Katharine Kanter
Inscrit le: 19 Jan 2004
Messages: 1415
Localisation: Paris
|
 Posté le: Mar Mar 23, 2010 4:40 pm Sujet du message: Driving a wedge into the works? |
 |
|
WOULD THERE WERE WOOD !
An Ode to the wooden Floor in the Teaching of classical Dance
by Julie CRONSHAW
London, March 2010
Since the 1980’s the floor of choice for dance professionals worldwide has been the Marley or linoleum floor covering over a sprung base. Before then, dancers trained predominantly on wooden floors, some sprung, others not, and with varying degrees of slip or grip, depending on how they were being used, and on climatic conditions.
The plastic dance floors that we are now used to, whether as classical or as contemporary dancers, and that we have come to rely upon, signal a professional dance environment. We know we will not slip in our pointeshoes or risk splinters or dodgy floorboards. On tour we can dance safely, knowing that the floor beneath us is neither the brutal concrete of the modern theatre, nor the old floorboards so often found in traditional theatres. Truly the invention of Marley floors for the travelling dance company has been a godsend!
However, over the past two decades of dancing and teaching in many theatres, studios, church halls et alia under all sorts of conditions, I now find that there is actually much to be said in favour of the traditional wooden floor for classical ballet training (not being a contemporary or modern dancer, I am in no position to comment here on how different floor surfaces may affect them).
Apart from the obvious natural beauty of the traditional wooden floor, with its tactile and resonant qualities, I now tend to believe that classical ballet training is not only enhanced, but actually safer, i.e. less potentially injurious to the body, when conducted on a wooden floor.
Having spent the first few years of my career dancing fearlessly on a Marley floor both in Germany and the United States, I gave no more thought to the wooden-floored studios of my training years with their scary slippery patches and the dusty rosin box in the corner. Happily I believed that the plastic floor was the answer to all my pointework prayers, and carried on confidently until my first bout with tendonitis. However, as all dancers know, you are never the same after an injury and more often than not, we hope, a lot wiser for it. I began to think about why and how I had sustained the injury, which had been compounded with a bone spur and knee problems.
Many of my colleagues over the years have also suffered from tendonitis, ‘shin splints’ and stress fractures, but accepted these as an occupational hazard. Although we would not, by any means, suggest that all of these injuries can be attributed to plastic floors, I would ask you to take the following into consideration nevertheless.
I first began to consider the impact of flooring in Kazan, Russia in 1994, whilst guesting with the State Theatre in ‘Sleeping Beauty’. At the dress rehearsal, I found that the usual Marley floor covering had been removed, which alarmed me somewhat. I was told that as there was a folk ballet taking place that evening, the wooden floor had to be uncovered and left as it was. The stage floor was now the original, untreated wood with gangplank-style floorboards that had at least as many gaps in them as one sees at the beach, and with an ominous looking trapdoor downstage right, just where you finish your maneges at the end of a variation! Somewhat to my surprise, the dress rehearsal went without a hitch, the floor proving to be neither slippery nor hazardous.
The following evening, for the ballet performance, the Marley floor was re-laid as usual. Busy with so much else, I gave nary another thought to the floor, but later, upon reflection, realised that rehearsing on the wooden floor had actually been a far more interesting, and actually more comfortable experience.
Several years later, having retired from the stage to teach in studios with a great variety of floor coverings and degree of spring, I gradually became aware of the valuable role played by the wooden floor. I had been attending Cecchetti Society summer school for teachers over several years, practising, inter alia, the advanced Cecchetti work, and found the plastic surface of the highly sprung studios irksome. I could not use my feet with the degree of sensitivity I had become used to on my own studio’s wooden floors, neither could I turn without adding on torsional force. The highly sprung base, whilst it felt easier initially for dancing allegro, proved to be somewhat of a false friend: I nursed tight shins and Achilles tendonitis for weeks afterwards, although I had never suffered from either complaint in my own studio, despite the hours spent skipping and jumping with small children. (Perhaps one should note here that my stage career had been curtailed by severe tendonitis and a bone spur. In those days, I had been working exclusively on plastic floors in the United States.)
I was interested to find out how other teachers on the summer course felt about the floor conditions. The teachers who worked on wooden floors in their own studios were universally in agreement that, despite the sometimes slippery conditions of their usual environment, this was nonetheless preferable to sticking to the plastic floor, and that they too had complained of tendonitis-like symptoms during and after the summer school. However, whether this were entirely due to the floor was uncertain, given other factors in the environment, such as the sharp increase in the time devoted to actual dancing at summer school, as opposed to simply teaching children.
Last year, I participated in a course for teachers, again, involving very advanced Cecchetti work, held in a purpose-built ballet studio near London. The owner of the studio, a former professional dancer and teacher of many years in her own school, told me that she entertained no doubts about her decision to have a wooden floor put down there. Her masterstroke was to experiment with the varnish, until she found the right product for ballet dancers, particularly for pointework. She was, fortunately, acquainted with the owner of Rustin’s, a varnish manufacturer . The two worked and experimented together, until the perfect surface was created, with just the right amount of allowable friction and endurance. This product is now used on other wooden dance floors in the UK by teachers who have discovered its value, and will be applied this summer to the floor of the studio where I work. (The product reference is FCSR, and the manufacturer is Rustins Ltd.,Waterloo Road, Cricklewood, London NW2/
Tel: +44 (0)20 8450 4666. E-mail: rustins@rustins.co.uk)
Fundamental to classical dance technique is the going through the foot, activating the entire sole, as the leg opens from fifth position into an extended position, and again, activating the entire foot as the leg closes back into fifth or as one lands from a jump. With its tiny asperities, its microscopic shifts from smooth to rough and from concave to convex, the wooden floor “sings”, rather like a violin’s sounding board, awakening and activating proper use of the foot, almost as though it were a digitopuncture surface The floor will “talk back” to the foot and leg, and thereby, stimulate proprioception.
In my view, the plastic floor, being innately sticky (and thus a potential source of noxious muscular tensions), also allows for what one may call “fake placement”. Take a student away from his usual plastic floor, have him dance on a wooden floor, and watch his fifth position, placement and general stability fall apart, as he struggles to glue himself to the floor with rosin. The plastic-trained foot has lost its natural proprioceptive ability to grip securely without clenching!
Finally, I should add that these observations are not confined to the teaching of small children in church halls, as I also teach vocational students advanced work. Furthermore, the last five years have been spent training and preparing for the Enrico Cecchetti Diploma, which I passed last summer.
As those acquainted with the technique will know, this is amongst the most challenging and difficult work a professional theatrical dancer will ever encounter. For the most part I was able to prepare for the Cecchetti Diploma on a wooden floor. However, for the one Diploma class a week held in a studio with a plastic surface, I had to dust the floor with talc as it was so sticky that I feared injury from excessive friction.
The over-sprung floor is a somewhat different issue, and one that were perhaps better discussed at another time.
Lastly, and perhaps not leastly, the sight of the wooden floor as one dances, the chiaroscuro play of its greys and browns, is both beautiful and welcoming, thereby helping to create an appropriate state of mind in both the student, and the professional artist.
Allow me therefore to propose a wider experiment. If there are teachers, dancers and other dance practitioners who have experienced dancing on several different floor surfaces and would like to express an opinion on these differences, please do so to Julie@julieannecronshaw.orangehome.co.uk.
I would ask you to consider carefully your experiences before impulsively declaring your preferences one way or the other, e.g. that wooden floors are hopelessly slippery, or that the plastic floor has the pitfalls as described above.
You will have read that I am in favour of a return to the use of a wooden floor for classical ballet, providing that it be well laid and properly maintained. I look forward to the further experiment needed to prove, or disprove, my case!
Many thanks in advance for your comments and feedback,
Julie Cronshaw
(Owner, Director of Highgate Ballet School, teacher of the Cecchetti Method)
London, March 2010
|
|
