Cunningham Technique 7/11/11

Again one of the most challenging  sequences in this class is the triplets sequence, I get the general gist of the triplet, three equal steps taken either forward, backwards, turning any way really but the sequence that we do involves turning a 180 degrees I find this hard because to enable me to do this I have to be able to turn in one piece, to accomplish this I have to hold my centre lift out of my waist and legs and also changing the focus quicker will help me. I think since we first started doing this that I have improved and it is starting to feel more comfortable rather than awkward. Through practice and practice then I will keep improving but at the moment this is one of my goals for this class to turn a weakness into my strength.

Weaknesses

• My arms in second are always a weakness, I  need to keep my elbows on top and not let them drop and also not hold tension in my wrists and , let my arms hang from my back and not hold them from any other place.
• I also need to use the depth of my plie more, I know I don't have a massive range of movement in my plie because I do have tight Achilles but what movement I do have I need to use it to the full e.g. in the jumps.
• focus-especially on the feet exercises I need to look more present and alive in the room rather than getting sucked into the mirror and sucked into what I'm doing, I should just let my body do what its doing and think afterwards
• Need to finish movements off before I go into the next movement rather than it all moulding into one big mess. This helps with phrasing as well!!!
• Also need to flow through the movements and not make them jerky, me on the counts but don't stop at every count.

Before

After

I know I have uploaded this picture before but this is also something I need to work on, being in a curve while being in this position, let the curve be the initiation of the movement, not the head dragging the body down. and also the leg doesn't need to be very high it just need to be in relation of the curve because if you have a high leg then there is a possibility that you could release the curve.

Before

 After

From a different angle

Again I have uploaded a picture of this before and I plan to upload another one so I can show some improvement,  I feel like I have suddenly clicked with the concept of the curve and hopefully this will show on picture etc although it might just mean that i feel it more internally so should this matter if it doesn't make a difference to the external view?  Dancing is internal as well as external ?

I feel out of everything that jumps are my strength and that I travel through the space when I perform them, this is because I am confident that I have the strength in my legs and also I feel comfortable in my body when doing them. I think from this sequence you can see one of my weaknesses that I don't use my plie to my full potential especially before the barrel jump in this sequence. If I got deeper into my plie it would allow me to get off the floor more and also take more of a risk with the lean backwards on the barrel turn to make it more on a diagonal. When I jump I also hold tension in my shoulders and in between my shoulder blades I think I need to relax more to release the tension but also, like I mentioned above if I hold my arms from the back this will give more space between my shoulder blades and less space for tension.