On Dramaturgy – Prepare

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I wrote this post before the start of my recent project, but never got round to publishing it! So here it is. Just imagine it’s still July 2016 when you read it…

“Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is a dramaturg?”

The process through which I came to be working with Chris was such a fluid one that I never stopped to pose this question myself. It was obvious to me that I would be working with a dramaturg on my next project. At the beginning of the year I had no idea what a dramaturg was either. I just had a hunch that a workshop being run by South East Dance was exactly what I needed to do. And so, by a series of coincidences, I had landed myself an incredibly generous and patient Chris who had already, in a few sessions, got me back into thinking of myself as a maker again. “He’s like an outside eye who’s also an inside eye” I said. “He listens and teases out what I’m after, suggesting ways of getting there and then suggesting ways of not getting there in case they might actually get us there anyway.” Tom, my collaborator, looked confused.

My first meeting with Chris was at the British Library cafe, or the echoing lobby area where you literally have to pounce like a vulture on a free table. I had no notes from the session. Chris wrote loads. What was I doing? Where was I going with it? What did I want to do? By the end of the two hours Chris pinned me down on one thing: “One of the conversations we need to have is around ‘Everything you hate about dance'”. I had no idea that I’d said that. I guess I was talking about the contemporary dance cliches, but the reference stuck. We now have a number of shorthand references like this.

In a second meeting Chris tried a technique that Lou Cope spoke about: he reeled off a list of words asking me to chose between two similar but different options. “Green or Grey?” he asked, “Grey” I answered. These are our oblique questions. We’re talking about the piece without talking about the piece. The result is a list of words that actually feel very connected to the work: close, lines, restless, shoulder, fact, held, grey, violin, made. There are also a number of words that don’t have anything to do with it, like “toast” and “lemon”.

By this point we were lucky enough to be able to shift our conversation into a studio. On our first day in a studio space, Chris came prepared with stuff: an elasticated string, paper, postcards, objects, wool. It’s kind of a relief, I thought, when someone else has thought about things. We stuck a long piece of blank paper up on the wall of the studio, sharpie at the ready. It’s our key questions board. This has been religiously rolled up and re-posted for each rehearsal. Even now, at the end of the project, it’s remained mostly empty, but then there’s a lot more to come I guess…

I’m making a piece about control and freedom that involves a dancer pulling a string that’s attached to a record player, playing an old relaxation record that’s telling her to relax. So our first question was: What else might it be? We had no sound to work with, which was a good thing. We tied the elasticated string to the ballet barre in the studio and began improvising movement informed by the string. At some point in our earlier discussions we had thought of using a dog leash to replicate the gadget my collaborator had built for me last year, a kind of retractable string. But it just didn’t give me any impetus. Apart from this, Channel 4 had just aired a documentary about adults who dress up as dogs. “Is this about control and freedom, or is it just a piece about dogs?”, Chris asked. Of course he wasn’t just talking about the dog-people, he was talking about seeing what we’re actually doing, rather than what we think we’re doing. We discarded the dog leash, but now Amazon thinks I own one…

We attached one line, then two lines to the Ballet Barre. We worked on facings, different uses of the line/s. My problem is that I often get a bit stuck in my head. I worry about creating movement just for its sake. I need a reason to move. I tried “just moving”. My “Suspending Judgement” sign was hung up on the door handle. To take my mind away from my movement Chris tries to get me to relate a story. He begins and then he says he doesn’t know what happens next, which is my cue to pick up and continue until I decide to hand the story back to him and so on. “He keeps hi-jacking the story!” I think. I bet he thinks my story telling is just as crap. The good news is that I’m so hung up on how terrible this story is that I have absolutely no idea how I’m moving. This is good, because it gives my body time to warm up to the string, to absorb something from it unconsciously.

We then try to give the movement a little more shape. Chris throws out random lines from a collection of poetry. “It never let up until morning”, “I melt for the first time”, ‘A formal line through beach and open ground..” I answer each line through movement, allowing myself to get stuck, to repeat, to try to embody something from that line. It’s not a literal translation (it can never be in movement). At one point I shake my head “everything I hate about dance” I say, referring to something I was doing. Chris gently encourages me to keep going. Just beyond that block something else happens. In our discussion afterwards Chris wonders if my fear of falling into cliche is stopping me from moving, and maybe if I suspend judgement and allow the cliche to happen, maybe just beyond that, there’s the gold.

What I’ve realised about working with Chris in the space is that it’s like having a clearer headed (and kinder) version of me on the outside. Chris is absolutely there with me through each improvisation. He knows what I’m after and luckily has none of my baggage to colour what he sees. So when he says there was something there, I know what he means. My experience is an embodied one, his is a visual one, but we’re still talking the same language.

Our second session in the studio. Chris hangs some postcards up on the wall. I pick three images to work with. Again we use one string attached to the barre. In the next improvisation I work through the images. Again, I’m creating an embodiment rather than mimicking. I feel the license to use the images however I feel. What comes out of this improvisation is the following realisation: “When you create movement with purpose, it has meaning.” (Chris’ words).

Our third studio session is with another dancer Joel. Two strings, two movers, multiple relationships start to unfold. Joel’s physicality is totally different to mine, but his playfulness and attentiveness to the string is exactly why I want to work with him. In a later discussion with Chris we talk about how to work with this difference without flattening it out. I don’t want Joel to move like me. Somehow I feel that if we both attend to the task, the physicality for this work will come out of that.

Our last studio session is with the sound artist Tom. All these sessions have been a preparation for our actual project which starts in August. We talk about the technical aspect of the work and put together some ideas for the string which Tom now needs to find a way to incorporate into the build. Then we start working with sound and movement in the same space. We don’t have any interactive stuff yet, so Tom just improvises via his laptop whilst I attempt to use his sound as a score for my improvisation. This time my movement just isn’t as fluid. It’s been three weeks since the last session, during which time I’ve been to San Francisco for Anna Halprin’s workshop, returned to a Brexit vote and sleep walked through a week of teaching on jet lag. But Chris is supportive and stops me hitting the self destruct button. At the end of the session we walk to Gordon Square to talk about collaboration and brainstorm some ideas about how to structure the process.

At some point in that last rehearsal Chris had brought up a question he had asked me to keep thinking about whilst I was away in California: “What moves you?” I hated the question. When Chris asked me to have this at the back of my mind during my last improv with Tom I dismissed it almost immediately. It doesn’t really fit. I almost wanted to cross it off our “key questions” board. Well I’m not in the business of making sentimental crap, I thought. It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when I was in Malta for a fleeting visit home to celebrate my parents 40th wedding anniversary, that the answer hit me. My mother stands up half way through the meal and gives an unexpected, unprepared little speech, the kind that’s so heartfelt and messy round the edges that its rawness is palpable. She has us all in floods of tears. And then I realise that what moves me isn’t something dressed up to be dramatic. It’s something that’s just so real it hits you in the gut. And this realisation is such a relief, because it means I can make something that might move people and all I have to do is be absolutely real.

I’d like to thank Lou Cope for inspiring us to work like this and for creating the ground work for our discussions to grow from, South East Dance for hosting the Doing Dramaturgy workshop and The Place Artist Development for giving us access to a studio space during this time.

The Key to a Healthy Lower Back is in the Gluts

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Lower back pain is one of the most common complaints that I deal with in my work as a Pilates teacher. In fact it is one of the main reasons most people take up Pilates in the first place (myself included!) And yet whilst the issue is so common, and can be extremely debilitating in the worst cases, it amazes me how little it is understood.

If you look at the spine in relation to the rest of the skeletal structure, you can see how the vertebrae of the lower back are relatively exposed. Whilst the sacrum is closed in by the pelvic bones and the thoracic vertebrae articulate with the rib cage, the lower back is not supported by any other structure. At the same time it bares the weight of the upper body and, being more mobile than the thoracic spine, tends to become the pivot point for a lot of spinal movement.

Excessive over-use of joints under load will bring about gradual wear and tear. In simple terms, this is what causes most back pain.

The traditional / standard prescription for lower back pain sufferers is: strengthen the ‘core’, by which most people mean ‘abdominals’. Of course there is some sense in this. If you strengthen the muscles in the lower abdominal area, then you create functional support for the joints of the lower back, reducing strain.

The key core muscle for lower back pain is the TVA. This wraps horizontally around the waist like a corset. Activating the TVA brings about a lengthening sensation through the whole spine. Up the back the spine is supported by a series of layers of muscles. These are relatively weak in the average person because so many of our daily activities tend to involve collapsing into a forward bending position.  A third component of the ‘core’ is the pelvic floor. Postural deviations tend to put more downward pressure on the floor of the pelvis which becomes weak and loses it’s buoyancy. So strengthening these three areas could go some way to reducing back pain.

However, the presence of pain in any joint is a signal that there are restrictions higher up or lower down the chain that are causing the over-use in the first place. What I’ve come to realise is that ineffective use of the musculature around the lower back is the result of poor integration with other parts of the body, and specifically, with the hip joints.

I’m going to give you two examples to illustrate this. These two postural tendencies are ones I know well. I have clients who present with both. I am simplifying by only considering forward / backward movement. Posture is three dimensional, so this clean side on view does not account for compensation patterns in other directions of movement. We’ll leave that out for the sake of this argument.

Doc - 17-03-2016, 10-37The first postural type that I come across in lower back pain is when the pelvis is in a slight backward tilt as illustrated in my sketch. We call this a ‘tucked under’ posture. This is an extremely common postural type and one that, funnily enough, Pilates can actually encourage! I have come across numerous lower back pain sufferers who actually adopt this position to relieve the pain. Actually they’re just de-stabilizing the lower back even more. When someone walks into a matwork class, one of the first preparatory exercises they are told to do is the pelvic tilt. I’ll hold my hand up here: this is exactly how I begin my classes! Someone with this tendency is likely to just press into their lower backs. The second preparatory movement is to take the spine into a bridge, where the cue ‘rolling the spine down bone by bone’ also encourages people to collapse into their lower backs further.

Doc - 17-03-2016

The second postural type is the anterior pelvic tilt. Here the hip flexors are tight, pulling the pelvis into a forward tilt. The lower back becomes shortened creating the exact opposite to the first postural type. Someone in this position may well benefit from the initial pelvic rocks, which will create some traction through the lower back area. However as soon as they begin moving into the bridge their lower backs begin to arch, amplifying the extension (shortening) of the lower back. Another very common problem in this postural type in particular is the loaded flexion exercises like the hundred, single leg stretch, double leg stretch. All of these will just go into the hip flexors making the situation a lot worse.

So whilst the long term effect of abdominal strengthening and traditional Pilates repertoire will be beneficial for the support of the lower back, in the short term they may simply play into the problem and make it a lot worse.  Rather than focusing solely on the ‘core’, both these postural types will benefit more from working on a common area of under-use: The Gluteals.

The buttocks are one of the most misunderstood areas of the body. Some people just think of the butt as something they wish was smaller (or bigger). Some people feel embarrassed about the thought that they have one and most people don’t realise that whilst it can be an area for fat storage, it is also the site of a major muscle group. Gluteus Maximus is the main hip extensor (ie: it opens the front of the hip) and Gluteus Medius and Minimus stabilise the hip (stopping us from falling over when we stand on one leg). When these muscles are under-used the deep hip rotators ( whose aim is primarily to rotate the thigh bone outwards) end up having to do a lot of the work. A lot of people have heard of a tight Piriformis, for example.

In the case of the first postural type described above, the hip remains in a chronically extended position where the deep hip rotators are literally tacking down the back of the pelvis towards the thighs. This tucked under position means that the gluts are unable to perform as an intermediary between the legs and the lower back, so people with this tendency are literally hanging their legs off their lower backs.

If the hip is not taken into extension enough, then it remains in a flexed position, (the second postural type described above). This leads to over-tight hip flexors and the increased lordosis (arch) of the lower back. As a result of the imbalance, the pelvis comes into a forward tilt making lower back articulation very difficult.

The key to a healthy lower back is to have tone and access to the gluts. This is not a question of mindlessly targeting the buttocks in repetitive exercises. It’s about ensuring that there is the right balance of movement around the hip to allow the gluts to fire up in the first place. Every body is different, and I don’t want to start suggesting exercises over blog posts. But perhaps the following points may help you make some adjustments that could help:

For people with a tendency to tuck under the key is: FOLD AT THE HIP! Stop sitting onto your lower back. When you sit down on a chair try to find your sits bones and sit right onto them. Almost imagine the tailbone pointing backwards which will bring the pelvis into a small forwDoc - 29-07-2016ard tilt, reducing the pull on the lower back. Often achieving this is difficult because the deep hip rotators are tight. So doing a seated glut stretch is a really useful way to create space in the hip joint which will allow the spine to lengthen upwards when sitting.

For people with a tendency to tilt the pelvis forward and arch the back, the key is to OPEN THE HIP. Most of us have tight hip flexors, so doing some Hip Flexor stretches like the kneeling lunge will help create some movement here. Once you’ve found a sense of opening the front of the hip, without letting the lower back, arch you can translate this into walking by leaving the back leg in contact with the floor for longer. This has the effect of lengthening your strides and though it may seem like it’s slowing you down initially, you’ll notice that you’re moving much faster in fact.

These are just a few points that you’ll already know if you’ve done any work with me. Next week I’ll talk a little more about how the tilt of the pelvis connects with and is affected by the feet.

 

A week with Anna Halprin – Coming Home

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It’s been a week now since I got back from California. Stepping back into my old shoes, I’ve been wondering about what I’ve learnt. They say that when you learn something new you need to put it into practice within a few days, otherwise you lose touch with it and the learning falls by the wayside. That’s all very well when you know what you’ve learnt. A new exercise, for example has an obvious form, something you can take hold of and define in the short term. But very often learning is less about new tricks and more a kind of imbibing of ideas or approach. It’s a kind of quality. At least this is the way it is for me. So how do I work out what I’ve learnt? Instead of looking in my notes for key ‘things’, I’ve decided to allow the work to come out in me. It feels as though it’s left a kind of imprint in my body and mind, triggered some new connections perhaps. All I have to do is trust that it’s there and listen. It’s a curious thing when you begin to see what’s new through the prism of what’s familiar. Whilst I write this with the intention of pinning down some key thoughts, as a means of drawing this experience to some kind of conclusion, I don’t believe that this is final. This is just what stands out so far.

Grounding. Anna defined grounding as one part of a polarity, the opposite of which is sky. She began in standing. It made me wonder why so often in contemporary dance classes, we start lying on the ground, surrendering to gravity. What’s the opposite of surrender? Fight? Is this why moving with ease is so difficult when you’re lying on the floor? Because essentially you have to fight the desire to just fall asleep? If the feet are planted you create movement potential from the feet upwards through yielding, if not you’re just jelly.’Letting go’ is a move towards passivity, ‘yielding’ is a move towards activity. Most people are ‘just jelly’ when they stand. Jelly hanging off bones. Poor joints! So cuing this anchoring down into the ground is not just about feeling earth-bound it’s about activating muscular engagement from the feet upwards.

Scores. Of course I’ve worked with scores a lot in my creative work. I dedicated my whole MA thesis to creating via scores. I found Anna’s definitions and thoughts about the RSPV cycle helpful. Again this is something I’m already doing, but the clarity around the approach, the labelling and identifying of the different components, brings a little more shape to this process, even if the term ‘valuaction’ is a little too American for me…

Collective Dances. We really do live in a world where convenience and efficiency is rated above the more undefined qualities that come through experience. In the Pilates world this translates into two things: private sessions and online resources. Before I move on, I think that both of these serve an important purpose. Some people need more assistance due to injuries, some people just don’t have time to get to a class. I understand and appreciate both. But something new happens when you move as a group. I’ve been thinking about this for some time now, but this specific experience really highlighted the importance and benefit of being amongst others. It’s not only a valuable social experience. There’s something you gain from moving in groups. A quality, a tempo, a focus, a playfulness, a relationship that no amount of self practice will ever achieve. I think sometimes we’re so stuck in our own needs that we forget / ignore the power and importance of moving together.

Relationships. The biggest take away from this whole experience was not in the specific ‘tools’ employed. It was in the underlying philosophy that you cannot separate a person’s body from their internal and external environments. A person is not a body with a head attached at the helm. A person is a point of inter-relationships, within themselves, between themselves and others, with themselves and their environment. We don’t just teach bodies we are feeding information into a complex system of inter-relationships.

Life-Art. I think that the ethos behind the work of the Tamalpa Institute is that through creative exploration we access a truer understanding of ourselves. Because movement, writing and drawing give licence for the ambiguous, non-literal, obliqueness within which self-expression truly lies. I guess this is why I’m an artist. But this work has never figured in my dance training or professional practice. I have spent the better part of 34 years trying to refine an understanding of movement, to understand how to move better and create better dance works, but somehow the messy area of feelings was never really addressed. The shift from feelings to movement or dance is a big one. There were occasions when I felt that the approach was naive to suggest that the bridge could be crossed so simply. This was a tough critique to let go of. But the insights I gained from the work were actually quite profound. So there is something in there.

Home. I came home and realised that I don’t really have a home. I rent a shared flat in a city that may well be getting ready to kick me out. My childhood homeIMG_2225 (1) is all but sold, but even if it weren’t, after 16 years it would be hard to call that ‘home’ either. 16 years of roaming. No roots. I came ‘home’ with an urge to create my home, a home studio where I can work and live and create my own space. Sometimes you just have to be brave and grow roots. Anna may not have said this, but this is what I heard from that space, this is what I’m taking with me.

My trip to Anna Halprin’s Summer Workshop 2016 was made possible thanks to the support of the Lisa Ullman Travelling Scholarship Fund.

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A week with Anna Halprin – The Tamalpa Institute

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Founded by Anna Halprin and her daughter, Daria Halprin, in 1978, the work of the Tamalpa Institute uses expressive arts practices to tap into the creative resources of individuals and communities. Through what they call a life / art dialogue, this work is really an extension of Anna’s ideas from professional dance/performance making into individual and community development. As described in my previous blogs ‘Arriving’ and ‘Score’s and Resources’, Anna’s work, whilst significant in the lineage of contemporary dance, spilled into real life. Her approach addressed the politics of intra and inter-personal relationships as well as our connection with our environment. The Tamalpa Institute solidifies this relationship through a 3 year training program. During my week’s stay we explored this work in the afternoons, no doubt to take the strain off Anna who is now 96 years old. I had no idea what to expect from this work and what I relate now is just my sense and experience of it during that week, rather than a fully researched presentation.

On the first afternoon Rosario takes us through a ‘self portrait’ process. The question Rosario poses is: “How am I experiencing myself physically, emotionally, mentally in my life right now? I think we dance a little and then paper and oil crayons are provided and we draw an image in response to this question. We’re given time to write something in our journal, inspired by what we’ve drawn. Earlier in the day we were divided into ‘support groups’ of 6 people. In our groups we are now asked to dance in response to our image and writing, whilst the rest of the group bares witness to our dance. After each performance, the performer has a chance to talk about their experience in the dance, about what they were thinking or where they’re at.

I guess that the purpose of this transfer of thoughts from image to words and then to movement aimed to create more texture or room for new ideas / revelations. I feel totally disorientated. Working outdoors is overwhelming and my main concern was staying in the shade and navigating the complex personalities in my support group. The idea is that the sharing is just a one way presentation, but unfortunately members of the group take it on themselves to provide a kind of feedback. I feel a little frustrated by this, but not wanting to be bossy I just let people talk and keep my input to a minimum. Why do we always jump in to provide feedback? Why is it so necessary to give our perspective? It’s a good reminder that sometimes just baring witness to somebody’s thoughts, work, actions is enough, especially when we have no other context, or when our feedback is not invited.

On the second day the sun is so strong that we have to start the afternoon session in the indoor studio. Thankfully, I think. It’s hot and stuffy but there’s something reassuring about sweating again and rolling around on floor without worrying about splinters. The improvisation score takes us through each area of the body to sense what movements are available and then to track back to one area that feels most familiar and another that feels most unfamiliar. Having identified two areas, we’re asked to bring these two movement scores into dialogue. I start working with the hips as a familiar area and the feet as an unfamiliar area. Of course the rest of my body was moving too but the initiation came from these two places. At the end of the process I realised that the areas I had chosen during the exercise were a reversal of my habitually difficult area (the hips) and familiar area (the feet). Ask anyone who goes to my classes and they’ll tell you how much I love working on feet. My hips on the other hand have caused me all sorts of problems. If there is one area I have to work very hard on it would be my hips, as Anna would put it: I have Kangaroo rather than Turtle hips. So it’s quite interesting that in that space and time, this relationship was reversed.

Having devised a movement quality, we’re asked to draw an image somehow portraying a quality / idea / feeling of  what we had just danced. We then get into groups of three. We each take a turn to hold up our own image whilst one person moves in response to it and a second person, the ‘poet’, offers a verbal response. At the end of each 5 minute performance the ‘artist’ has a chance to talk about the experience after which the performer and then the poet offer their perspective. The exercise didn’t seem to give me any new perspective, at least not in the short term. I was mostly struck by the fact that the structure of artist, performer and poet gave each member of the trio an active role, so everyone’s presence felt more invested in the process. We each had something to lose, and I think this made the quality of the ensuing discussion a little richer.

Wednesday afternoon. I spent the two hour lunch break trying to recover from my fit of crying triggered by Meredith Monk’s music in the morning session. I’m telling myself it was the music. We’re asked to consider the following life/art questions:

What in your life is opening? What in your life is closing? What do I want / need to open / close in my life?

Deep stuff. So I turn to my journal and write in all seriousness: “My feet are so dirty and I wish I could clean them. I don’t really know what to write.” Clearly. I think I’d decided to take it all with a pinch of salt. Earlier that morning I had announced to my car pool pals how I really didn’t get the connection with emotions etc. I found it a bit of a stretch. But only a few hours later I was bawling my eyes out. These questions just seemed to press the issue a little. It took some time for me to get something out. Then we transferred the words into a drawing and then again into a dance. This time we performed in large groups of 10 people. We had two witnesses each who sat out and watched. At the end of the performance the performer spoke about their experience, then the witnesses could offer their perspective. “You have colour in your picture!” someone exclaimed later. True. So far everything I’d drawn was monochrome.

I had an interesting realisation at the end of the performance. During the improvisation performers were given the option of talking. Someone in the group had taken on this option in a somewhat more determined way. The whole performance was taken over by her monologue. I mostly spent my time trying to withdraw from the noise and pull of the group. I just wanted to do my own dancing! Then at some point I crossed paths with Dena who had taken to asking everyone questions. “Who are you?” she said to me. Instead of responding, I kept moving in my own little dance. I remember considering a response but then deciding that to say anything just wouldn’t have felt authentic to where I was at that moment. So I ignored her, making her question an abstraction. Sitting with my two witnesses afterwards I thought to myself: “what a typical bloody Londoner I am. Someone talks to me out of the blue and I assume they’re mad and ignore them.”

Thursday afternoon. We cover ourselves in tick and mosquito repellant and are led into the woods. This is meant to be a dance with nature. We arrive at a spot for this enlightening process and there’s the very distracting sound of a digger in the background. I first stand by a tree stump that looks a little interesting. The score is to make contact and then have some kind of a movement dialogue with nature. OK then. Suspending judgement. I stand there for a good minute before realising that this particular bit of nature is swarming with mosquitos and that I probably haven’t covered my legs with enough of that tick spray. So eventually I give up on my efforts to ignore it all and find a less mosquito ridden tree. It’s ok to move away from something that feels hostile, I tell myself. The second tree is a large redwood. My dance doesn’t feel hugely overwhelming. I lean into its bark, sit back and look up at it, try to see right to the top. The dialogue feels very one sided… trees don’t take any notice of you.

I walk back to the deck where Rosario asks us to grab our journals and consider: “What am I bringing with me from the natural world?” But unlike yesterday’s conundrum today I have a clear answer. I realise that I spend most of my life trying to meet others. I travel to my clients and classes. I feel that I’m always trying to meet someone else’s standards and needs. Trying to be the teacher they need, trying to be the flatmate they need, trying to be a useful sister, trying to meet funding aims and objectives. And here I am at the home of a woman who is known the whole world over and who has built her work around her life. Anna has been developing work in her home studio since she was 22. People travel to her, some from considerable distances. With all the emphasis on getting yourself ‘out there’ I think we undervalue the need to create roots, to stand squarely in our own space and say “this is me”. There’s a popular saying that goes: “If you don’t like your life, change it. You’re not a tree.” Yes change precipitates growth, but you can’t grow a tree if you keep digging up its roots. Sometimes relating to people needs you to shift your perspective. But what if I stand still? Might that not allow other people to adjust and relate to me? Who says we need to spend our lives hopping around everyone else?

By this stage we had all become a little more tuned in to the process. So we closed the session with a group sharing. Each of us had about a minute to reflect our thoughts back to the group. Some people performed a small movement or gesture. One person sang. But none of it felt silly. It all felt quite authentic and insightful. What I hadn’t accounted for that I now realised, was that over the course of the week we were all getting better at selecting and dealing with the materials we were working on. I wrote down a few of the other insights that people shared because I thought they were quite resonant:

  • One participant had been working with a large asymmetrical stick. Her dance involved trying to balance it in one hand. She found a technique to allow her to do this. She concluded: “there is balance in asymmetry. You just have to figure out the technique. Don’t blame the stick. Engage with it. It’s a personal responsibility.”
  • Another participant shared the following observation: “When you really want something and you hold on to it, it doesn’t really work out.”

It’s the final day. By this point I’ve learnt to just keep my shoes on so my feet don’t get all mucky. Rosario takes us through an improvisation sitting on the benches. To be honest my mind is not on my movement, because last night the UK voted to leave the EU and I cannot think straight, I’m so frustrated. Borders! They want more borders! Rosario asks us to take paper and colours and draw out something that carries the feel of the movement. I wasn’t paying attention enough really, but I trust another saying that Rosario has: “the experience is in your body in some way so don’t worry too much about ‘knowing’.” After drawing, we return to our journals and write a letter to ourselves “from the voice of the drawing”. Suspend judgement. Trust the body. Just write. And I do. When we get back into our support groups to share our pictures and thoughts someone asks if we’re reading out our letters too. Rosario says that this is just an option as letters can be hugely personal. Phew! I think. I’m not reading mine. No way! But as the first member of the group reads through her letter, and then the second and then the third, fourth, fifth, I slowly start to realise that there is sheer wisdom coming out of these insights. Not only this, but by being authentic to themselves they have written things that I empathise with and that resonate with me. So I read my letter too.

My trip to Anna Halprin’s Summer Workshop 2016 has been made possible thanks to the support of the Lisa Ullman Travelling Scholarship Fund.

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A Week With Anna Halprin – Scores and Resources

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Anna Halprin’s experimental workshops that began in the 50’s became the seed bed for postmodern dance, influencing the artists who later went on to form the Judson Church group in 1960’s New York. I am not a dance historian. I travelled to California not to understand Anna’s work intellectually but to experience it, to embody the space, her approach and her ideas. Anna’s work has underpinned much of the postmodern dance practice that has been filtered down to me through my teachers and their teachers. I came here to get to the source and what I’m relating now is the slightly haphazard collection of thoughts that spilled out from this frail but determined 96 year old.

Choreography is a strong word… I’ve spent my life rebelling against it. When you choreograph, you create. When you use scores, others create. That’s how I don’t burn out. I make space for others to be creative, I tap into their potential and I learn something from what they do with my scores. So I never burn out. – Anna Halprin

If Anna’s creative approach could be summed up in one word, that word would be “scores”. We walk into the space through a score. We relate to each other through a score. We create individually through a score, we dance together through a score and finally we eat together through a score. A score is a set of rules that loosely hold together an event, allowing an individual to devise freely but still remain engaged in a specific dialogue.

But the score needs support. Anna draws strongly on the RSPV cycle defined by her husband Larry Halprin. The R stands for resources. What are we working with? A resource could be the environment, our bodies or any object, idea, stimulus that informs or moulds our dance. Resources are the raw materials of the creative process. If we define them and become aware of them they can enrich our practice. S stands for score. These are the rules of engagement. P stands for Performance, the enactment of the score using the resources. V stands for Valuaction. Like an evaluation of the performance, this is an opportunity to look at what happened in the performance to generate further resources that will then inform the next execution of the score and so on in an endless cycle.Even the working process can be a resource. “Don’t worry if you feel stuck” Anna says, “Just think to yourself, ‘OK I’ve been collecting resources, now what can I do with them.'” With each repetition we become more attuned to the practice, opening up the creative options.

Anna approaches the body as a resource. She identifies two ways in which this resource can be used. Firstly it is a point of sensation, what do I feel through my physical body? Anna talks about being an artist. She says that as an artist working with the body, her aim is to try and access the most authentic movement possible. If movement is authentic then anyone can empathise with it. Inauthentic movement, like ballet, she says, is like decoration. “It’s not bad, but it’s not authentic. It’s a style.”

Anna tells her assistants to pull out all the cushions from the studio. She instructs us all to lie down with the pillow under the upper back. “Let your jaws relax or you’ll hurt your necks.” We lie there for a good 15 minutes gradually circling our arms overhead to which she exclaims “Oh my goodness Colin I’m very worried about you. You need to do this everyday!” Colin is not a dancer, in fact most of the people here are not dancers. It’s a testament to the reach of her work that such a wide range of people have been drawn to this workshop. Whilst I’m lying there with my upper back in this extremely extended position, I feel gravity slowly stretching out my diaphragm and abdominals. Of course, being a Pilates teacher means I spend most of my day loading in the opposite direction. No wonder my entire abdomen goes into spasm once a month. We then placed the cushion under the pelvis, creating traction in the lower back. “Could all the assistants please develop eagle eyes”, she yaps. Her old-school manners sometimes come across as quite harsh.

I was relieved to hear her talk about her two favourite muscles: The trapezius and the gluts. Her largely self taught knowledge of anatomy was quite impressive. Clearly she spends a lot of time thinking and learning about movement. She talks about western cultures being more removed from the earth, losing our ability to ground. Whilst african cultures are more earth bound. Their tailbone opens backwards more, orienting the pelvis forwards, so they can commune with the earth more easily. She asks us all to raise our arms upwards by rolling the the chest backwards to access the lower trapezius. This is sky. She then instructs us to drop and ground through our feet to create a connection to earth. The centre is your horizon, the point of intersection between sky and earth. If sky and earth are two polarities then the horizon embodies both qualities. I think that’s a really interesting perspective on the centre, not as a fixed point, but as a dynamic interplay between the polarities of earth and sky.

Anna insists that we feel the earth polarity in our bodies. So she instructs us each to focus on grounding, whilst another person attempts to lift us off the ground. Obviously none of us budge. Then she tells us all to do it again and “just think about what you had for breakfast”. Lifting us off the ground this time round is a piece of cake. Wow! So it’s real! Anna stands up from her wheel chair. To give you some context, this 96 year old recently slipped on some dry leaves sending her shin first into the deck which cut across her shin bone. To avoid putting her weight onto it she started to walk differently which then led her to fall, fracturing her lumbar vertebra. So though still able to walk, she’s been instructed to keep it still and is in a wheel chair much of the time “for the next 6 rather than 8 weeks, because I have too much to do” she says. As we’re all trying to feel grounded she lifts herself up to standing, plants her two determined feet into the ground and gets her assistant to try to lift her up, fracture and all. Her face looks furious”You Won’t Lift Me!” she shouts. Surely enough Rosario cannot lift her.

Another resource is how we relate, because “you cannot exist without being in relation to others”. Anna describes two more polarities, Active and Passive.  We work through scores involving touch. In the first score we’re asked to lead a partner who’s eyes remain shut. We can leave our partner at times, and select someone else. “Did you feel anxious when you were left alone? Was it hard to leave someone?” We worked through different variables within this score. Both partners had eyes open, both could select to lead, to follow, to leave or hold on. “It’s important to be  clear in a relationship. It’s important to recognise when it’s no longer comfortable, when the relationship isn’t working anymore.” The intersection between life and art is no where more evident than in this abstracted relationship practice. It created a lot of food for thought. I noticed that my dominant action was to lead and got into a few power struggles when the person I was trying to lead refused to give in, taking us both into spins.

The body is also a site of emotions, what am I feeling emotionally? Physical sensation and emotions are linked. We inhabit our emotions in our bodies and in our movement. Anna instructed us to sit back to back with a partner, giving and receiving weight in turn as we went into flexion and extension. Moving with empathy for our partner’s body. Then she gave us the following score: starting back to back with your heads touching, slowly turn around to face your partner without losing contact between your heads. This has the effect of bringing you very close to your partner’s face. In the background she played a piece of music by Meredith Monk. I think the sound will haunt me for a long time. I’m not really sure what happened. My partner was a lovely older woman, Anita, who, as we turned to face each other, put her arm around me and smiled. I don’t know if it was the kindness of this gesture or the emotional manipulation of the music, but I literally began to sob.

Physical sensation, emotion, environment, relationships. Each of these resources form part of the self. Each of these resources impact on each other. For example: My environment can impact on my movement which can then impact on my emotions which then has an impact on how I relate to others. By highlighting these different resources, we create options that give us a sense of agency. If I move differently, how will that impact on my emotions? How will this changed state impact on my relationships? And how, in turn might this impact on my environment. Through the use of scores, Anna offers people a chance to play out these different dialogues through a process she calls the life / art dialogue. This is the basis of the work of the Tamalpa Institute, the organisation she co-founded with her daughter Daria Halprin. I’ll talk more about this work in the next post.

My trip to Anna Halprin’s Summer Workshop 2016 has been made possible thanks to the support of the Lisa Ullman Travelling Scholarship Fund.

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A week with Anna Halprin- Arriving

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Gate 1.  As you enter and pass through the gate leaving the driveway and leading to the studio, become aware of descending, of a procession and a change of atmosphere.

It’s Monday 20th June. After 5 hours in airports and 11 hours in the air, I arrived in San Francisco last night. The word ‘gate’ is a loaded one. I think about the gates I passed through to get here: tube gates, departure gates, arrival gates, the invisible policed gate that is border control, the Golden Gate Bridge and now this one. You cannot travel to the US without becoming excruciatingly aware of the politics of gates. Gates as a means of control, St Peter standing at the gate, “do you have your papers?”, “how much money are you carrying on you?”, “do you have proof of a return flight Ma’am?” I thought I’d negotiated my way through passport control quite neatly, but then another officer caught sight of my Maltese passport and sent me over to import control to have my bag scanned in case I was carrying any nasties. Lest you forget, let us make it absolutely clear that you are not welcome to over-stay your stay…oh and welcome to the US.

Anna’s historic Mountain home studio is nestled into a forest of redwood oak trees on the west slope of Mount Tamalpias in California’s Marin County. A long staircase takes you down from the driveway to the lounge area. A sign at the side of the entrance invites you to consciously attend to your descent: “walk slowly, pause periodically, look, listen, breathe, smell, touch.” It’s immediately clear that the users of this space revere the environment as much as they do the history of the studio. When Anna moved here with her architect husband, Larry Halprin, he knew that she needed a space to continue to develop her movement work. Together with Arch Lauterer (Martha Graham’s lighting designer), Larry designed the outdoor studio which was built in 1948 and later the indoor studio in 1950.

Anna and Larry’s work sought to redefine social structures in art and life. Their home studio became a seed bed for postmodern thinking in the 1960’s, attracting artists from all over the US to the West coast. This is how I had placed Anna’s work. Historically she is one of the founding artists of post-modern dance, a title she naturally refutes, along with the idea of choreography altogether. “We’re all choreographers” she says.

By 10am a group of around 30 of us have assembled in the lounge area, a hut space with kitchen and bathroom set on a lower level to the studio. Tomoko, one of Anna’s assistants, leads us up to the studio through a dance. Barefooted we’re invited to hold hands in a long line. We enter the space like a procession, ascending the stairs to the outdoor deck. In the far corner a frail Anna sits in a wheel chair. A minor injury means she’s a little less mobile, but she’s OK, they assure us. As we file passed Anna she asks each of us for our name and where we come from, and “please speak up ’cause I’m a little deaf”.

A leaflet they gave us on arrival spells out the significance of this space. It’s history is not lost on those of us present. A sense of reverence for the environment, for the people who have been a part of it and have literally sweated into the deck, takes over each one of us. As Anna explains:

This place has a long and fascinating history. It is here that the Dancer’s Workshop did its early experimental work..Artists who are now well known started here; dancers like Simone Forti, Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, Yvonne Rainer, A.A. Leath, John Graham, Norma Leistiko, Shirley Ririe…; Musicians like Terry Riley, LaMonte Young; Ruth Beckford who led one of the first all black dance companies, Merce Cunnigham, Min Tanaka… all performed on this deck… And of even greater importance are all the many talented and wonderful students and teachers who have shared so many creative dances and laughed and cried together here.I believe there is a field of energy that keeps growing, bringing the past into the present, and giving this space its particular beauty and sacredness. I hope you will enjoy being here and that you will be able to experience the power others have invested into the Mountain Home Studio as an addition to your own creativity – Anna Halprin.

Anna’s words spin in my jet lagged head. I have no idea what time zone I’m in. I find the outdoors overpowering and cannot feel my body. Worst of all my feet are so dirty it looks like it will take a month of hardcore scrubbing to get them clean again. But in the back of my head I hear Chris telling to me to just go with the daze, to surrender to the unfamiliarity of it and who cares that you haven’t had a warm up.

As Anna says, life and art are never separate, and here I am on this creative journey negotiating with an unfamiliar space whilst a part of me frets about whether they’ll let me back in when I fly home. The Entry Score provides a welcome direction for my unsettled brain. The rules are clear, inviting engagement, framed/ held together by years of other entrances down those stairs. All gates have entry scores, I think… and then I wonder what airport gates might be like if people were invited to walk slowly, pause periodically, look, listen, breathe, smell, touch….

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My trip to Anna Halprin’s Summer Workshop 2016 has been made possible thanks to the support of the Lisa Ullman Travelling Scholarship Fund. 

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On Judgement

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I am writing this from sunny California, where I’m lucky enough to be participating in Anna Halprin’s Summer Workshop. I’m still finding my feet here so I’ll give it another day before I get into describing it. I feel like I really need to address another issue today, about something that has been ticking away on my mind recently: Judgement.

Over the last month I have been preparing for my next dance project. I’m in an extremely lucky situation of having a dramaturg, Chris, to work with. Our preparations began as discussions in a cafe and then shifted into a studio space. We started by talking about everything I don’t want this work to be and everything that’s stopping me from making, for fear of creating something I don’t want it to be.

The creative space is a tricky one. When you’re running to the studio from teaching and know that you have exactly three hours before you have to run off again to teach, switching the creative machinery on is no easy task. The worst of it all, and the most frightening thing for any dance artist who’s about to embark on a new work, is facing an empty studio. So Chris and I thought about how to approach this time. How could we support the creative space, what questions, props, thoughts, attitudes do I need to have with me to place me in the optimal mode of ‘making’? I needed to learn how to shift gear. What rituals would help me make this transition?

On the night before our first studio session I was packing my things in preparation. I pulled out my new notebook and leafed through the empty pages. Then I pulled out some card and cut it out in the shape of a door hook, like the ‘do not disturb’ signs you get on hotel doors. Using a black sharpie I wrote out in big bold capitals: I SUSPEND JUDGEMENT.

I realised that the biggest hindrance to my process, the biggest hindrance to my creative journey was my own judgement.

Judgement can be a very useful tool. It stops us from doing things that might hurt us. So it plays a role in self-preservation. But as the master improviser and Dance Theatre teacher Sten Rudstrom says: ‘The Tiger has left the room’. Most of us are not judging ourselves and others based on an immediate threat to our existence. Our fear is unfounded. Most of us are locked into patterns of judgement that are learned. Patterns that we’ve adopted to fit in, to keep us safe from ridicule. But there is no doubt at all that this kind of judgement stops us from fulfilling our true potential.

For the last few weeks I have held this idea in my mind in a number of different contexts. I realised that it had huge relevance in my teaching work. I noticed when clients and students were judging me, for example. They want to know that their time and money is worth my work. They want to protect their investment. So they have to employ some element of judgement. It’s completely understandable. Sometimes I notice clients actively trying to suspend their judgement. Other times I notice people cutting off, withdrawing. Judgement says ‘it’s not my fault’, ‘this is how I am’, ‘i’m not good enough’, ‘you’re not good enough’, ‘this is crap’.

A few weeks into my process, I walked into a Yoga class on a Friday evening. It was a hot afternoon and by the time I got there I was tired and dehydrated. I put my water bottle at the end of my mat. The teacher walks in and demands that I get rid of my water bottle. “You don’t need anything”. Can you imagine how indignant I felt? I grudgingly put my water away in my bag at the back of the room. “How dare he” “How does he know I’m not ill” “If I over-heat and pass out I’ll sue him!”. The protestations in my head got to a point where I was very close to storming out of the class. Oh dear… this suspending judgement thing is a lot harder than I thought! I didn’t leave the class. I didn’t pass out. I did a strong 90 minute practice and I learned something.

Suspending judgement is about meeting another person where they’re at. Applied to oneself, suspending judgement is about meeting yourself where ever you’re at. Because sometimes the point we want to move towards is just beyond the discomfort of this place we judge. Judgement keeps us stuck in one place. Suspending judgement allows us to shift and grow.

Each time I start a new studio session, walk into a class, teach a class or a client, I now imagine I’m suspending judgement as I walk through the door. I metaphorically place my judgement on the threshold. My studio notice hangs up on the door handle. Each time I feel myself shrinking I say it in my head: “I suspend judgement”.

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This little patch of grass…

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I think it must have been some time in 2007 or 2008, during ID’s crossing borders series of talks, that I heard this story from Heather Ackroyd. She had been going through a difficult time and withdrew into a comforting process that she had often turned to in her artistic work: planting patches of grass. The story is that at the same time an artist named Dan Harvey had begun making work using grass and was told by an associate that there was this artist, Heather, who was copying his work! The duo became Ackroyd and Harvey, sharing both a personal and artistic partnership and creating work using grass, such as their chlorophyll images ‘Mother and Child’.

Today I was supposed to complete and publish a post about the importance of glut balance for lower back health. But on the last day of work for this term, I felt the need for something more reflective.

A number of conversations that I’ve had in the last 3 months have prompted me to think about the idea of control. I think it’s easy to feel that we can have no control over events in our lives, in our relationships, in our profession, in our country, in the world. So much so that we resign ourselves to just taking what ever is tossed in our direction. Rather than being pro-active, we get stuck in re-activeness. Re-activeness is pretty safe. There will always be something to complain about, and as long as it’s someone else’s fault, at least our abilities, drive and focus are never brought into question. But if the ball is always stuck on someone else’s side of the court, then how will you ever serve an Ace?

In January I was scheduled to meet with a programmer who runs one of the major production venues in the UK. The meeting had been planned from two months before, so I was well aware of the need to be prepared to get the most out of the event. Naturally I was after some kind of commitment towards my next project. (It’s an irony that as artists we’ve clearly put the need to make money secondary to our drive to create, and yet we always seem to be asking for money…) I don’t know if I really achieved my aim. Asking someone to support you is very much like leaving things up to them, again placing the likelihood of my next project in their hands. But what I did receive was some extremely insightful advice. He said that opportunities are great and always worth applying for if they suit your needs. But you cannot build a sustainable practice on the back of opportunities alone.

We all know that selection processes are highly competitive. We moan about how closed or un-transparent these processes seem. How is it that some artists are always supported by certain institutions? The truth is that success is often down to an underlying relationship that has already been established and this is a good thing! In the past I’ve submitted tonnes of applications (I still do), carefully scrutinising the guidelines. I felt as though I was always answering everyone else’s questions and then getting genuinely upset when applications fell through (which I also still do). When I look back at the perfectly planned schedule that I set myself on leaving college back in 2003, I realise, now, how flawed it was. Almost every goal I had set myself relied on my success in open auditions and application calls. Each one placed the ball squarely on the other side of the fence, I was at the mercy of the elements, totally disempowered. No wonder I was so disgruntled!

I’m writing from the perspective of a dance artist, but it applies to a much wider community. I think we can become so desperate to prove ourselves, to gain validation and recognition or to find security through regular income, that we hurl ourselves all over the place, never stopping to think: what are my questions? Who do I want to work with? Where do I want my work to go? I think we could all do with tending to our own little patch of grass, sowing the seeds, watering, pulling out the weeds and watching it grow.

I’m writing this on the back of many fresh disappointments, and one surprising achievement in the last few weeks. It’s a frustrating business building a project from scratch. But as I retreat away from it all to rest, my aim is to re-focus the compass inwards on this little patch of grass that’s under my feet.

Why do we all follow Liz Lerman?

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In September 2015 I was lucky enough to show my latest work in progress at The Place’s Touch Wood season. This platform follows the bi-annual research period, Choreodrome, hosted by The Place. I was terrified because not only was it my work in the frame, but for the first time in 7 years I also had to perform it! Each Touch Wood night four companies presented their new ideas, fresh from the studio. Afterwards the audience was divided into 4 groups and each group was joined by one of the artists whose work had just been performed.  Over the following 20 minutes the groups were (very skilfully) led through a feedback session, providing their input into that particular choreographer’s work that evening, following Liz Lerman’s critical response template.

The Liz Lerman structure is aimed at providing artists with the feedback that is helpful to them, and protecting them from the less helpful input. It has an artist led focus. The artist can ask for feedback on specific questions, audience members could then ask their own questions before the floor is opened to ‘opinions’. In offering an opinion, audience members had to first ask if the artist wanted to hear an opinion they had on a specific aspect. The artist could decline or accept before the opinion was offered. This is a well-known structure that I have followed a number of times. I was grateful for the structure on that particular occasion because I was feeling extremely nervous and insecure about my own performance. However I also sensed that I wasn’t fully getting to the crux of what was not working. Something was sticking and I wasn’t quite getting the reaction that I wanted.

After this I went to every single Touch Wood night and participated in feedback sessions for each one. The really intriguing thing was that I noticed that not only was the experience painful for me as a receiver, it was also quite strained as a feedback-er. You simply cannot say what you think! Sitting on the other side of the fence I was painfully aware of my enforced restraint. Sometimes this turned into sheer panic at the thought of having to say something when all I had to say was an opinion. I started to wonder whether all this protection wasn’t in fact a little too sheltered. Are we actually extracting constructive feedback, or are we hiding away, too scared of knowing the truth?

Surely the real question to ask is: what do I want for my work and for the profession in general? Do I want to keep myself safe, to hide behind a protective framework for fear of being found out, for fear that someone will realise that I do not have all the answers and that most of the time I have no idea where I’m actually going? Or do I want to use the lens of people’s external viewpoint to help me to make the best possible work I can make?

In Ed Catmull’s ‘Creativity Inc’ he talks about the importance of ‘candour’ and how this is a valued and necessary part of the creative development at Pixar Animation Studios. Catmull states:

The hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions and criticisms. Lack of candour, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments. – Ed Catmull, ‘Creativity Inc’ 2014.

Now to be clear, what I’m not saying is that the critical response should be thrown out with the proverbial bath water. I’m certainly not qualified enough to say so and there are contexts where this system is a very useful tool. But I wonder if we may be taking it a little too far.

When we invite feedback, we’re aiming to use other people’s external viewpoints to help us to see what we cannot see.  We have to be open to hearing what we might not want or like to hear. It’s always tough. But without access to candid feedback we cannot learn from each other and progress as a profession. We may well all be walking around in circles wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes. Waiting for the critics to shout ‘he’s naked’ is just a wasted opportunity to make something amazing. Rather than adopting a framework because it exists, we need to be mindful of what it is and what it is not achieving. We need to have open discussions with people we trust to speak their minds and with the knowledge that their thoughts are not personal or resulting from competitiveness. What we all want is just to make the best possible work at this time. Our egos are surely secondary to this.

 

Quality not Quantity

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I think it’s time we all stopped talking about ‘eating less and exercising more’ as the key to weight loss. It is not. Restricting calorie intake and increasing exercise leads to an input / output mentality that ties many people into an obsessive cycle. Yes it works in the short term, but in the long term it is unsustainable and can bring about a very negative relationship to both food and exercise, which only re-enforces the negative spiral. As the biomechanist Katy Bowman says in ‘Move your DNA’:

There is great debate over the generalized calorie-in-vs.-calorie-out theory when it comes to weight loss. Despite this theory seeming like a no brainer, it isn’t. Metabolic science is hugely complex and there is much left out when we fill the “calorie-out” side of this coin with “exercise” and research whole-body metabolic activity questionnaires, pedometers, and other ‘easy-to-quantify’ but indirect and inaccurate measures of energetic expenditures.

As a teenager I was completely obsessed with my weight. I loved dance and spent most of my free time at the ballet school. I matured early and had pretty much the body I have now when I was 11 years old. Still, I dreamt of becoming a ballet dancer and thought I needed to be stick thin to achieve this. Unfortunately teachers at the ballet school actively encouraged me to lose weight. The way I did this was by skipping meals, going through whole days on no food and then, starving by the evening, eating dinner plus lots of bread to make up. Luckily this never really progressed into a serious eating condition, but so began my difficult relationship with food.

When I moved to London to train at a professional dance school things got a whole lot worse. I had no concept of how much to eat or what to eat, for that matter. Like most first time Londoners I gained 5kgs even though I was spending most of my day dancing! For the rest of my training and a few years after that my body clung persistently to those extra kgs. The worst thing of all was that I expended so much of my energy just wanting to be thinner that I missed out on what I was really there to do. After leaving college I did about 3 different part time jobs. I would be in the gym at 7am, workout for an hour and then go to professional class at 9am before heading to work till 8pm or 10pm. Everyday! Still, my body held on to those stubborn kgs. I was killing myself on the treadmill every day, and barely eating.

By this point my main work shifted to a gym, so now I was around fitness fanatics all day long. I was having to stand up at the reception desk for 8 hours at a stretch and realized that my back was aching. I was forced to see an osteopath who basically told me to go and do Pilates. I decided to do the Teacher Training instead. The course I did was matwork only and spread out over a whole year. I started to learn how to move again and finally had the tools to train myself. By the end of the year I had lost the excess weight and now rarely go over my happy weight. The best thing is that I was also stronger and more flexible than ever before too.

Yes I am going to say it: the difference was Pilates. Why? Because instead of focusing on quantity of “exercise” I was finally working on the quality of my movement. Quality is the key ingredient that is missing from the ‘eat less exercise more’ paradigm. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it that counts. The reason for this is that our bodies are programmed to try to conserve energy. Technique, and the watchful eye of a teacher, is the only way to access the benefits of a movement without causing injury and strain elsewhere. When you work your muscles effectively, you gain strength without shortening and tightening up. This raises your basic metabolic rate. Now your whole body is using up more energy even at a resting state. The initial mindful investment of energy goes to work for you for the rest of the day, a bit like a financial investment. People earn money by doing work, exchanging their time and energy for money. But people become wealthy because they invest that earned money in assets that go to work for them. It’s the same story with weight loss. If you detach yourself from the direct relationship between input and output and focus on quality output and quality input, your body will do the self regulation so you can just get on with your life.

Since my epiphany I have been baffled by the crazy things people do in the name of getting into shape. No you do not need to starve yourself and run laps around your park every day. And for those who still think this is the way forwards you may be surprised to learn that being programmed towards efficiency, the more you do something the more efficient your body becomes at doing it, ie: the less calories you burn. This is how it’s possible to run a marathon and still have a potbelly.

Now to be clear, my situation, and that of many of my clients, is very different to that of people who are obese. Obesity brings with it further complications and may actually require an eat less and move more initiative to get the initial weight loss going. Pilates can help to get the spine and joints moving and reduce the strain that the additional weight puts on the body as a whole. (Every now and again I have to carry small weights around to my clients. It’s amazing how painful carrying 2kgs extra can be!!!) Luckily few of the people I work with are in this category. Most just want to lose a few kgs off stubborn areas and these are the people I’m talking to here.

My issues with eating lingered for several years until I started living with my ever-wiser older sister who literally taught me how to eat. If you’re stuck in the negative input-output trap, there is a way out: eat proper food, join a Pilates class, do a little cardio that you enjoy and get on with your life! Exercising more does not necessarily burn more calories. It’s quality not quantity that counts and yes, Pilates does help.