If you do, at least perform your hands full out while practicing.ĥ. That tactile action combined with saying it aloud will help solidify the steps.Ĥ. If you need help reviewing the material, ask an advanced peer to go over it with you for a few minutes after class.ģ. When the teacher asks if you need to see it again, say “yes.” It will get you noticed and they will appreciate that you probably aren’t the only one who needs to see it again. Advocate for yourself during and after class. If you’re an aspiring dancer, use these!Ģ. Dancers today have smartphones, easy access to recording abilities, YouTube, voice memos and many more multisensory tools at their fingertips. So what can dancers do if they are struggling to pick up choreography?ġ. Writing the sequences down also helped when I was learning phrases for an upcoming show. When I took the time to practice on my own, without the demands, I was successful. I know that I was getting the gist of the choreography, but not the whole picture. Perhaps it was somewhere in between motor planning and execution, when a timing demand was in place. Looking at this praxis model, I am not entirely certain where my breakdown was. : organizing and sequencing novel motor actions in the brain Pavan Gupta/UnsplashDancers learn movement through a process called praxis, which has these steps: Dancers have a unique ability to visualize movement, time these movements to music and execute many directional and opposing changes at once. It is a highly complex multisensory process. Then, “signals are sent to the spinal cord and onto the muscles making them contract.” Simultaneously, “sensory organs in the muscles provide feedback to the brain.” Parsons, in a 2008 research paper titled The Neuroscience of Dance. To move our bodies, there are areas of the brain that “translate visual information into motor commands,” according to Steven Brown and Lawrence M. If they themselves never struggled with slow acquisition of movement, how could they truly relate? It occurred to me that perhaps my dance teachers were completely unfamiliar with motor planning deficits. Something was not firing quickly enough in my brain during those dance classes and auditions many years ago. “Maybe this was my problem!” I realized recently. In making the connection between my own dance challenges, I realized that this processing of information happens with movement as well. They may have difficulties with auditory memory, auditory sequencing and discriminating sounds (words) in background noise. In my field of speech and language disorders, we see some children with auditory processing deficits. Through my work with these professionals and the children themselves, I have seen similarities between various disorders-certain brain signals are out of sync with motor or auditory functioning in the brain and body. I primarily work with children who have special needs and require a team of specialists. Eventually I left the dancing world and became a speech therapist. I then danced professionally for a couple of years after college. Why couldn’t I pick it up? Why couldn’t I make my body mimic exactly what the teacher was doing? I knew what she was doing-I knew “pirouette,” “développé,” “battement,” “ball change.”īut the same note followed me everywhere: “Helene is a really wonderful performer with so much personality… She’s not getting the steps as quickly as everyone else.” I wanted to scream, “I am trying! I don’t know what is wrong with me either!” And also, “Slow down!!”Īfter four years of dancing at an arts high school in Houston, I went on to major in dance at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. Matthew MurphyThe frustration of looking around at other girls getting the combinations quickly and immediately reversing them was infuriating. It was the process of getting there that haunts me to this day. Once I knew the steps, there was no undoing it. However, this is the reality of how I often felt throughout my dance career. Each time I wake up relieved that it was only a dream. Or, I’m rehearsing for an upcoming show, onstage, and I don’t know what comes next. Lately I’ve been having recurring dreams: I’m in an audition and I can’t remember the combination.
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