Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and BMC (complete)

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen Notes
(information from BMC School website, Jerome Robbins Library and Kestenberg Movement Profiling site)

For over 35 years, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen has been a leader in advancing an integrated approach to the body and mind connection. The body and mind are not separate entities that are at odds with each other. Instead, the mind and body inform each other and changes can be made in the body by accessing the mind.

Credentials:
~ Registered Occupational Therapist
~ Registered Movement Therapist
~ Certified in Neurodevelopmental Therapy,
~ Certified in Laban Movement Analysis
~ Certified in **Kestenberg Movement Profiling.

What she has done:
~ developed Body-Mind Centering® (BMC)
~ founded the BMC School in NY in 1973 (now located in Amherst, Massachusetts)
~ wrote the book, Sensing, Feeling and Action.
~ practiced occupational therapy and taught in university hospitals
~ helped to establish a school for occupational and physical therapy for the Tokyo government
~ practiced bodywork and movement in psychiatric settings
~ taught in the masters program in Dance Therapy at Antioch New England College
~ taught dance at Hunter College and at the Erick Hawkins School of Dance in New York
~ presents workshops throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe.

There is a 30 min. videorecording of an interview with Cohen at the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection. She discusses her concept of body-mind centering and about her training, recalling Erick Hawkins and Irmgard Bartenieff as special mentors. She discusses the aims and program of her School of Body-Mind Centering.

Title: Dance on: Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen [videorecording]
Producer: Billie Mahoney 1990
Call Number: Performing Arts - Dance *MGZIC 9-2279
Interviewer: Billie Mahoney.


**KMP is a complex instrument for describing, assessing and interpreting nonverbal behavior. Developed by Judith Kestenberg who based KMP on Laban Analysis. Download the profiling program here.

BODY MIND CENTERING notes
(Adapted from Sensing, Feeling & Action
by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen)

“There is something in nature that forms patterns. We, as part of nature, also form patterns. The mind is like the wind and the body is like the sand; if you want to know how the wind is blowing, you can look at the sand.” BBC

BMC Philosophy
Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) is an ongoing, experiential journey into the alive and changing territory of the body. It challenges the notion that the body and the mind are separate and opposed entities. In BMC, the body and mind have an intimate relationship on many different levels and the relationship is always changing according to experience. There is no arrival. There is no centered. There is no balanced. Balancing is a constant dialogue based on experience.

Although BMC is based in Western terminology and mapping, it has been informed by Eastern Philosophy. Like the relationship between body and mind, the Eastern and Western value systems blend and complement each other in BMC. Physical substances (eg. blood or lymph) are treated as substances with states of consciousness and processes inherent within them.

“We are relating our experiences to these maps, but the maps are not the experience.” BBC

BMC tracks the connection between “smallest level of activity within the body and the largest movement of the body—aligning the inner cellular movement with the external expression of movement through space.”

The study of BMC includes both the cognitive and experiential learning of the body systems:
Cellular – each cell has its own living intelligence
Skeleton - supporting ground for our thoughts, the leverage for our ideas
Ligaments - helps articulate clarity of focus and concentration to detail.
Muscles - express our power, and engage in the dialogue of resistance and resolution
Fascia - connect our inner feeling with our outer expression
Fat – Static Fat Vs Mobilized Fat. Fat that is embraced offers nurturing comfort.
Skin - It sets our general tone of openness and closedness to being in the world
Organs - habitats of the memories of our inner reactions to our personal histories.
Fluids - underlie transformation, and mediate the flow between rest and activity
breathing and vocalization
The Senses and the Dynamics of Perception
Developmental Movement (both human infant development and the evolutionary
progression of species)
Psychophysical Integration.

DEVELOPMENTAL MOVEMENT
Ontogenetic (human infant development)
Phylogenetic (the evolutionary progression through the animal kingdom)

The Basic Neurological Patterns are based upon prevertebrate and vertebrate movement patterns.
Prevertebrate patterns:
Cellular Breathing
expanding/contracting process in breathing and movement in every cell of the body
correlates to the movement of the one-celled animals
Naval radiation
relating and movement of all parts of the body via the navel
Mouthing
movement of the body initiated by the mouth
Prespinal movement
soft sequential movements of the spine initiated by means of the crossing point between the spinal cord and the digestive tract

Vertebrate patterns:
Spinal movement (fish)
head to tail movement
Homologous movement (amphibian)
symmetrical movement of two upper and/or two lower limbs simultaneously
Homolateral movement (reptile)
asymmetrical movement of one upper limb and the lower limb on the same side
Contralateral movement (mammals)
diagonal movement of one upper limb with the opposite lower limb

Todd and Sweigard

From "The Thinking Body".....

"Thinking" of image goals could be used to break old habits and establish better body balance

"The thinking body" promotes an understanding of body alignment as a function of mechanical principles

"Why hold the bony parts of our body when we can let them hang or sit?"

Ideo - idea; kinesis - movement

Ideokinesis involves sustained mental focus upon imagined actions

Proprioceptive - "perceiving of self" self-awareness; also called "organic"

Exteroceptive - mechanisms by which the outer world is perceived

Organic sensations are grouped into three general types

1) kinesthesia - feeling of movement

2) labyrinthe - the feeling of position in space as derived from organs in the inner ear

3) visceral - miscellaneous impressions from various internal organs

Most of the operations involved in the guidance and control of our bodily movements are entirely unconscious.  Movements are a combination of reflexes and not the moving of muscles.

Force in one direction must be met with an equal opposing force

advanced anatomy wed 10/29

Hello Gerald & Independent Study friends,

So, next Wednesday in Lynn Martin's advanced anatomy workshop I will be doing a small presentation on the work of Eric Franklin. (For those that were there, this was my subject for last year's final anatomy project.)

The topic of this workshop is the hip and upper leg so I will be leading a few of Eric's imagery exercises which focus on these areas. It might be a nice hands-on intro to Franklin, a fellow we will be studying a little later in the semester. Hope you can come!

Wed 10/29 5-5:45 pm Studio I

Love, elizebeth

Faye's Mabel Todd Notes

Notes on Mabel Todd
from her biography written by Pamela Matt on ideokinesis.com

Years: 1880-1956
Hometown: Syracuse, New York

Childhood: As a child, she suffered from a severe illness that weakened her kidneys and threatened her with lifelong invalidism. She recovered from the illness and began developing a keen interest in science.

Beginnings of bodywork: Todd had a bad fall that immobilized her for months. She finally took control of her rehab. She used her knowledge of physics and applied that to movement mechanics. She gathered more information about the anatomy and kinesiology and allowed that information to infiltrate her practice of simple movements. She gradually improved her posture and movement.

Voice and posture: At Emerson College of Oratory on Boston where she enrolled as a college student, she discovered the relationship between voice and posture. A weak and unstable voice came concurrently with problems in posture and coordination. At the start of WW1, she began teaching with techniques from her rehab and voice methods and called the practice “Natural Posture.”

Development of teaching method: People working in makeshift factories for the war efforts needed help restoring their bodies from the harsh conditions. Todd taught them to use their bodies in more efficient ways and to break the habit of a “military posture.” She impressed many doctors in the area who sent patients to her. Her clientele grew and she began training her students to be teaching assistants. This process clarified her teaching method.

A class with Todd: She would present a picture of a skeleton or an anatomy chart that suggested good posture. An image will be offered to assist the student in achieving good posture. Voluntary muscular response to the image was discouraged. The student would be instructed to maintain that image while practicing simple movement patterns like walking or crawling.

Connection with Columbia University: Dr. Jesse Feiring Williams, who was head of the Department of Physical Education, invited Todd to earn a Bachelor of Science degree for a portion of classes usually required. Williams had been challenging the dualistic notion that the body was separated into two opposed parts: the material body and the immaterial mind. He developed a progressive and holistic curriculum that “promoted movement as a ‘laboratory’ for learning in all the subject areas as well as enhancing social responsibility and moral values.” Todd graduated from Columbia in 1927 and immediately began lecturing at the college.

Publication of The Thinking Body, a Study of the Balancing Forces of Dynamic Man: In 1937, Todd published this seminal work to “promote an understanding of body alignment as a function of mechanical principles.” Recognition from this publication helped sustain her studio classrooms for a while. By the late 40s, a new generation of the NYC medical establishment challenged her approach and threatened to sue her. Todd lacked the energy and funds to defend herself so she agreed to stop working in NY.

Publication of The Hidden You in 1953: Todd moved to California and developed her book The Hidden You in Los Angeles. She expanded on ideas from The Thinking Body to include psychological and spiritual connections to posture and movement. It seemed natural to her that “the process of exploring dynamic body balance would eventually inform all dimensions of one being.”

Her legacy: Todd died in 1956 in California. Her students dispersed after that. Lulu Sweigard organized and scientifically verified Todd’s method, while Barbara Clark developed accessible educational manuals for the general public.

Traci's Laban/Bartenieff notes

Laban established choreology - the discipline of dance analysis

Labanotation is also known as Kinetography

Laban led the ausdrucktanz movement and was recognized as an intellectual in the field of dance theatre and movement study

When he opened the Art of Movement studio in Manchester in 1946, he concentrated on movement as behavior

Laban's ideas: 1) he was influenced by the social and cultural changes happening at the time
2) feeling was being questioned - opened the way for a freeing of the feeling body
3) he felt that the best way to advocate this freedom was by mirroring it in dance and movement arts
4) he valued individuals own choice of movement and self initiated vocabularies
5) he abandoned constraints of traditional steps, reliance on music for inspiration, and mime

Der Freier Tanz was born!

What sets him apart?? He was a creative artist and a creative theorist at home, in the studio and the lab. he could express himself equally through movement and writing. His legacy is in studio practices and theoretical methods driven by movement practice. His passion was to establish dance as an art of equal standing to its sister arts. He thought that without dance literacy, dance would never be taken seriously, so that is why he developed labanotation.

Bartenieff
was a physical therapist

applied developmental principles and Laban's theories to her work with polio patients and dancers, which originated the Bartenieff Fundamentals (a physical reeducation).

her Effort/Shape training began in various projects in areas such as psychology, physical therapy, child development and the performing arts

Four LMA components: Body, Effort, Shape, Space. These components of movement phrases are irreducible, meaning that they are the smallest units needed in describing an observed movement.

For great online descriptions of the LMA components, go to the NYU movement research website at: http://movement.nyu.edu/projects/lma/intro.html

Faye's Bartenieff Notes

Irmgard Bartenieff 101
Birthplace: Germany
Early interests: Biology, art and dance
Professions: dancer, choreographer, teacher, Labanotation expert, Physical Therapist, pioneer in the development of Dance Movement Therapy, and a cross-cultural researcher

Important dates:
1900: Irmgard Bartenieff was born
1925: Met Rudolf Laban
1936: Fled Germany to the U.S. with her husband, Michail Bartenieff
1943: Irmgard Bartenieff graduated from New York University's Physical Therapy program
1954 –1957: Chief Therapist at Blythedale Hospital Valhalla, NY, an orthopedic hospital for children
1978: Founded Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies – LIMS in New York City
1980: Bartenieff’s text, Body Movement: Coping with the Environment, was published
1981: Bartenieff passes away

Life in Germany:
She studied, taught dance and toured around Germany with her husband.

Upon moving to the US:
Introduced Labanotation at the Hanya Holm Studio
Lectured at Bennington College, Columbia Teachers College, The New School for Social Research, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Beginnings of Bartnenieff Fundamentals:
As Chief Physical Therapist of the Polio Service of Willard Parker Hospital, NY, she worked to rehabilitate victims of the polio epidemic by teaching active participation instead on passive acceptance. This approach, combined with her work with the Choreometrics Project, became core to her body re-education method, Bartenieff Fundamentals.

Bartenieff’s Process of Exploration:
Peggy Hackney wrote in the preface to her book “Making Connections” that the focus of Bartenieff’s teachings would change from year to year. Bartenieff Fundamentals “developed in application,” meaning that the focal point of her theory that year was directly related to what Bartenieff was experiencing and investigating in her own body.

What is FUNDAMENTAL?
Change is fundamental: The essence of movement is change
Relationship is fundamental: Relationship is connection
Patterning Body Connections is fundamental

Faye's Laban Notes

Rudolf Laban 101
Birthplace: Austro-Hungary
Family Background: Hungarian Military Family
Religion: Combination of Victorian Theosophy, Sufism, and popular fin de siecle Hermeticism.
Training: Art and Architecture in Paris

Important dates:
1879: Rudolf Laban, born in Austria - Hungary
1915: Rudolf Laban established the Choreographic Institute in Zürich and later founded branches in Italy, France, and central Europe.
1928: First publication of what will be known as Labanotation
1938: Flees from Germany to the UK to join Kurt Jooss and Lisa Ullmann, his students.
1947: Published “Effort”
1948: Laban School establishes as the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester.
1953: Studio moves to Addlestone in Surrey due to expansion.
1958: Rudolf Laban died.

Interest in movement arts:
In Munich, he was influenced by dancer/choreographer Heidi Dzinkowska to study German Expressionist Dance. His study in architecture and movement arts led to his interest in the moving human form and the space around it.

Movement choir:
He developed the movement choir, which involves choreographing people en masse. His spiritual pursuits shaped this form.

Alleged Nazi Involvement:
In 1934, he was promoted to director of the Deutsche Tanzbuhne in Nazi Germany. He received funding from the propaganda ministry for running dance festivals. He published this statement: “We want to dedicate our means of expression and the articulation of our power to the service of the great tasks of our Volk. With unswerving clarity our Führer points the way”. He started removing non-Aryan pupils from his children’s course in July 1933. By 1936, he had fallen out with the Nazi regime.

“Shadow movements”
Laban believed that “shadow movements” wasted evergy and time. While in the UK, he tried to help workers eliminate these “shadow movements and to concentrate on effective movements for their jobs. This work led him to publish a book entitled Effort in 1947.

Legacy:
His student Irmgard Bartenieff developed Bartenieff Fundamentals based on his teachings. Kurt Jooss, Mary Wigman, and DH Lawrence also studied with him. He shaped the philosophical basis of the new German Dance Theatre that flourished after the 1960s with Pina Bausch and Susannah Linke and others.

Trivia:
Laban means “Bible” in Hebrew.

Overview of Laban Movement Analysis:

People combine the elements of movement in unique ways and organize them to create phrases and relationships, which reveal personal, artistic, or cultural style.

The elements of movement are
Effort, Shape, Space and Body

It is in the PHRASING of these elements that relationships are formed.

Patterns of Total Body Connectivity:
Breath
Core-Distal Connectivity
Head-Tail Connectivity
Upper-Lower Connectivity
Body-Half Connectivity
Cross-Lateral Connectivity

Sequencing of movement:
Simultaneous
Successive (adjacent)
Sequential (non-adjacent)

Effort
Flow, Weight, Time and Space

Flow effort: Free and Bound
Weight effort: Light and Strong
Passive sensing: Limp and Heavy
Time effort: Sustained and Sudden
Space effort: Indirect and direct

Reading List

Hello everyone,

Here is a preliminary (suggested) reading list. This is a list that I
have recently compiled for a graduate course I taught this summer at
UW-Milwaukee. I thought it would be a good place to start for us as
well. Feel free to browse through these books as they have been
tremendously helpful to me in the last few years. I don't plan on
having a mandatory reading list as many of these books are expensive
and difficult to obtain. It may be nice to share amongst yourselves. I
know that many of them are available at Bobst. I also have some of
them, particularly Erkert's book (who was my pedagogy teacher). Let
me know if you are interested.

My best,
Gerald


Books:
Harnessing the Wind: The Art of Teaching Modern Dance by Jan Erkert
Sensing, Feeling, and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind
Centering by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Making Connections: Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff
Fundamentals by Peggy Hackney
The Thinking Body by Mabel Todd
Taking Root to Fly: Articles on Functional Anatomy by Irene Dowd
Human Movement Potential: Its Ideokinetic Facilitation by Lulu E. Sweigard
Dance Kinesiology by Sally Sevey Fitt
Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery by Eric N. Franklin
Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain

Websites:
www.kleintechnique.com
www.bodymindcentering.com
www.limsonline.org
www.alexandertechnique.com
www.feldenkrais.com
www.skinnerreleasing.com
www.ideokinesis.com

Somatics 101

A nice introductory article on somatics:

Somatics 101
Dance Magazine
July, 2006
Article by Nancy Wozny

Why do some dancers fully inhabit their bodies, creating a seamless whole between the dancer and the dance? Can we attribute this to a kind of somatic intelligence? Dancers have heard the term somatics tossed around for three decades, but few know the exact origins of the practice. And yet, dancers have been a driving force in the field. The somatic movement was already well under way when the philosopher Thomas Hanna coined the term in 1976. Somatics derives from the Greek word for the living body, soma, and is the study of the body experienced from within. The roots of somatics can be traced back to the late 19th-century European Gymnastik movement, which used breath, movement, and touch to direct awareness. Francois Delsarte, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, and Bess Mensendieck encouraged a kind of inside-out expression that questioned the traditional nature of movement training. They seemed to be saying, "The body is the person," thus joining mind and body in a celebration of the human form.

American somatic thinkers also made significant contributions. Mabel Elsworth Todd's classic text, The Thinking Body, introduced dancers to the role of the mind in dance training in 1937. Her student, Lulu Sweigard (who later taught at Juilliard), developed "ideokinesis," a process of activating the imagination to affect movement. Somatic
pioneers Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (Body-Mind Centering), Emily Conrad (Continuum), Joan Skinner (Skinner Releasing), Elaine Summers (Kinetic Awareness), Susan Klein (Klein Technique), and Judith Aston (Aston-Patterning), all hail from the dance world.

What makes a movement experience somatic? Glenna Batson, who teaches Alexander Technique in the Hollins University/MFA program at American Dance Festival, highlights five components of a somatic discipline: using sensory feedback, slowing down and paying attention, learning through internal experience rather than imitation, applying a rhythm of doing and resting, and exploring movement rather than simply completing exercises. Martha Myers, Dean Emerita of ADF, was a key
figure in integrating somatics into dance. Her seminal collection of articles in Dance Magazine, "Dance and the Body Therapies" (March, April, May, July 1980), introduced the work of Alexander, Feldenkrais, Irmgard Bartenieff, and Irene Dowd to readers. "Each comes at the work differently," says Myers. "But somatics always involves awakening the sensate self." Many somatics teachers combine various approaches.
Martha Eddy, director of MovingOnCenter in California, combines Laban Movement Analysis, Bartenieff work, and Body-Mind Centering to create SOMAction Movement Therapy. Dance historian Sondra Horton Fraleigh created a hybrid form after studying Feldenkrais, Craniosacral Therapy, Myofascial Release, yoga, and Zen meditation. Klein acknowledges influences from Bartenieff, Bainbridge Cohen, and Barbara Mahler. Somatics gained momentum in the dance world as a means to prevent injury. We become more prone to injury when we're on autopilot. Whether it's the gentle touch of an Alexander teacher's hand at the back of your neck or going through the mental inventory of sensations in a Feldenkrais scan, it's about paying attention to
what's already going on in our bodies. Somatics classes are offered at many dance training centers, including Juilliard, ADF, and the Bates Summer Dance Festival. Ray Schwartz, of University of Texas at Austin, uses Feldenkrais to jump-start improvisation sessions. "This is a very democratic way of working," says Schwartz. "The dancers develop movement phrases from their own sensations rather than through imitating the choreographer." Somatics has influenced many choreographers, from Anna Halprin and Trisha Brown to Jennifer Monson, DD Dorvillier, and Daniel Burkholder. Each has created a unique style with attention to a more sensory-based compass. Whether we want to heal from an injury, shake up the creative process, or dance like we are fully at home in our own skin, somatics will continue to inform
the dance terrain, and dancers will be instrumental in moving somatics into the future.

Nancy Wozny is a Feldenkrais teacher and writer in Houston.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Dance Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group

Welcome!

I thought I would start by making a list of topics we agreed upon as well as a timeline of discussions. Soon, I will post written assignments and future meetings.

Thanks,

Gerald

Rudolf von Laban and Irmgard Bartenieff (10/16)

Lulu Sweigard and Mabel Todd (10/23)

Body-Mind Centering/Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (10/30)

Irene Dowd, Susan Klein and Barbara Mahler (11/6)

Eric Franklin, Andre Bernard and Barbara Clark (11/13)

(F. Matthias) Alexander and Moshe Feldenkrais (11/20)

Wrap-up and written assignment due (12/4)