Posture alignment

Correct alignment in dance is essential for mastering any move. Without proper placement of the arms, legs, diaphragm etc. a dance move can be executed but not the right way. For example, I could do a *Pirouette with the incorrect placement of my arms, poor posture, weak turn out of my foot and still get two full turns in (which normally happens). While I have achieved doing two turns, I did not complete a proper double pirouette and it probably looked pretty bad.

What I needed to think about during my turn was:
Is my bottom foot connected to my opposite leg?
Am I spotting the correct wall?
How is my posture?
Where are my arms going?
What am I doing to control this pirouette?

There are so many alignments a dancer needs to think about for any technique move, in this post I will be focusing on the alignment of our diaphragms, shoulders and arms.(The three body parts I struggle with the most)

The first exercise I used from my IRP book, Conditioning for Dance focused on the diaphragm, Franklin used the example of a extending the back leg and advises us to keep the diaphragm aligned with the rest of our torso in order to improve technique. "If you are aligning your torso correctly, your turns and jumps will become easier to achieve and improve sufficiently when focusing on with relationship between the alignment of your diaphragm, pelvic bone and rib cage" (Franklin 99).

As you can see in the photo above I am attempting to keep my back and bottom legs straight while mainly focusing on how my torso is aligning, to be honest this kind of hurt because I have horrible positioning when it comes to my rib cage. 

A tip I would suggest if you want to focus on the alignment of your diaphragm is to start with your back leg in a 45 degree angle then as you feel your torso aligning properly begin to lift your back leg higher, unless you are super flexible then do whatever you want. 

The second exercise I wanted to try focused on the alignment of the upper body which includes my shoulders and arms. In this exercise I stood in first position and only thought about my arms as I slowly went through some basic **port a bra movements. I ended in first position (seen in the photo below) and practiced positioning my shoulder blades quickly so I would be in the correct alignment. I did this a few times, each time getting a little faster. 

A tip the book gave for this exercise was to, "shake both arms for a moment to release all tension, then feel your upper body alignment; you may feel more lifted in the breastbone than before" (Franklin 100).

(Please enjoy this Santa emoji, I really wasn't liking my face this day) 

I'm pretty proud of how kept my shoulders relaxed and my shoulder blades pinched together, one thing I need to improve on is keeping correct alignment all the way through my fingers because in the picture above my fingers are not strongly positioned.

Overall I feel like these two quick and easy exercises will be beneficial to my dancing by reminding me that I always need to keep posture in mind. Usually I only think about new choreography and never think back to the basics of my moves.

Hope everyone is having a relaxing winter break! 

*Pirouette- an act of spinning on one foot, typically with the raised foot touching the knee of the supporting leg.

** Port a bra- French for "Carriage of the arms"

Citation: 

Franklin, Eric N. Conditioning for Dance. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2004. Print.