Recently, I have had two major epiphanies. One of these sudden insights happened while I was in my second night of ballet class. I had not taken ballet for nearly twenty years, when I was a teen, although I have made up for it by practicing yoga, modern and jazz dance in the years since. We were at the barre working on our tendu battement followed by the rond de jambe. I was going through the motions of this exercise as if I were a child again, easily remembering many of the positions, even if my body was not as graceful as it had once been. My foot traced the uppercase letter D on the floor which was always the way I remembered this particular movement. But when it came time to do the rond de jambe counterclockwise my foot stuck. I realized I needed to train my foot to do the exercise backwards.
As a young dancer I struggled with reversing routines and movements. I could do them fine on the right side, but if asked to do the mirror image on the left side I had to work extra hard. But it was good exercise for the brain and even though in retrospect I’m sure my dance exercises were hampered by dyslexia. Of course symptoms of dyslexia include perceiving letters and number backwards or reversed or inversed. While dancing I would need to work extra hard to remember which direction my limbs were supposed to go in order to complete the exercise or combination correctly. I’m sure the extra work on my part was good for my brain function even though it was exhausting.
As my foot was tracing the rond de jambe I remembered a letter I had received from a friend last year. We had both struggled in school as children, and he went on to tell me about his sudden growth and development in his learning process during the time he was learning to play guitar. Up until that point academics were troublesome for him. He suspects that somehow learning to play the guitar forced him to think differently and soon after he became interested in literature, writing and other areas where he had once struggled.
The correlation between my experience while growing up dancing my friend’s learning to master the guitar are similar. Each skill worked on a section of the brain that academic learning did not touch, yet in the end I’m sure both of us benefited from learning dance or a musical instrument. These two art forms force you to think differently and possibly recalibrate the brain. I’m not an expert, but I know that everyone learns differently. After studying Dr. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences I know that when it comes to working with my own students and now sons teaching them only through linguistic and logical-mathematical means may not reach everyone. Play to their strengths and you never know what may come out of it. And remember, you are never too old to start dancing again!
