Dance Techniques 2010

Anouk van Dijk — Countertechnique
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which creates pressure on the psoas muscles, the sides of
the back, and the lower region of the spine and, second,
some dancers do not use the joints’ full movement potential
and compensate by moving other body parts.
This was apparent during the second day of Anouk
van Dijk’s residency at Codarts in Rotterdam. The second–year
students were
sore from class the day
before. Instead of pushing
them through another set
of exercises, Anouk van
Dijk took the time to explain
possible reasons for
their pain and to review
what she calls some ‘basic
facts of anatomy’: Where
is your hip joint? Where
does your arm connect to
the shoulder? Where is the
head / neck joint located?
This questioning helps
students understand how
movement happens in the
joints. After that, a series
of simple head rolls helped
them experience and understand
the principle that
the head goes forward and up in space and not backward
and down. Anouk van Dijk chose to explain anatomical
details of the head / neck joint to help students change their
perceptions about how the head moves in space. “Allow
that everything in your body can move. Widen between
the shoulder blades and the back, be easy in the knee
joints, soften your ankles. Allow the head to move into
the space above you.” In this way, pressure was taken off
the neck and back area, and movement became lighter and
less painful.
Movement Characteristics
and Physicality
The principle of directing and counter–directing body
parts away from each other enables dancers to achieve
a more effective and overall control of their movement
without gripping muscles and blocking further movement.
As a result, alignment is achieved by continuously sending
body parts away from each other and into the space
outside the dancers’ kinesphere. While moving, the body
parts’ relationship with each other changes constantly. It
is therefore necessary for the dancers to continually direct
and redirect body parts to keep the dynamic balance functioning.
This means that all body parts are active most of
the time.
Anouk van Dijk is very particular in designating body
parts, which helps students to be clear about what they
should move. The body is divided into arms, legs, head,
and trunk; the word ‘torso’ is not used because no clear
anatomical definition of ‘torso’ exists.
Countertechnique teachers refer often to the sit bones
(not to be mistaken for the tail bone). Working with the
sit bones is functional for various reasons: The sit bones
are the lowest part of the pelvis and there are two of
them, implying dancers can move them away from each
other, which helps to widen the pelvis. This designation
already includes possibilities for movement, directing, and
counter–directing. Furthermore, the hamstrings, which
are attached to the sit bones, can support and initiate
many leg movements—be it jumping or rotation. Knowing
where the sit bones are—“Lower than you think they
are,” as Anouk van Dijk says with a smile—is a good start
for finding a more efficient use of the hamstrings.
A dancer needs anatomical knowledge to understand
one of the basic ways of directing and counter–directing,
which Countertechnique terms distance. Distances always
refer to the ends of two chosen body parts that move away
from each other. There are longer or shorter distances in
the body, for example the distance between the head and
the sit bones (long), or the distance between the pubic
bone and sit bones (short).
To move, dancers need to engage joints, bones, and
muscles alike. As Nina Wollny puts it: “The movement
happens between the two bones that together form a joint.
The muscles make movement happen.” Therefore, when
seen from inside the joint, two bones are moving away
from each other. Here, another technical term comes into
play: point of view (POV). In order to create more space
in the joint (which enables more movement), dancers can
temporarily adopt a joint’s point of view. The point of view
will determine in which direction the bones will be sent.
Bones attached to the chosen POV joint always move away