One of the most asked question for dancer is how to make a spin or turn. Most of dancer, especially the beginner ones have difficulty on doing turn. The problems of making spins or turns are balance, dizziness, and speed of turning. One of the most important things in make a turn or turns is knowing and using our center correctly. Let see some facts of turning and center.

About Balance

There are two kind of balance :

• Statically Balanced : Stay in your balance while you doing no movement.
• Dynamically Balanced : Stay in your balance while you doing movement (e.g : Walking or turning)

We are in balance whenever we could maintain our position without changing our center position horizontally. To maintain a balance the dancer center should be inside the area of contact with the floor. It could be anywhere inside the shaded area (see the picture). Whenever a dancer doing a position which it takes a smaller area of contact with the floor, it will make the area for the center is smaller and will make staying balance more difficult (eg. En Pointe).

To maintain the balance the dancer could do moving the arm, leg, or torso to change the Center of Gravity. So remember this, to make a balance posture, your center should be INSIDE of the dancer contact area with the floor. It’s both same rules for statically or dynamically balanced, but it’s easier for you to learn to control your Center while you doing statically figures (e.g. Standing).

About Dizziness While turning

After we spin (especially many spins, triple, quadruple, or even more), some dancers that not trained well will got dizzy. This is caused by endolymph in the semi-circular canals (it’s a fluid) will still continue moving even after we stopping. The place is inside our head near our ear. The more we spin, the more it have force to moving in the direction of our spin. So when we stop, because the endolymph still moving, our brain will ‘think’ that we still spinning and that will make us dizzy. To reduce the effect, there are some tips you could do for spinning :

• Focus as normal as you could, keep the point of sight not so many moving, so the endolymph inside our head or ear will not moving too much
• Try to make as little as you could not to make so many movements in your head.
• Try to make a little oppositely change of direction of our head oppositely to make the force of turning in the endolymph lesser (this could be done IF there are so many turning e.g. 32 fouettés en tournant in ballet).

About speed of turning

Speed of turning is depend on the power we give before we start spinning. To make a strong force of turning, we could see this rule : The further we give strength from our center to start turning, the strongest the effect of the turning. In physics we call it angular velocity. The further the power given from the center it will make the angular velocity bigger, and the force will be stronger. But the bigger the angular velocity, it will make the centrifugal (the force that pushing something outside of a turn) bigger, and will make the difficulty to maintain a center.

Another thing that you should know about the speed of turning is : The greater the mass of object (dancer) will decrease the spin rate and the lesser the mass of the object will increase the spin rate. When we turn, the mass of the object (the dancer figure) could be change by extending or retracting your feet or arm. So if you put your arm or legs further from your body, your mass of object will be increased and your spin will be lowering in speed.

To combine this two facts, we will understand that we could starting moving the turning with wide area or put power of turning in the side of our body, but whenever it start turning, concentrate to the vertical line of the center to increase the speed of turning.

Comments

Add New Search RSS

the_dolphinboy Registered | 2007-05-10 10:41:19 i got something from this article...

william.hawthorn Administrator | 2007-05-11 02:20:10 Dolphin, I'm glad hear that. Maybe you could share to the others what you've got?

the_dolphinboy Registered | 2007-05-20 10:39:44 i think i'll try to make sure about what i've got from the article by practicing it first,coz i still need asked more than share,hehehe... can u help me doing this thing out,if u're not busy....

william.hawthorn Publisher | 2007-05-22 05:18:11 Sure dolphin. Just point it out, I'm listening

Only registered users can write comments!