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Making Connections Making Connections Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff Fundamentals Peggy Hackney Illustrated by Mary Konrad Weeks LONDON AND NEW YORK Published in 2002 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Originally published by Gordon and Breach Publishers, an imprint of OPA (Overseas Publishers Association). Copyright © 1998 by OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) First Routledge edition 2002 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Body-Mind Centering™ denotes a patented system of movement therapy created by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. For purposes of the clarity and design of this book, the trademark symbol has been omitted from the term “Body-Mind Centering” when it appears in the text. However, this term is a registered trademark owned by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and is fully protected under U.S. law. Cover illustration by Mary Konrad Weeks All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retreival system without permission in writing from the publisher. Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-203-21429-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-27093-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 90-5699-592-8 PBK ISBN 90-5699-591-X HBK CONTENTS Preface v Acknowledgments ix 1 Personal Memories of Irmgard Bartenieff 1 2 What Is Fundamental? 12 3 Why Return to Fundamental Patterns? 21 4 What Is Bartenieff Fundamentals? What Is Its Goal/Core? 33 5 What Are Principles of Bartenieff Fundamentals? 41 6 Breath 54 7 Core-Distal Connectivity 71 8 Head-Tail Connectivity 90 9 Upper-Lower Connectivity 121 10 Body-Half Connectivity 181 11 Cross-Lateral Connectivity 193 12 Integration 219 Appendix A A Brief Overview of the Framework of Laban Movement 237 Analysis Appendix B Concepts Used in Fundamentals 250 References 267 Index 268 PREFACE Well, you see, there are many possibilities! … As human beings we want to be fully present, embodied, as we live our lives. We want to communicate who we are and what we stand for in action, so that our message reaches out to others. As we move, whether in dance, theater, sports or simply in being with others, we want to connect. In order to do this we need to find means to connect inwardly, both to what we want to say and to how all parts of the body relate to each other to support our statement and purpose. To do this, we need to know something about the fundamental nature of making connections. This ability to make connections, to create relationships, is a skill which begins “at home,” within our own bodies. This book provides a chance to explore how we go about creating the connections within us that allow us to become fully embodied human beings in the world. As I write this book about making connections through movement, the words of my mentor Irmgard Bartenieff come back to me with a diversity of implications: “Well, you see, there are many possibilities,” she often said. Yes, there are many possibilities for talking about our human process of becoming embodied. There are also many possibilities for illuminating the fundamental work of Irmgard Bartenieff and my own continued development of that work, because the work is constantly changing. When I was working with Irmgard in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s as she was forming her Bartenieff Fundamentals, I was never disturbed to see that she would seem to totally change what she was teaching from year to year. I could see that she was exploring. For instance, one year she might be concerned almost exclusively with mobility at the proximal joints, while another year she might focus on internal space with breath support. She didn’t set out to propose a new theory of body connectedness. She worked with living bodies and responded to their needs. Bartenieff Fundamentals developed in application, which means that what was stressed in any particular year was part and parcel of where Irmgard was in her own life at that time and where she perceived her students/clients to be. This alive relationship, this sense of adventure in the classroom or in private work, is something I have enjoyed also as a way of working. I have come to believe that effective teaching comes from that alive relationship. It also means that the “adventure” is never the same two days in a row. This brings into real question what can/ should be written about Fundamentals. vi And so it is with great trepidation that I write; for black and white words written in the linear language of English seem too concrete and much too inanimate. Their sequence is too set. Words need to have the capacity to jump, turn inside out, constantly alter their emphasis, texture and relationship. It seems I am longing for movement. But I have been moving these ideas for thirty years. In the unceasing alternation of mobility and stability, now is the time for some ideas to become stable, in print, so that they can take on new life and mobility in the work of others. When I ask myself: “Why am I writing this book?,” I realize that I am searching for closure on this period of my life and my current work with Fundamentals. It is a time of taking stock, of seeing where I am with this body of work—like seeking to complete a thought. Paul LaViolette, who studies how people form new thoughts, says that thoughts are “momentarily stabilized patterns of flow” (i.e., they have substance). I want to give work that has been totally fluid a bit more substance momentarily. When I was talking with my colleague Robert Ellis Dunn several years ago, he said in his mischievously insightful way: “Oh, I can’t wait for your book to be published so that it can be out of date!” “Yes,” I said, “and then we can go on.” We have been in a period of “form creating” in the Fundamentals work for about thirty years. Now it seems that this is for me a period of “form stabilizing.” It also should be stated that this form I am momentarily stabilizing should not be confused with the form Irmgard would have chosen to stabilize. I am not writing the “Bartenieff Fundamentals,” because I could not. It would not interest me to be mainly historical, even though some history is included here. Only Irmgard could have written that book. By writing this book I am recording where my own work in movement is now— feeling-tones and associations around Fundamentals that have coalesced around certain larger themes. From the ongoing continuous flow of complex and richly patterned movement associations, mostly subconscious, certain more simple discontinuous thematic words or thoughts emerge—words such as “initiation,” “connections,” “sequencing” and “dynamic balance.” It is true that these themes, words, have been almost universally agreed upon among persons working in Fundamentals and were spoken about consistently by Irmgard. In other words, these themes are not new. And it is also true that over time each of these major concepts falls back into the sea of subconscious feeling-tones to have more and more associated relationships. So in another way these concepts are always new and unique to each individual. Each concept contains in some sense an historical record of the evolution of processes that contributed to producing that concept. At each moment when thoughts emerge in relation to each other, the individual person is in a “form- creating” mode, actually creating knowledge. And this is my working definition of learning —“Learning is the creation of knowledge.”1 It is a creative process. As we create knowledge we come into an embodied relationship with what we know. And so, as I work with organizing this material, at every point I hear Irmgard’s words: “…[T]here are many possibilities.” And I say: “Yes, here are but a few.” Each reader will find more. vii Organization of This Book As a sequence for writing this book I am metaphorically organizing my material in a developmental progression. This organizational progression, based on the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, will be encountered again and again. The sequence is: 1.Breath 2.Core-Distal Connectivity (Navel Radiation) 3.Head-Tail Connectivity (Spinal) 4.Upper-Lower Connectivity (Homologus) 5.Body-Half Connectivity (Homolateral) 6.Cross-Lateral Connectivity (Contralateral). We will begin with some very personal memories of Irmgard Bartenieff and the development of her approach to Fundamentals. Events in history are part of a flow line, part of a phrase. Irmgard Bartenieff’s important work breathed life into Fundamentals. It was germinal. One might say it was the initiation moment of the Fundamentals “phrase.” But Irmgard’s power and joy lay in working with people in movement, mobilizing people in the moment—not in explaining what she was doing or formally addressing the issues her work generated, nor the full extent to which it could develop. Fundamentals was not a theory codified and thoroughly illuminated by its originator. Irmgard’s own major writing on Fundamentals was deleted from the final published version of her book, which she co-wrote with Dori Lewis, Body Movement: Coping with the Environment. She asked me to read her manuscript and make comments, which I did in 1977. I have utilized quotations from her manuscript in this book.2 But my hope is that the entire Fundamentals portion of her original manuscript will eventually be published. Irmgard’s students were waiting for her to publish before they began writing about Fundamentals. We were disappointed that the Fundamentals aspect of her work did not receive full publication when her book came out in 1980. In the time since 1980, we have each continued to do our own work—clarifying the material in both action and theory. My colleagues and I are realizing a larger, more comprehensive framework for what Irmgard was doing, which hopefully will nourish the work. I will leave detailed historical research to the historians. My concern is more with the living progression—and so, I give my own personal memories of Irmgard in chapter 1 and then move directly into how I work, including my thoughts on theory underlying the work. In chapters 2 and 3, I discuss some of the theory behind the work with an immersion into the whole sense of patterning as a basic life-giving process, much like the breath. In chapter 4,1 present what I perceive to be the core or navel center of working in Fundamentals and its goal. I cover the vertebral spine of the system (chapter 5) i.e., principles and concepts on which the system is based. In the next portion of the book (chapters 6–11), actual body level issues are dealt with in detail. I explore stage-specific movement experiences in the developmental progression and discuss possible movement experiences within each pattern—Breath, Core-Distal, viii Head-Tail, Upper-Lower, Body-Half, and Cross-Lateral. I must also be clear that my thirty years of experience is in Fundamentals, not in Body-Mind Centering; so although Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s work has been inspirational and has provided a framework, I will not be writing about Body-Mind Centering per se. By the last chapter in this book, the stages of bodily differentiation are complete. It becomes clear that no one pattern is more important than any other. It is the sequences or pathways through all the patterns that weave the message. All the patterns are available, and it is the effective functioning of changing relationships according to context that takes us to the integral stage. Within the book, this brings us to the question of reintegrating all our specific knowledge into our own life context, acknowledging its timeliness. What is the purpose in all of this after all? Is studying Fundamentals meaningful? What would “meaningful” be in our world today? Certainly there are no answers, but I do want to engage the question. Whether one is a dancer, actor, athlete or business person, a fully functioning expressive body increases life’s possibilities. Irmgard Bartenieff stated: “Body movement is not a symbol for expression, it is the expression.” The functional and the expressive are in intimate relationship. The work we are exploring in this book activates connections to facilitate integration and enrich life. As you read this book you are engaging in an active relationship with me and the questions that becoming embodied pose to all of us. Here we go…. Notes 1. My friend Dean Elias, former dean of Antioch University-Seattle, currently dean of the California Institute of Integral Studies, and I were discussing the field of education, learning and other large topics. He made the statement quoted in the text and I have always enjoyed using it as a frame for knowing whether learning is happening. “Am I/are these students creating knowledge in this moment?” Knowledge is not the same as information, because true knowledge, in my understanding, requires claiming the information in a personal way. Claiming it personally requires coming into an embodied relationship with it. 2. The manuscript was entitled Body/Space/Effort: The Art of Body Movement as a Key to Perception. I particularly like this subtitle, because it acknowledges the key role of movement in our process of coming to know whatever it is that we actually know.