| First published in STATNews, vol. 6, no. 1, May 2000. |
I found this video extraordinarily interesting. To someone unfamiliar with the work of Jean Clark, and the Dart procedures, it could be a revelation.
What are the Dart procedures, and why do we need them? The second is perhaps the easier question to answer. We need them because they are interesting and enjoyable and because they provide us with ideal conditions to practise inhibition and direction. It is impossible for us to learn the Alexander Technique on our own because of our faulty kinesthetic awareness. We need some more objective indicator of what it is we are really doing with ourselves. One possible source of more objective truth is a mirror, another is an Alexander teacher, and a third - as Don Burton used to say - is a hard surface like a floor or a wall: if part of you is being pushed into the floor by excessive muscular tension, there is a chance you will notice it.
Born in Australia, Dart lived much of his life in South Africa. He had benefited from a series of lessons with Irene Tasker. He also had a son with cerebral palsy. A professor of anatomy, and an important anthropologist, he applied all his vast knowledge to finding a way that he could continue to work on himself, and help his son, after Irene Tasker had gone back to England. The procedures he evolved are mostly a somewhat stylised version of movements that we have all performed as babies and toddlers, perhaps even in the womb.
What of this video? Firstly, Jean is remarkably clear in everything she says and does. She begins by quoting some words of Dart about our potential as human beings: “In a state of poise, with their heads pivoted on their spinal columns, and with their bodies pivoted on their feet, while their convergent eyes are so pivoted upon their objective that the entire apparatus of movement is the reflexly operating instrument of their concentrated purpose.” In the gentlest of ways, Jean embodies this poise and concentrated purpose.
There were around sixty students at the workshop, and the room was not that big. For this reason Jean does not focus on any of the various procedures that, involve lying in prone, all of which require space. Most of the time she works with students in crawling, in “Muslim Prayer”, and in a series of movements that take us back and up from crawling, through monkey, and into standing. The workshop ends with beautiful demonstrations, by students of Jean, of a toddler-like way of spiralling back from a crawling position in such a way that you end up sitting on the floor with one leg in front and one leg out to the side; I cannot emphasise enough how deeply satisfying these simple movements can be, both to watch and to perform. Performing them for the first time can feel like rediscovering a part of your heritage, something you were dispossessed of so long ago that you had not even been aware of the loss.
Most of what Jean says is of relevance to all our activities, not only to the specific situation she is addressing. I was particularly glad to be reminded of the importance of sending the knees forward and away, even (or perhaps especially) in positions like crawling and kneeling when the knees are weight-bearing and it is tempting to think that there is nowhere to send them. Another useful reminder was that one should not put oneself in a position that “embarrasses the breathing” or where one is unable to swallow; I had remembered the first half of that, but not the second.
Now it is not for nothing that Alexander himself spent so much time doing what we call “chair work”. The movement between sitting and standing not only engages the pupil’s whole self, but is also relatively easy to monitor.
At least one of the movements Jean teaches in this workshop - the movement from crawling into monkey - is considerably harder to monitor: no teacher can sense the student’s head-neck relationship with one hand while putting the other on their heels. There are two moments when students appear to be pulling their heads back and Jean appears not to realise this (the camera has a privileged viewpoint). This emphatically does not mean that the movements are not worth persevering with; I have no doubt these tensions would have come to light on a subsequent occasion. On the contrary, these moments serve to underline the truth of some words of Joan Murray that Jean has quoted earlier: “When you put somebody in an unfamiliar position, you can see where they grab in order to hold on to what is most familiar.” We simply need to remember that, if we too are in an unfamiliar position, we may need to be especially alert.
This video is remarkable not only because of its content, but also because of Jean’s style. We talk a lot in the Alexander world about end-gaining and means whereby, not always realising the psychological and philosophical depths implicit in these terms. Faced with the demands of teaching a large group, and being recorded while doing so, many of us might slip into treating a particular student as a mere means through which to demonstrate something to the group as a whole. Jean, in contrast, is a model of sensitivity in her dealings with each individual, always paying perceptive and thoughtful compliments before venturing anything that might be heard as a criticism.
One last point. If I meet someone at a party and say I am an Alexander teacher, they all too often tighten and narrow their backs, stick out their chests and say: “Oh dear, I should probably do something about my own posture, shouldn’t I?” I have also met people who have had twenty or more lessons and who still believe that Alexander teachers think that “everyone should always keep their back straight.” When I asked whether their teacher actually used phrases like that, they admitted that the teacher had never said that explicitly. But since, in the course of twenty or thirty lessons, these pupils were never once asked to perform a movement that involved flexing the spine, they naturally enough came to believe that this was considered impermissible.
This kind of misconception is widespread and we need to think more seriously about ways in which we unconsciously encourage it. Even if we choose to devote 95% of the time to chair-work, it seems important to me that we should also at least glance, with our pupils, at as wide a variety of movements as is possible for them. Only then will they grasp the idea that the Alexander Technique is applicable to all of our movements and activities.
Any teacher who wants to expand their repertoire, and to feel more comfortable about teaching without our usual props, would do well to watch this video.
© Robert Chandler. Reproduced with permission.
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This edition © Mouritz 2005. All rights reserved. |
