1710  [warning: LONG RANT] Hips, Center, and Core muscles

Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 15:51:21 -0700
From: Jonathan Thornton <jnt@NOYAU.COM>
Subject: [warning: LONG RANT] Hips, Center, and Core muscles

Charles Roques <Crrtango@AOL.COM> wrote:

>
> Tom Stermitz wrote:
>
> <<<"Don't move your hips." I think virtually ALL argentine teachers use this
> admonition, yet if you watch them on the dance floor every single one of them
> is moving her (and his) hips. If your hips are stiff and rigid, there is no way
> to feel grounded and smooth.">>>>
>
> I respectively disagree. 'Stiff and rigid' .... is a relative assessment. I
> always teach not to move one's hips and I dance without moving mine and I feel
> grounded and smooth and not stiff at all. It is quite possible to do it but it
> is not so easy to learn and it, like many other aspects of the dance,

is

> mastered only by practicing. It doesn't come natural.

Charles,
I don't mean this personally at all. Your statement was just the
final straw of years spent listening to good dancers and helpful teachers
repeat the passed on nonsense that social dancers have used as directions
and explanations. Today I snapped.
It's easy enough for me to believe you are a good teacher and that
your students learn to dance and that you tell them not to move their hips
and they understand you and improve their tango walk. But what you are
saying is that you and your students don't move your hips with some sort
of *exaggerated roll or sway*.
I absolutely know you are moving your hips. I don't believe you
are lying, but this kind of linguistic shorthand is not uncommon and is
often harmless as long as everyone knows what it meant. But you like
everyone rotates the femur in the hip socket when taking a step, i.e. MOVE
your femur by flexing muscles including hip flexors and gluteals as well
as hamstrings and quads, and other muscles are supporting that movement.
That is what walking is. There is no "walking" or crawling for that matter
without flexing the hips. The hip flexors and other hips muscles move the
bone and the hips and legs move every time a human takes a step. Humans,
compared to say a dog or horse have a lot of freedom in the hip joint and
are capable of moving the leg at the hip in many different ways. John
Cleese of Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks was an absolute genius of
the walk. But no matter how quietly you step there is always hip movement
involved.

The argument could be about whether as a verbal direction saying
"no hips" is useful or not, but anatomically and actually hips always
move!!!! In class most students try to do as the teacher does and not as
the teacher says, because clearly the teacher and every human I've ever
seen move their hips in some fashion or other when they walk, crawl, ride
a bike, swim, etc. The desired goal is not to walk with out moving hips
which is impossible, but rather to walk using the hips the way a tango
dancer does instead of for example the way a salsa dancer might.

Leaving your post behind and ranting on some other posts: I want to
address the nonsense that is repeated ad nauseum in social dance classes
about developing "muscle memory". There is no such thing as "muscle
memory"! Dancers develop and use *SENSORIMOTOR SKILLS*!

And please everyone remember bones don't move or initiate movement nerves
and muscles do that. Note also bones and muscles, not points! A point
can't do anything! It has no dimensions, that's why it's called a point!
It's a conceptual abstraction! Muscles have mass, length, form. They are
hunks of meat! They move bones which also have form.

Now the mind can summarize and use a concept of a point as a short hand
for mobilizing a group of muscles. That concept is used by the brain
to cause actual hunks of meat to contract certain amounts at certain
rates. When you are dancing, your brain is coordinating all kinds of
sensory input and outputs to move the muscles that move the bones to make
your actual flesh move around the dance space. The body is the
brain's meat puppet is one way to think of it.

I will leave aside the Eastern concepts of ki or qi as a form of energy
moving in the body independent of muscles. I actually think there is
something to that but I'm not sure what, and it doesn't supplant the
actual physical movement systems. I think we do first need to be clear
about neuro muscular function before addressing energetic issues.

Some very brilliant people have devoted years to understanding and helping
people move. To name just a few: Bonnie Cohen, Moshe Feldenkrais, Joseph
Pilates, and Ida Rolf. If dancers would take even an hour to peruse an
introductory anatomy text we might begin to create a system based on
scientific understanding instead of folk tales about belly buttons and
breasts bones. Belly buttons and breasts bones are passive, they don't
initiate any movement. And points? They don't even really exist, they have
no dimensions. They "ideally" exist. That was Euclid's idea anyway.

Look at the core muscles: the hips flexors, the iliopsoas, the abdominals.
See how they connect the rib cage, the pelvis, and femur. See how many
muscles and bones are involved in taking a step. What you feel and what
someone else feels may or may not be similar, you may or may not look
similar doing it, and you may use similar words for different things, or
different words for similar things. But try to be anatomical specific so
that people can tell if they are doing the same or different.

In ordinary walking the heel strikes first. But hardly anyone unless they
have say a broken toe or badly inflamed ingrown toenail actually walks on
their heels! They step on their heel then roll through the foot and push
off with the ball of the foot and big toe. Many tango dancers step such
that they touch the floor first with the ball of the foot, but many of
then lower the rest of the foot to the floor so the heel takes some
weight, though others may remain almost always on the ball of the foot.
Taking linguistic short cuts like saying "walks on the heels" is imprecise
and leads to confusion. I can actually walk for short distance using only
my heels but I've never tried dancing like that.

People with highly developed skills can know what it is they do when they
"just do that little thing there" but everyone else is in the dark. Unless
they are there and see them and figure out what it is they are referring
to as "that little thing". Here on the list we can not show what it is we
are talking about, so please try to be aS detailed and anatomically
specific as possible.

I think "core" is a little more specific then center, and that the notion
of support includes rather than excludes. Movement of the chest, movement
of the leg, the posture of the back are all examples of things that
benefit from integrated core support. It's not one or the other. The
chest, abdomen, and pelvis can optimally work together as one system. And
though some may helpfully conceptualize it as a point, the deep core group
of actual muscles include the deep abdominals, the iliopsoas, and the hip
flexors, some of the biggest and strongest muscles in the body. It's not a
point that is supporting the trunk and chest. Points have their use for
focusing attention but also spend some time experiencing the range of
sensations of the muscles of your core and how they feel to you when you
are walking, sitting, or dancing.

I will leave off with one suggestion. One of the most clear and cogent
discussions I've ever read of the role of core support in movement is by
Alexandra Pierce in her book EXPRESSIVE MOVEMENT. I again recommend that
book. She has pages to describe her point.

I rest my rant.

peace,
Jonathan Thornton

Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 20:10:11 -0400
From: Keith Elshaw <keith@TOTANGO.NET>
Subject: Hips, Center, and Core muscles

This thread I was not going to join. You've been there.

I was tempted to write in reply to Charles to say that some hip action in
dancing many milongas - Sacale Punta, anyone? - makes it all work better. I
mean ... hips are up and down in opposition to weight. No? This is tango
dancing. A style, anyway.

Jonathon's rant was fun to read.

Hip action is sensuous - though I daresay advanced. The more I lose myself
to rhythm experimentation, the more my hips do their thing. It's sassy, I
know. It's that darn tango.

Keith

https://ToTANGO.net