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    Floor Barre
    Floor Barre
    Floor Barre
    Ebook180 pages2 hours

    Floor Barre

    By Alex d'Orsay

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    About this ebook

    A handbook on the tecnique of floor-barre conceived by Alex d’Orsay and written by the creator.

    A work on the floor expecially conceived for dance teachers and professional dancers

    which can also be used by amateurs interested in improving any tecnique, be it classical, modern or contemporary dance.

    The aims of this method are: a perfect alignement, an improvement of the turnout, a postural awareness, the strengthening of all the core and the back muscles.

    The work on the floor by Alex d’Orsay is structured as a dance class where all exercises constitute an effective instrument to improve the natural relashionship between movement, music and rythm.

    Manuale sulla tecnica di Sbarra a Terra creata da Alex d’Orsay, scritto da lei stessa.

    Un lavoro a terra dedicato sì ai danzatori professionisti ed agli Insegnanti di Danza, ma anche a tutti coloro che da amatori ne studiano una tecnica, classica, moderna o contemporanea che sia.

    I principali obbiettivi che si pone questo metodo sono: una postura correttamente allineata, l’allungamento della muscolatura, il potenziamento dell’ en dehors, lo sviluppo della percezione fisica dei movimenti, della concentrazione e della memoria muscolare del movimento, il rinforzo della muscolatura addominale e di quella di tutto il tronco, il rinforzo dei legamenti e l’alleggerimento dei muscoli sovraccaricati.

    Inoltre nella Sbarra a Terra di Alex d’Orsay, concepita strutturalmente come una lezione di danza, tutti gli esercizi costituiscono un’efficace strumento di conoscenza della relazione tra musica, ritmo e movimento.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherYoucanprint
    Release dateMay 31, 2017
    ISBN9788892666962
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    • 5/5
      excelente libro, muy bien explicado y detallado con buenos tips a aplicar

    Book preview

    Floor Barre - Alex d'Orsay

    Italy.

    Introduction

    The first time I met floor barre was around 1980. At that time I was a dancer, quite a poor one to my opinion, who while out of time for training, was still roaming among stages and seminaries, during jobless periods, looking for new techniques and great teachers to eventually find my way.

    At that time most of the talented personalities of the dance world- coreographers, dancers and teachers - were attracted by France’s lavish cultural policy.

    One morning, in Paris, I decided to warm-up in a different way and try this mysterious (for me, of course) barre a terre. I definitely was very far from understanding that my whole life was going to change the moment I was lying on the floor for the first time.

    Love at first sight. I loved it immediately; without really knowing it I was suddenly actracted by it in the same way you fall in love with a stranger you casually run in , somebody who could easily be a rascal or a fascinating criminal you cannot resist , somebody you know you will unreasonably follow all your life long.

    I decided I would had taken two classes a day (meaning two hours and half no stop, when I think about that now it looks to me almost crazy…) to go deep into that technique and to master it as well.

    Noelle Winkelmann gave the classes: one of the very few teacher (the best at my opinion) personally accredited from Kniasieff. She strongly wanted pass the barre a terre tecnique to the new generations.

    Tiny, always ruffled black hairs (and no wonder, always lying on the floor!), piercing black eyes, sparkling eyes she run you through with. Few words. That’s the way she was.

    She used to explain a lot at the beginning, then when you were on the point of getting the concept or the key to go trought, she let you go and you had to find the end by your way, this was her method, if you weren’t smart and sensible enough to get it by yourself you would never be able neither to perform properly floor-barre neither to teach it.

    Great teacher, great challenge: I immediately accepted it. And I started to research on floor-barre.

    Physical effects on my own body had been prodigious, almost an unbelievable miracle. At the age of twenty-five the solidification of the bones is totally completed, therefore it generally becomes impossibile to modify either an incorrect muscular posture either a technical mistake.

    Despite of that thanks to floor barre my technique improved so much I started imagining the results that young dance students could have achieved practicing it from the beginning of the study of dance.

    During my thirty years of teaching I have added day by day a lot of personal touches to the basis of Boris Kniasieff floor barre untill I created a new complete method: creativity has always been and still is the most exciting part of my job.

    The constant daily evolution of my floor barre had dissuaded me for a long time from recording it as I never considered the latest version as final.

    But eventually the insistence of the teachers who attended my classes combined with my desire to leave a record of my work made me decide to write down the details of my technique. The beautiful summer of Mallorca contributed to my serene mental disposition.

    I really hope this manual can interest either those people who had already practiced floor barre either those who are pushed to read it by a genuine curiosity .

    I wonder whether it could become itself the starting point of a new technique in the same way Kniasieff’s work had been for me.

    Pollença (Isle of Mallorca), March 2017

    Alex d’Orsay

    CHAPTER ONE

    BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FLOOR BARRE

    Boris Kniasieff created the floor barre technique (Barre au Sol) last century, in the mid fifthies.

    He was an average dancer, a good Maître de Ballet, and an excellent pedagogue.

    His revolutionary idea was to transpose all the academic standing barre exercises onto the floor, following the same order and using the same lexicon.

    A legend goes that the building where he was giving his classes was of such great historical interest that he was not allowed to put regular barre into the walls, so that his only alternative was to make everybody lay on the floor, but this is probably just a tale….!

    His two goals were:

    a) to reduce the effort of the dancers during the barre in order to keep their energy for the centre work

    b) to facilitate the learning of the basic classic ballet technique through the contact with the floor, by excluding the problem of balancing.

    The floor barre replaced therefore the classical training during his classes, and it became, expecially for the beginners, the fundamental basis for ballet, a combination of strenght and stretch, with an enphasis on correct placing.

    We can nowadays say that the first goal was not really achieved: during a movement on the floor the force of gravity causes certain different muscles to work as compared with the same exercise performed in a standing position. The consequence is a definitely harder work, that needs more energy, precision and care, especially when prone.

    The saving of the balancing effort does not make the floor barre an easier work, because the dancer during the floor barre still has to control both the balance of the corset area and the balance of the pelvis.

    Moreover the blood irrigation of the brain differs slightly on the floor as compared with the standing position causing a decrease in attentivness. A bigger effort of concentration is requiered on the floor. All this difficulties constitute the strong points of the Kniasieff’s method as much as when this difficulties are overcome and assimilated during the didactid course they make the subsequent learning far easier.

    We can therefore say that the second goal of Kniasieff was successfully achieved.

    The few dancers who were personally accredited by him (you can count them on one hand) spread out the floor barre, mainly in France and Switzerland , but they never used it to replace a normal class, as Kniasieff used to.

    Jacqueline Fynneart, one of the few, stated categorically that the floor barre had to be supplemental to a regular class, so that her classes were divided into three parts instead of two: floor barre, barre and centre.

    On the other hand Noelle Winkelmann, from Geneva, another dancer of Boris Kniasieff school, prefered to gather all the benefits of the floor work in a separate class, even better if taken before the traditional ballet class.

    In the U.S. Zena Rommet created in the seventies a different floor barre, mainly aimed at getting back into shape more quickly after an injury, almost a therapeuthic rehab. She use to have a huge following of professional dancers, being her classes excellent for developing a good placement.

    THE METHOD OF ALEX D’ORSAY

    The method I have created is essentially based on the Kniasieff’s Barre au Sol, which I started teaching more than thirty years ago.

    I was working every single day with a great number of students aged from eleven to eighteen years old and I noticed that the results not always satified me: some exercises, or some parts of the exercises were too hard, some others stressed the articulations too long and so on.

    I therefore thought up a few new exercises, to be alternated with the traditional ones. In the new ones I privileged the use of

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