Lewis Wheeler (closed): develope to the very end
Friday, Sep 5 2003, 02:39
Have just finished the first week and I'm not in as much pain as I was midweek - probably something to do with double contemporary followed by 'fundamentals' (i'll explain) and then contact this afternoon. phew.
Fundamentals is where we go back to the very very very basics. Even more basic than the basic star thing! The point of the lesson is to make sure everybody has the vital underlying skills to build upon....
The first exercise we had to - one by one - was walk around the perimeter of the whole room and accelerate the heel to toe walk into a grounded run for a lap of the room and then back to the walk and then finish. With the whole class watching. It was very interesting to see how differently people tried to do it and to watch them think through the movement with their bodies.
Lots of people just ended up snapping from the motion of falling into 'pick the foot up, thrust forwards and break into a run' - Which was not nearly as interesting or physically intelligent as the people who worked through softening into the plie (or the three folds in the leg mrs whatley! ;o) and gently accelerate while transferring the weight - when people did it right (Dave the teacher) they could almost stay on one level and make it seamless. Of course some people were just so embarrassed to be stuck out on their own doing quite a bizarre thing - if you think about it.
Contact was really nice - we did some full on body contact in fundamentals and weight sharing etc - I got to be in the demo at the beginning with Dave - he is just like one big muscle!!!!!! so that was fun.
But then we did some real getting in tune with each other style work with Pete in the afternoon - we played being in partners - one with a hand right at the bottom of the other persons spine and keeping their eyes shut - the other one led and we had to move completely, all body parts, in sync - and we could be a bit more creative than just walking. That exercise really worked for me - I was amazed at how I could feel the precise curvature of my partners upper spine with my hand right down at the bottom of his spine. - Pete teaches his stuff well!
At the very end of the class we played developpes - we had to learn 3, just to the front with the leg at 90degrees, to the side with the whole body forming a Y shape and another one to the back - reaching a parallel position to the floor and we had to improv through all of these while travelling across the room - intensely focussed and trying to create a very beautiful quality of movement. Tomorrow my thighs will not be able to move anywhere at all.
Technique is also picking up - its not even at intermediate level yet but they are making sure that every fundamental movement alignment is happening - so they are becoming very good for that. And I never knew a plie could be so intense!!!!
I'm just sad that I have to wait a whole weekend for more classes - but I'm going clubbing tonight so yey!!!
Filed by Article19 at 2:39 PM | 
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