The Appropriate Effort, an excerpt from Attention and Focus in Dance In our endeavour to achieve the desired line and movement form as seen from the outside, we regularly adopt a more-is-more approach. We strive ceaselessly in Western dance to do more – pull up more, turn out more, hold more — with the assumption that more effort, more control, more hours and more repetition will eventually lead to mastery. This more-is-more approach persists even though we have the evidence from sport science that more conscious effort, more conscious control and more physical repetition lead us to more of the same result. It is counterproductive and inefficient and can lead […]

Saturday 29th May at 11am EST/5pm CET Dance Educators: The 1st guest of attention and focus specialist Clare Guss-West MA, in the IADMS interdisciplinary webinar series “Discovering attention & focus strategies in practice” is Ellie Kusner, MSc, IADMS Dance Educators’ Committee Chair. Join us and learn more about using Attention & Focus in your Dance context. IADMS – International Association for Dance Medicine & Science. Registration Join Clare Guss-West and Ellie Kusner on a metacognitive journey to explore the role of attention and focus in dance teaching. This relatively uncharted territory in dance provides rich tools for teachers to enhance the performance and learning of dancers. Ellie and Clare bring ‘internal’ and ‘external’ attentional focus approaches to […]