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Have you tried everything to improve your physical performance? Have you heard about the Polyvagal Theory? The now 20-year-old theory introduced by Stephen Porges provides useful and informative information on the autonomic nervous system and how it can be potentially applied to dancers in order to improve physical performance. The Polyvagal Theory claims that the nervous system employs a hierarchy of strategies to both regulate itself and keep us safe in the face of danger. Dancers now are constantly searching for new and improved ways in which they can apply to improve their physical performance in order to become the best. In this day and age being mediocre is not good enough anymore. So what is the polyvagal theory? The polyvagal theory
The three principle forces are the summing of joint forces, continuity of joints, and the linear motion (McCaw, n.d). In the summing of joint is when the thoracic, the shoulder, the elbow, the knee, the ankle, the atlas and skull, and the phalange joints gain the momentum. When joints are in fast action it produces more muscle force and all joint are moving to help produces the muscle force (McCaw, n.d). The second principle is continuity of joint forces. This is when the hip is going into flexion first. Then after the hip the knee goes into flexion, then followed by the ankle. This movement should be smooth and fluid (McCaw, n.d). The last principle for the force producing phase is linear motion. In this phase the start of pirouette should be gaining momentum (Hall, 2011). The direction the pirouette is going in is clockwise because the body is rotating counter clockwise. As a dancer is performing a pirouette an outside force is acting on the body. This force is what causes the body to be able to turn. When the dancer starts the body is at rest and not moving until they initiate the turn with their arms and
I considered myself a performer, and after years training as a classical ballerina I expanded into stunting and tumbling. While on tour, I developed friendships and bonds with dancers strengthened by a mutual love for dance, a commonality over the pain our bodies endured daily, and conversations on bruised and broken toes.
By universal definition, "sport" is listed as "an activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively." Football, basketball, baseball, soccer and other primary activities have always been concretely defined as sports in society. However, one of the most physically demanding activities is constantly forgotten when it comes to the realm of sports- dance. Dance requires a tremendous amount of training and creates an aura of competition in which people compete to be the best, win, and take home the trophy- just like in traditionally accepted sports. These sports, however, do not possess an element of psychological health threats that some competitive dancers unfortunately must account for due to the emphasis placed on physical appearance.
Li’s passion for ballet shows on and off stage through his arabesques, flexibility, fouettés, grande jeté and pirouettes that were nothing less than perfection. I understood that becoming a dancer requires commitment, passion and having a great memory as there’s many moves, routines and ballet terms that you need to learn. When I was performing on stage, I felt free and that I could own the stage as it felt like it was my second home. I also felt complete within myself just as Li felt. To perform on stage, you need to be light and graceful along with connecting to the music using precise steps, poses and formal gestures. The film used dance, music, scenery, and costumes to portray a story characterised by Li’s dance. Classical ballet dancers require the utmost grace and I’ve found that you also need a tremendous level of concentration and memory. This portrays when his choreographer Ben Stevenson asked Li Cunxin to replace the main male role due to an injury on the day of the performance to memorise new dances and perform them in front of an enormous crowd. Many of my performances have been in a group where we all need to be in sync and work together. This film highlighted that in order to become a professional ballet dancer, you have to prepare to work extremely hard no matter how gruelling the schedule is in order to
The dance cannot exist with music alone; the choreography helps complete the dance. Choreography often involves learning dance from other dancers, or learning a new type of dance to make the existing one more exciting. Going beyond the normal boundary increases the chance that the dance will effectively intertwine the music and choreography, so the dance will go beyond the original idea. Shadowing neurosurgeon Dr. Norgran in high school and pulmonologist Dr. Yaeger in college, has given me a new perspective on going into a career in medicine. These people helped me to see that I would have to be willing to alter the music of my life in order to finish the dance of a medical career.
The typical idea of a dancer is that they are tall, slender, full of energy, and lucky because they dance with all of the “stars”. Much of this is true, however, what many people do not think of are the many hardships that a dancer goes through in order to achieve their high status in the dance world. It takes much hard work and determination along with good direction to become a dancer. However, nothing good comes without a price. Dancers often times have many pressures put on them which can lead to physical and emotional damages. These damages occur through the pressures from the media, parents, teammates, and the stereotype that society has placed on dancers.
Athletes must accomplish amazing feats of balance and coordination of the body. As scientist, Mikhail Tsaytin discovered in the 1970s, acrobats can successfully make a two person human tower in the dark, but after adding a third acrobat, not even the most talented can maintain the balance required to keep the tower intact while in the dark (1). What does darkness have to do with it? The point is that balance relies on at least three signals coming from the body, and one of those is sight. Once you eliminate one of these signals, the body cannot accomplish the required task. In addition to sight, signals coming from muscles and joints, called proprioceptors are sensitive to changes in position. The third contributor to the human tower and the topic of discussion of this paper is the vestibular system. A three-person human tower in the dark must not have enough information coming from the vestibular and proprioceptive systems to function without vision, whereas the two-person tower did have enough information.
Phrenology was controversial for a couple reasons. One reason was the criticism from Pierre Flourens who used the ablation method and his findings were contradictory to phrenologists. Another controversial reason, according to the reading was that the selection of the different “faculties” was totally random. Trying to explain human differences in intelligence and personality by a restricted number of those faculties was not a valid method.
After I began to learn to dance ballet, I found out that these elegant movements actually require a lot of strength, flexibility of the bodies and brain’s participation to make it looked elegant. The dancers’ movements in the performance were so fluent and elegant and it is not hard to imagine how hard they had practiced, stretched and use the strengths to do all the ballet poses with their bodies look longer and longer. Their expressions also impressed me a lot. By looking at their expressions, the audience can easily understand the scenes and blend into the story. The performers actually not only are required to have good dancing skills but also are required to have some talents to be actors. Moreover, they also have to be good at expressing their feelings on the
Gray, Judith A., and Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, Reston, VA. National Dance Association. American Alliance for Health. Dance Technology. Current Applications And Future Trends. n.p.: 1989. ERIC. Web. 17 May 2014.
It is crucial for us to understand the fundamentals of the development of a child as there are countless ways to conduct a lessons and to understand why children would react differently at this timing to another timing when they are completing a certain task. Furthermore, children develop uniquely and their development milestones differs from one another. Thus, a teacher must be cognizant of each child’s progression before conducting the class. This will help the teacher to plan and organize the lesson materials and the lesson time appropriately. There are two theories I would like to share in regards to child development in peer social interaction and cognitive development.
Structuralism was developed by Ferdinand de Saussure in the mid-twentieth century (Cuddon and Preston 923). This creation was brought on, in part, by the French existentialism period and is often combined with the semiotic theory of literary criticism; both are the source of development for other literary criticisms from the formalist schools of thought. As the name suggests, structuralism examines the structure of the work, investigating the ramifications of the organizations of literatures (McManus, 1998). As an image to portray this idea is examining the structure of a building and comparing it to the structures of other buildings in its surroundings, and then subsequently comparing the common features of those buildings to buildings from other cultures and what those architectural discrepancies represent (Brizee and Tompkins, 2011).
Maling, Michel. "Ballet Dancing and Injury Prevention." EzineArticles Submission - Submit Your Best Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure, Ezine Publishers Get 25 Free Article Reprints. Web. 07 June 2010. http://ezinearticles.com/?Ballet-Dancing-and-Injury-Prevention&id=3861053
Weinberg, R.S. & Gould, D. {1995} Foundations of sport and exercise psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Ch.15
Tracks ensures that the dancers involved are from a range of different cultural circumstances, this allows more diverse choreography, performances and audiences. McMicken describes the diverse environment, “If you just had one plant growing everywhere, its bland and not interesting, and not healthy… I often use [the] image that a healthy environment has maximum diversity in it”. This concept is parallel when regarding the education of cultural dance in schools, “maximum diversity builds respect and understanding” of traditions and beliefs.