Movement and Dance

I am a secret living room dancer, but only because I haven’t yet found the perfect retro 80s/90s band to let me rock out with a bunch of my peers. That was the ultimate fab dance era. Prince, Madonna, and Michael Jackson made music that just lifted you out of your seat and made you dance like the joyful varmint you were intended to be!

I took formal dance classes in ballet, tap, and jazz at times, but most of my dancing was for theater. This means that in professional jargon, I’m more of a “good mover” than a real dancer. In other words, there will be no triple pirouettes for this gal! Or toe shoes.

BUT one good thing about being a good mover rather than a prima ballerina is that you know what other good movers can do. And you know what non-movers can do. So, a number of times, I’ve had the pleasure of choreographing for my drama students’ musicals. It was always such a thrill to see the looks on their parents’ faces when they saw their kids could actually dance.

Of course, the way the first-graders can dance is far different from high school students. But one of the most beautiful movement sequences I ever created was for a sad story about snowflakes that I wrote for first-graders. The ballet-like sequence completely hushed the room as the seven children moved gracefully in their white clothing. A little movement can do a lot more than we think when set in the right story.

During my acting training, I did a lot of movement work, including the Alexander technique. I learned relaxation exercises and good physical warmups. I explored how emotion can grow out of movement itself, or posture. And I learned stage combat, which uses movement in the most controlled and precise ways, for safety’s sake.

Most of all, my work in movement and dance taught me to respect the body and its integral role in acting. If your body doesn’t have flexibility and range of motion, your range as an actor will be more limited. The way our bodies move tells the world who we are. And the same is true of our bodies on stage. They are a key part of storytelling.