Reflective Essay: My Dance Career In Dance

There are a few improvements that I would like to make throughout the rest of this semester and carry them into my dance career in the future. One of the biggest problems I have is my alignment. I want to be able to work on my anterior pelvic tilt, so that I can form my spine into neutral alignment during class. I hope that fixing my pelvis can allow me to use more of my rotation and turn out. I also want to improve the use of my rotators and turn out muscles, without gripping my glutes or quads.
Ultimately, my pelvis naturally tilts forward to where I would look as if my bottom was sticking out. This issue has always been a part of my dancing, where I am not finding the space in my back or engaging the correct muscles to move my body into neutral alignment. I was always told to tuck my bottom while training. From a young age, I developed a habit of tucking to find a straight spine. During high school, I became aware of this negative habit of overcorrecting and started to try to change my ways. When I have problems trying to fix my alignment, I feel disconnected from my top half and lower half. It feels as if I am stuck working with my legs and not with …show more content…
I can now see how my alignment has created a domino effect in affecting my turn out, use of my arms, and extension of my body. I also now have a more efficient, effective way to respond to my body when it is not in correct alignment. I am thankful to have the knowledge from the Working Body course, so I can attack the problem or at least understand where I am lacking. I used to get very frustrated in class when my professors would constantly tell me to fix my alignment or come pull my up to extend my spine. I often felt helpless in being able to fix it on my own. When I receive corrections about my alignment now I can immediately see that, for example, I am not using my lower abs or that my spine has three more inches I can extend into to fix the