Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery - Eric Franklin

Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery

by Eric Franklin

NEW, 320 pages

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About Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery

Destined to become a classic text and reference, Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery shows you how to use imaging techniques to improve posture and alignment and release excess tension. The book's 195 illustrations will help you visualize the images and exercises and show you how to use them in a variety of contexts.

Part I of Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery discusses the origins and uses of imagery and includes 36 exercises that demonstrate dynamic alignment in practice. You'll explore the importance of posture and dynamic alignment and discover how to use imagery to affect body movement.

Part II explains the biomechanical and anatomical principles behind complex imagery and illustrates 52 exercises to bring these principles to life. You'll learn how to use basic physics to create a strong yet fluid balance in your muscles and joints.

Part III provides 250 anatomical imagery exercises to help you fine-tune alignments and increase body awareness. The exercises focus on different regions of the body--the pelvis, hips, knees, lower legs, spine, shoulders, arms, hands, head, and neck--as well as on breathing. You can select specific images to address individual needs or follow the sequence presented in the book.

And Part IV provides 23 holistic exercises to sculpt and improve alignment in various positions--standing, supine, and sitting. These exercises will help you establish a body image that facilitates dynamic alignment and releases excess tension.

By practicing the techniques described in Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery, you'll tap into the power of imagery and create better movement.

About Eric Franklin

Eric Franklin has more than 20 years' experience as a dancer and choreographer. In addition to earning a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a BS from the University of Zurich, he has studied and trained with some of the top movement imagery specialists around the world and used this training as a professional dancer in New York.

Franklin has shared imaging techniques in his teaching since 1986. He is founder and director of the Institute for Movement Imagery Education in Lucerne, Switzerland, and professor of postgraduate studies at the Institute for Psychomotor Therapy in Zurich, Switzerland. He is a guest professor at the University of Vienna (Musikhochschule) and has been on the faculty of the American Dance Festival since 1991. Franklin teaches at universities, dance centers, and dance festivals in the United States and througout Europe.

Franklin is coauthor of the bestselling book Breakdance, which received a New York City Public Library Prize in 1984, and author of 100 Ideen für Beweglichkeit and Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance (both books about imagery in dance and movement). He is a member of the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science.

Franklin lives near Zurich, Switzerland, with his wife, Gabriela, and their two children.

Reviews

"The use of imagery to improve human alignment and movement has been practiced by relatively few adherents, most of them professionals. Now, with Eric Franklin's book Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery, the technique of using imagery is made clear for the general public as well for professionals. Franklin is to be commended for bringing this important work to a wider audience."
Andre Bernard
Adjunct Assistant Professor Dance Education
New York University

"This is a charming and humorous synthesis of ideas contained in the writings of Mabel Todd, Lulu Sweigard, Barbara Clark, and their students."
Irene Dowd
Faculty, The Juilliard School
Guest Faculty, The National Ballet School of Canada

"The main purpose of body alignment in dance is to create efficient control of movement. Eric Franklin's book Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery equips readers with the basic knowledge and exercises to achieve a clear and useful alignment."
Zvi Gotheiner
Choreographer and Teacher, New York City

About Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting.

Dance may also be regarded as a form of nonverbal communication between humans, and is also performed by other animals (bee dance, patterns of behaviour such as a mating dance). Gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are sports that incorporate dance, while martial arts kata are often compared to dances. Motion in ordinarily inanimate objects may also be described as dances (the leaves danced in the wind).

Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to virtuoso techniques such as ballet. Dance can be participatory, social or performed for an audience. It can also be ceremonial, competitive or erotic. Dance movements may be without significance in themselves, such as in ballet or European folk dance, or have a gestural vocabulary/symbolic system as in many Asian dances. Dance can embody or express ideas, emotions or tell a story.

Dancing has evolved many styles. Breakdancing and Krumping are related to the hip hop culture. African dance is interpretative. Ballet, Ballroom, Waltz, and Tango are classical styles of dance while Square and the Electric Slide are forms of step dances.

Every dance, no matter what style, has something in common. It not only involves flexibility and body movement, but also physics. If the proper physics is not taken into consideration, injuries may occur.

Choreography is the art of creating dances. The person who creates (i.e., choreographs) a dance is known as the choreographer.

Dance does not leave behind clearly identifiable physical artifacts such as stone tools, hunting implements or cave paintings. It is not possible to say when dance became part of human culture. Dance has certainly been an important part of ceremony, rituals, celebrations and entertainment since before the birth of the earliest human civilizations. Archeology delivers traces of dance from prehistoric times such as the 9,000 year old Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka paintings in India and Egyptian tomb paintings depicting dancing figures from c. 3300 BC.

One of the earliest structured uses of dances may have been in the performance and in the telling of myths. It was also sometimes used to show feelings for one of the opposite gender. It is also linked to the origin of "love making." Before the production of written languages, dance was one of the methods of passing these stories down from generation to generation.

Another early use of dance may have been as a precursor to ecstatic trance states in healing rituals. Dance is still used for this purpose by many cultures from the Brazilian rainforest to the Kalahari Desert.

Sri Lankan dances goes back to the mythological times of aboriginal yingyang twins and "yakkas" (devils). According to a Sinhalese legend, Kandyan dances originate, 250 years ago, from a magic ritual that broke the spell on a bewitched king. Many contemporary dance forms can be traced back to historical, traditional, ceremonial, and ethnic dance.

Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery