Full Cunningham Class 17/10/11

This was the first time in a while that we have had Juliet for technique.It felt good to have her back as a teacher as we have had have her for two years so she knows our own strengths and weaknesses. I feel like some of my weaknesses in this class are getting better but sometimes I need a little reminder so that I remember.
    
Juliet's class is a Cunningham based class which focuses on positions of the back (my weakest area) I find that doing an 'upper curve' which just uses the upper part of the back manageable for me to do with the little range of movement I have. The curves are harder for me when it comes to the middle back but I am working on this and need to think more of pushing my belly button into my spin rather than having a deep plie. I doesn't matter if I'm not as deep everyone else in my plie just as long as the positioning is correct.
     I also need to work on my back curve, keep my ribs pulled in and not to push my hips forward and really isolate the upper back going backwards almost over the ribs, like having a corset on.

You can see on this picture that I am slightly pushing my pelvis forwards to give myself a bigger range of movement, I need to keep my pelvis tucked under and ribs quiet to be able to make the correct position.

This is a picture that I have uploaded to try and show my improvement on my middle back curve, I am starting to remember to not bend in the hips but push my belly button to the spine. I appreciate that my movement In my back is little so it will be hard to see a massive improvement.

Middle back curve in parallel, from this picture I have just noticed that I slightly roll my feet inwards I need to work on keeping every toe on the floor and have a flat foot.

When we get moving in this class I feel like one of my major strengths is that I can travel and really move when asked.  However I struggle travelling when doing triplets, they feel quite uncomfortable to do and have the 3 steps equal size, feels quite awkward, I think this would be a interesting feeling/dynamic to explore as I am used to things flowing so it would be hard to make things awkward and staccato almost.

There was one exercise where we had to balance in an open like movement but to do this we had to keep moving to balance, if I think of balancing and stop still then I will definitely wobble whereas if i think about moving through the movement I will be able to keep my centre intact and move through the balance rather than just stopping still.

We were set an adage to do that was quite challenging as it had a lot of positions and balances in. At first as soon as I saw it demonstrated I thought to myself that I wouldn't be able to do that and that I don't have the strength. Our teacher told us not to think like that and to think that if we tell ourselves that we can do it then our body will respond to this whereas if we start an exercise with a negative mind set it will come across in the movement. I tried this approach and I started to believe more in myself and that came across. I can use the same concept for adage as in the other exercise: to balance is to move.  I think this advice has a very positive outcome and is a mindset which I can and will transfer into wider life. 

When in this full Cunningham class I can definitely feel my core working especially when we are in an upper curve doing the bounces, but the idea of the bounce is not to bounce up and down but to help us get deeper and deeper into our curve. I know when doing standing practice to use my core but sometimes I forget when we start moving around the space so this is one thing I need to really work on and remember to do because this will help with travelling on the triplets which I have mentioned I struggle with.