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During Floorwork class, we learnt a new phrase across the floor. The phrase was a relatively long with similar positions throughout the exercise. Thus, I find myself struggling to remember the steps. However, after watching Lewis do the whole exercise, I realised that the phrase involved a lot of arms. This became very helpful in helping me understand and remember the mvoements quickly. For instance, in the first half of the exercise, we had to swing our arms and point them in various directions. This made me think of using the arms to remember the direction of the movements. This is especially useful when I focus and utilise the momentum of the swings to connect and transition in between movements. One clear example of this is when we sway and rebound the arm from the elbow. This recoil feeling became a leading force for me to change direction, which then gave me enough centripetal force to turn with stability. Another important aspect that I noticed was how the use of the upperbody and arms are essential to weight transfers. In this particular exercise, there is a floor section that requires us to swing our left leg around and slot it through in between one hand and the right leg, allowing us to turn backwards and into another movement. This particular action was quite hard for me as I could only balance on the ball of foot while manouvering the other leg around the whole body. At first I thought that I needed to rely mainly on the leg power and strength to keep myself from collapsing down. However, after observing myself through videos, I realised that I should use more of my arms to counteract the weight imbalance as I am executing the movement. To illustrate, as I swing my leg around, I have to focus on putting my arm in the opposite direction and quickly switching it according to my leg placement. This then reduces the tension in my leg to keep hold of my entire bodyweight on a single side and also make my movements look bigger as I am using my entire body. Overall, I find that I need to increase my awareness of my arms and improve on lengthening its line to help recall movements faster and effectively execute movements.

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Locking lessons have been quite difficult for me as it is very different from the groove-based classes from last term. I realised that locking focuses a lot on upper and lower body coordination; the arm movements are moving quite differently from the footwork. Visually, I thought that some of the locking phrases are simple as the legs are moving consistently while the arms only had small changes in between. However, when I actually try to execute them, I struggled to get my arms to synchronise with the legs and its beat. After repeatedly practising and drilling the movements, I found that I was still quite stuck and felt that my body was tensing up rather than loosening and grooving to the music. Therefore, to rectify this problem, I thought back to the groove-based classes with Vicky. During the lessons, we delved into the rhythm and beat of the music. This was primarily from the footwork giving use the bass line tempos. Therefore, I started to make my body get used to the lower body patterns first through repetitions. Subsequently, after becoming more familiar with it, I relied less on the leg work and focused my attention to the upper body movements. This was quite beneficial to me as I could pay more attention on one particular movement than confusing myself with too many details. To put it in another way, I created some body cues to remind me of certain movement details. For instance, when I have to swing my arm down, my torso needs to be contracted inwards while I lift up my leg. So, I thought of my arm slicing downwards as a prompt for me to go low on the down beat while I lift my leg to touch my arm. Although I am still struggling and taking a lot more time than I anticipated, I find that with more practise the movements become more in tuned with my body. This would eventually allow me to make my movements bigger and less tense.

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Coming back from the first term, my body took a bit of time to adjust back to Cunningham classes. The reason for the long adjustment period was not due to the physical limitations but because I needed time to recall all the details mentally. Some examples primarily include the alignment of my hip and torso in relation to my upper body. For instance, when I initially did the upper body curve to the side corner in second position, I thought more about keeping the hips facing front than my upper body. This then resulted in my shoulders being slanted to one side without my knowledge. After Kate notified me of this problem, I found that I was focusing too much on my lower body awareness since the last term, and I need to work on my upper body alignment more in the future. After correcting my shoulders by sensing my arms behind held on an even plane, I increased my awareness of my upper body alignment in other exercises and phrases. For example, in the phrase shown in the video below, I found that my upper body movement is essential to not only keeping my entire body aligned and stable but also making the dance movements big and expansive. To illustrate, at the beginning of the phrase, the swinging of the arms from side to side can easily go out of control as the arms can lead the hips to overturn. To change my mindset, instead of primarily focusing on the hips being secure, I also concentrated on using the levelled alignment of my shoulders to guide my arms. In other words, I thought of spiralling the upper torso while maintaining my shoulder alignment to reach further into my extremities while letting the weight of my arms release downwards for momentum. This then creates a more expansive movement that does not compromise the stability of my lower body. Another note I took was the alignment of my arms while lunging forward to the wide second position. Sometimes my arms would unconsciously move too back, resulting in a break in the long alignment. Thus, to improve this, I thought of a straight line from my neck, shoulder, elbow, hand and fingers to extend my line more forward than backward. Simultaneously, I also tried to press my armpits down to pull my shoulders down for a stable upper-body position.

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Weight transfer for footwork in Cunningham and Locking

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Weight transfer for footwork in Cunningham and Locking

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In Cunningham class, we were given various tendu exercises to practise coordination, the articulation of the foot and most importantly, the control of our weight placement. One main correction that was raised for the whole class was ensuring that we placed our weight back into the centre every time we returned the working leg back in. To illustrate this, whenever I point my foot outwards, my body weight naturally shifts to the opposite leg to counteract the weight disparity of the working outside leg. Due to this, when the working leg moves back to the centre, I tend to keep my general weight on the standing leg so that it is easier for the working leg to move again immediately. However, this is not the best habit, as it makes it harder for me to change my weight to the opposite side when I need to switch legs. In other words, I need to put more effort into transferring weight from one extremity to the other whenever I have to change the working leg, which ultimately results in slower leg movements. Thus, I found the correction given a very useful pointer to work on because it makes me more aware of my weight placement.

As it was a long habit of mine, I am still struggling to continuously and consistently apply the correction. However, I definitely see the benefits of purposely shifting weight back to the centre every time. For one, my legs feel freer as I do not “lock” myself in a stagnant position, so I am able to get more range of motion in my hip. Another improvement is my increased range of motion in locking. As stated before, I struggle with locking as it requires a lot of quick footwork, which feels very unfamiliar to me. However, when I analyse the movements, locking is mainly about shifting weight and using body weight to create and gain momentum for big movements. Therefore, I realised that the correction could also be applied to my locking classes. In other words, with enhanced awareness of my weight placement, I can better anticipate my next movement and shift my weight accordingly. This has helped me move more swiftly in between movements, letting me focus on other aspects of locking, such as the groove and arm movements.