has to be experienced and why it must be learned and mastered on the level of a body-felt understanding. Kinesthesia has helped me understand why my work is so difficult to explain. Through Klein Technique™, the body can be talked about, analyzed, and intellectually understood, but our goal is to make change in the functioning of the body. The work must exist on the level of the body. It cannot exist solely in the mind. Kinesthetics is the body-felt understanding, the internal experience, the sense that makes change in the functioning of the body possible.
Kinesthetics is our sense that allows us to perceive movement in locomotion as well as the movement inherent to the body in stillness. It is this sense that allows us to focus on what we are doing while we are doing it. It requires a split-level of consciousness; one level is doing, while the other level is observing what is being done. Kinesthetics awareness allows us to keep track of what we are doing with our bodies as well as how we are doing it. In Klein Technique™ the active and receptive or perceptive aspects of movement exist simultaneously. By working slowly and thoughtfully we bring movement and the subtleties of movement up to consciousness, so it can be analyzed and understood. We bring unconscious movement habits up to the conscious level so they can be experienced, understood, processed and changed if necessary. It is this process of discovery, this process of bringing the unknown to the known, the unconscious up to consciousness, and/or expanding consciousness, that enables us to change.
corpus: Why and how do you apply kinesthetics in classes and your practice? Why not? Can you give an example?
Klein: Klein Technique™ is a process, a process of change. Kinesthetics is a tool in Klein Technique™ that allows us to understand the body, not intellectually, but on the level of the body itself. It is the tool that allows us to make that change. It allows us to feel deeply, with tremendous sensitivity, how the body is connected to itself, to the ground and to space. Change can only be experienced in relationship to what is. Kinesthesia allows us to discover where we are in space, how our joints and bones are connected in relationship to each other and the roles the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia play in the coordination of the whole.
Kinesthetics evolves through the cycle of learning and is an essential part to the process of learning itself. I believe we need to learn how to learn. We have to gain a kinesthetic sense in order to learn how to move. The process is cyclical. It requires a depth of feeling, tuning into what already is. It requires quietness, stillness, and focus. We are finding the movement in the stillness, the constant and on-going movement in all the systems of the body. Through the development of our kinesthetic sense we gain an internal knowing of where we are in space, how we are connected to the floor and how our body parts are connected to each other. We have to develop a language of movement that enables us to learn how to move.
It is important to note that our kinesthetic sense does not always give us an accurate reading, or feed us back with an objective truth concerning where our body is in space and how our body connects to itself. Kinesthetics is a subjective sense that has to be calibrated and educated. We define ourselves in the scheme of our habits. Our feeling of where our body is in relationship to itself and in space is based on what we are used to feeling, what we have calibrated to understand as correct. Without focus or attention, our kinesthetic sense maintains our habituated movements. We think we are moving correctly. However, by bringing our habituated movement up to consciousness, we can use our kinesthetic sense to learn whether our habits are serving us, or whether they need to be changed. We can use our kinesthetic sense to re-calibrate our feeling, our body-felt understanding, of what is correct. It is through this cyclic process of learning, learning and re-learning, that we come to the place of what I call an internal knowing. This “knowing” comes from within. It comes as a result of time, process and intense work. It tells us, with great certainty, where we are in space and how our body is connected within itself.
In Klein Technique™ we are working on the level of the bone and the muscles of deep postural support. We are learning to feel deeply, to feel the deepest tissues in the body and to move from these tissues. We learn to feel at this deep level of the body and move from within. In this process we also need to learn how to feel the more superficial levels of the body in order to let them go. The tissues, the large external muscles, in general, restrict movement. When these muscles are held, not only do they prevent contact with the deep levels of the body, they prevent movement in the body in general. Muscles are meant to move the body. When they are over-worked or held they act to stabilize the body and they actually restrict movement. When these superficial muscles are held we cannot change our movement patterns. Once we let go the holding in these large over-worked external muscles we can gain access to the deep muscles of postural support that hug the bones. This process is a cyclical process of deepening our kinesthetic awareness. It requires that we learn to feel very deeply. It determines how and when our muscles both release and contract, and when they are held. There is a different quality to the movement of the superficial muscles and that of the deeper muscles. The superficial muscles have a quality of contraction or holding, the “feeling” we all associate with muscle use. The deep muscles, however, have a “feeling” of non-use. When using these muscles there is a sense of enlivening of the body, they bring us into an experience of the body as a whole.
In Klein Technique™ we work slowly and thoughtfully on the level of the bone, our deepest structural tissue. We are working using clear commands of direction, for example: lengthen your tail bone down to the earth while at the same time lengthening your spine up through the top of your head to the heavens, connect your sitz bones through your heels into the floor, connect your tail bone to your pubic bone, connect your tail bone to your heels, and connect your greater trochanters to your sitz bones. In order to make these connections, our sense of our body, our kinesthetic sense, must be highly developed to feel the profound and subtle movements of the bones and these muscles of deep postural support. Much of our work is to gain a kinesthetic sense of these deep muscles; the psoas, the pelvic floor, the hamstrings and the external rotators, as well as the bones they are attached to, the bones of the spine, pelvis and leg.
This ability enables us to change the relationship of the joints themselves. It enables us to change the relationship of the spine and pelvis to the legs, to bring the pelvis to a full and upright position. It enables us to change how the forces of qi or gravity travel from heaven to earth through the bones, as well as how the forces of movement travel through the body both in stillness and in locomotive movement. The clearer the forces of movement travel through the joints, the more efficient the movement. We use less force to produce more movement. By changing the relationship of these key joints, the sacro-illiac joints and hip sockets, we are connecting the body more fully to the earth. We are enabling forces of movement to travel in a clearer, stronger path through the body. Since we are using the deepest muscles of postural support to move the bones, the deepest tissue of the body, we produce movement that comes from within. Toward this end, Klein Technique™ develops a profound kinesthetic sense.
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Jeremy Krauss
corpus: When and how did you first get in touch with kinesthetics? When was the first time you heard the term? What is your idea of kinesthetics? Why and how do you apply kinesthetics in classes and your practice? Why not? Can you give an example?
Krauss: As I understand your questions, kinesthetics is the ability to feel movements of the limbs and body and it relates to a certain awareness of the self in movement. I first heard of the term when reading Moshe Feldenkrais’s book Body and Mature Behavior in 1978.
My idea of kinesthetic is that it is one of the central aspects of an individual sense of oneself in the world. To be aware of oneself and the environment both around, both the physical and the social one; one needs to use the kinesthetic sense.
I am a Feldenkrais trainer and educational director. My entire work centers on helping people develop their kinesthetic sense. This is a way to bring self-awareness and learning new aspects of perception. It is a deep course in self-learning. I use it in all my teaching of Awareness through Movement and Functional Integration.
Developing self-awareness through the refinement of the kinesthetic sense helps broaden all the abilities of the self: intellectually, emotionally, sensorily and movementwise.
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Steve Paxton
corpus: When and how did you first get in touch with kinesthetics? When was the first time you heard the term?
Paxton: I first noticed the word in your question, above.
corpus: What is your idea of kinesthetics?
Paxton: It seems to be two words, really, one meaning movement, the other denoting appreciation. Perhaps, 'movement arts'?
corpus: Why and how do you apply kinesthetics in classes and your practice? Why not? Can you give an example?
Paxton: Movement arts would be the morsels of movement which enliven an action. Kinaesthetics might then be the thought or perception which unites those morsels to identify the deep nature of the action. Why not? Why not, indeed. Yes, I can give an example. I give an example both in classes and in practice (performing movement).
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Linda Rabin
corpus: When and how did you first get in touch with kinesthetics? When was the first time you heard the term? What is your idea of kinesthetics? Why and how do you apply kinesthetics in classes and your practice? Why not? Can you give an example?
Rabin: The story of my relationship to kinesthetics is a journey that traverses some 40 plus years in dance. My understanding of kinesthetics was informed by the many teachers I studied with from the 1960’s until today. All offered original ways of communicating awareness and consciousness of how we can feel ourselves from the inside. At first, this cultivated my interest in body alignment, ease of movement and overall body harmony in dance. Over the years my interest in our internal landscape grew and evolved, determining a shift in my usage of the term kinesthetics from its dictionary definition, to a broader more encompassing understanding that refers to felt-sensation and movement in all its layers and possible manifestations.
The notion of kinesthetics first came up for me in the 1960’s when I decided to become a professional modern dancer. At the Juilliard School in New York City, I studied with Jose Limon, Betty Jones, members of the Martha Graham Company, Alfredo Corvino and Anna Sokolow. Each of these teachers, in his or her own way would direct us, the students, to “feel the movement in our body”. Whether through the use of imagery, through repetition of movement, or through specific anatomical directives, we worked to perfect our form and pay attention to how we moved in relation to space. We taught our bodies to remember these sensations and how they gave shape and form that satisfied the outside eye.
While at Juilliard, I also got to work with Lulu Sweigard, who guided us with her approach to imagery and movement called Ideokinesis. The image of spreading open a curtain at the back of the pelvis would soften the excess tension in my pelvis, and I could feel my breathing change. Or we would be guided to carefully roll an imaginary layer of wool socks down the lower leg, which would ease up my calf muscle, bringing more awareness to my lower leg, foot and hip connection. Lying on the table I could feel my body alignment awaken in a new way. When I got up to standing, I could feel a whole body lightness and freedom that gave me new ways to experience dancing.
In 1970 the Alexander technique led to a life transforming experience. As my teacher, Rika Cohen, guided my pelvis, with the slightest of shifts, I felt everything change from the inside – my alignment, my brain, and my perception. I have a strong memory of getting on the bus right after my lesson and looking around at the people sitting. I could see the inside of them, the way they breathed, how their thoughts informed how they were in their body. I looked at the stone walls when I got off the bus and perceived the stones as made up of moving particles. The wall was alive, breathing too. (No, I was not on some hallucinatory drug!) You can imagine how excited I was about this discovery. The next day in dance class, I guided my students from a whole new place of consciousness. I could “feelingly see” the dancer on the inside, what he or she was desiring to show in the movement, or unconsciously hiding, and where the separation – the disconnect – was occurring in the body. Over time I found ways of bringing language to my teaching, words that could help dancers connect to what was going on inside and to how that inner world was informing their movement. I was not only attending to the physical movement, but I also addressed the dancer’s thoughts, conscious and unconscious, and how these thoughts were contributing to their movement outcome.
At that time I also began to choreograph. By reducing outer movement vocabulary to a minimum, and by slowing down the speed to a great degree, I continued to explore the inner world of the dancer. I was curious to see what the audience would perceive when all extraneous movement was removed, if the simplicity of a dancer’s walk, sitting, or raising an arm, could communicate the intriguing world of sensations and feelings coursing through the performer. This was also a period when I investigated theater techniques, unique ways of delving into sensation, emotional tones and neutral states as resources for performance and creation. In retrospect, I can see that this time in my career marked an expansion of my vision in kinesthetic awareness. I was opening up the realm of sensation and internal awareness that went beyond proprioceptors at the joints and muscle spindles. The more I spent time in the internal landscape the more inner doorways opened with new information and possibilities.
By the 1990’s my dance focus shifted from formal technique classes and choreography to investigating internal processes more fully. It was also a time when somatic education was well integrated into dance training and professional research. I became a practitioner of Body Mind Centering® (created by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen) and a teacher of Continuum Movement (founded by Emilie Conrad), while also gaining much bodily understanding from my private sessions in osteopathy. I felt little need to engage with the performance of dance. Rather, I preferred to take the time lingering in the internal milieu – great lengths of time – to discover and deeply savor the vast terrain of sensation, all the layers and levels of movement richness, that lay within. In that realm I could feel a deep inner dance, perhaps approaching the very source of all movement, an essence. At some point, I began to ask the question, “what would dance performance be like if dancers drew from this essential source?”
Today, I perceive that how I teach, not only what I teach, is informed by an awareness of my felt-sense. I teach from an intuitive place, paying attention to and trusting in the intelligence of my organism’s resonance with the person or group I am working. My impression is that as we become more attuned to felt-sensation, we become more sensitively attuned to all realms of life – relationships with self and with others, how we express our creativity, how we relate to our physical body, emotional and spiritual self too. It all starts with paying attention, whether to the whole of my being, to some part of my anatomy, to my breath or to how I feel my tissues. The relationship I have with these very basic organism states has a direct effect on how I am in the world. In dance terms it means: the way in which dancers experience the integrity of their body tissues is directly related to what will be communicated in their performance.
Although I no longer teach technique class nor do I choreograph, I have the good fortune to lead classes for groups, or work with individuals, on their personal and creative processes – with dance students in professional training programs, seasoned performers in dance companies and solo dancer/choreographers. I get to draw from the many approaches that have filtered through my dance life, though Continuum Movement serves as my primary practice.
Here is one example, drawn from Continuum Movement, that I might bring into class to stimulate awareness of our felt-sense: Lying on the floor, take a moment to tune into how you are experiencing your body, its relationship to ground, the movement of breath, what parts of yourself you are noticing, etc. Then begin to sound “EE” for a couple of minutes, traveling with your attention slowly from the head toward the feet. After sounding, begin paying attention to what is occurring internally; notice what sensations have been awakened by the sound vibrations and what movements you are feeling. We are primarily composed of fluids and sound is a wonderful way to activate the fluids of our organism. As the fluids get stimulated, a wave-like motion may emerge. And if you internally ask the question, “what is the movement within the movement?” you may discover a whole new perception, a new level of movement opening up to you. The energy that comes from such discovery can be invigorating; it brings creativity, a kind of life force that is actually strength building, though not what we conventionally think of as building strength.
By repeating the sequence – sounding “EE” followed by paying attention to the tissue response – you may come to yet another level of felt-sensation and movement, the emergence of a complex and dynamic flow of interpenetrating waves. You may notice that the more you are in touch with felt-sensation, the more you recognize that you ARE movement. Sometimes this is a subtle microscopic experience, sometimes more gross and evident, very slowed down and sustained, or filled with spontaneous undulations and spirals. No matter the amplitude or tempo of the experience, felt-sensation lets you know that you are alive – from the inside out.
My experience of working with dancers continues to inspire my inquiry into what is movement, how we express ourselves as movement and what is communicated between performer and viewer through movement. As for the students and seasoned professionals who resonate with a deeply kinesthetic/felt-sense approach, I am touched by their presence, by how every particle of their being is alive and participating in the dance.
Footnote
[i] In: Dance Research Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 19-22.
(2010-09-12)
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