What a full weekend it has been. Our young dancers have taken nine master classes already, sampling classes from each instructor to inform their schedule choices. This weekend was a chance for all the dancers to get to know each other, their counselors, the faculty and most importantly their own bodies.
Saturday evening, the group gathered into the dance studio at Chase Hall to meet the ballet instructors, Shonach Mirk-Robles and Martha Tornay for an injury prevention workshop. Some of the best advice that was given, was to get to know your own limits. A huge part of body wellness is simply understanding yourself and your physical limitations. Once you have that understanding, you can begin to safety push past them.
The young dancers gather for an injury prevention workshop.
I saw these ideas of self awareness reflected again and again in the classes the dancers took. In Karl Roger’s improvisation class, students were asked to travel across the floor, “as you are” and then in opposition “as you are not.” Pushing themselves to act both on their intuition and also to wander into the uncomfortable.
Moving past, or accepting fear was a concept that Kendra Portier opened her modern dance class with. Fear may seem like a limitation to some, but as Kendra pointed out, this is a universal feeling in the dance world. At some point we are all going to feel uncomfortable, scared or weird in dance class. Just accepting and recognizing the fear in those moments allows us to move forward through these experiences and often has an exhilarating outcome.
As we move into our first week of classes, I am excited to see our dancers push their boundaries, mentally and physically, to a place of awareness and discovery.
Kendra pushes the dancers to move without fear.
-Posted by Caroline Barna. Caroline is BDF’s Social Media Intern for the 2013 summer.
