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Dancing Improves Posture! by Geneva Aboites

A student once told me, “I have to remember 500 things all at once to not look like a floppy fish while dancing, Ms. Geneva!” I responded, “It sure seems like it, right?! But don’t worry, soon you won’t have to think as much about all those things and friends at school will ask you if you are a dancer just because of the way you sit and stand!” Control, grace, holding balances, turning, landing from jumps, extensions, and looking elegant all comes from having beautiful posture that works individually for your body as a dancer. I say ‘individually’ because some students have medical issues with their spine, abdominals, and collar bone, etc. so teachers have to gauge what works best for each student. Pulling the belly button towards the spine, engaging the abdominals, lifting up out of the lower back, pulling the shoulder blades down, lifting up the back of the neck while keeping the neck long and high, is just the start of everything to think about! Once your body gets used to having good posture it becomes second nature. Doing pilates based exercises for the abdominals and back are really great ways to help develop the muscles needed for good posture such as Pilate's Hundreds or the Pilate’s Superman exercise! Imagery actually helps quite a lot too. Think of holding a string of pearls. The pearls represent the spine. Your fingers are pulling up the string and the pearls naturally align. You don’t want to think of holding a straight stick because you have to embrace your natural curves.

Having nice posture is not about who looks the tallest. Short dancers rule too! It’s about looking so pulled up and poised that you are just floating across the ground while dancing which creates the look of being tall. But without holding your breath!!!! For my Ballet Levels 1 & 2 I have them face the ballet barre holding on with two hands and pretend they have a glass of water on their head. In the winter that quickly changes to hot cocoa, ha! Standing in parallel they have to stare at something right in front of them. The belly button is a button that needs to be pressed to start off. They think of a string being pulled from the top of the head towards the ceiling and start to rise up and down in releve (like calf raises). We pretend we are on a fun elevator ride so smiling lets everyone know the ride is fun. In the end the class is all focused on their posture by not spilling their drink, the abdominals are engaged, and the class is looking confident with a smile and long necks. For girls, the importance of having correct posture will come back in full circle years down the road when they have to repeat this exercise on their first day in their pointe shoes. For boys, being able to have good posture will help them in their future of lifting and partnering others.

Speaking from experience, bad posture can be one of the hardest habits to break. The brain has to constantly be reminding the body of correct alignment until it becomes muscle memory. As a young girl I would dance with my back in a big C curve because it made me feel like I was dancing confident with big movements. People started to wonder if I did gymnastics due to the stance gymnasts often use in their routines because that’s basically what I looked like all the time. Little did they know I secretly wished I was, but the tiny balance beam scared me to pieces. So instead I would stand in my living room pretending I stuck a landing from flipping off of a vault and then hit that pose that felt SO good.... sway back with the arms in the air with the crowd cheering! I tried to sneak that into my dancing whenever I could. However, the physics of going up on pointe on top of your toes requires a long natural spine. I had a strict ballet teacher who would yell at me for a whole year “Close your ribs! But NO tucking!”. Then he would pretend to karate chop my stomach and pull up on the back of my neck so that I felt like a giraffe until one day it all finally clicked. I realized I could still use exaggerated upper body movements, get my arabesque high, and have stage presence without needing force my spine to curve to be noticeable and feel great. Why do we like to say “no tucking?” Because that causes a dancer to think of pulling the hips forward resulting in pinching everything and hunching over the spine.

Life events and growing will change posture so it’s good to be able to keep your body in check through the years! Having a child caused my sway back to come back into my life big time so while I am teaching others about posture I have to remind myself about it too! Not only is your child learning to dance in class, they are helping the health of their spine and pelvis for years to come.


Image #1 on the left is the correct posture

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