Alignment principles
Kinaesthetic Awareness
What is it that allows you to gauge or adjust your alignment?
Kinaesthetic awareness is define in the HSC Dance syllabus as:
'feelings of the body’s muscles, joints and tendons while in motion or stillness. The kinaesthetic sense is of primary importance to movement and dance. Perceptions of the body’s movements are gathered through receptors in the tendons, muscles and joints and relayed to the brain. By becoming aware of their own kinaesthetic sensations, students can more accurately direct and control their movements as well as copy movements demonstrated to them. This results in students increasing their dance techniques.'
Dance 11-12 Syllabus copyright NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2009.
You have an inner ‘sixth sense’ enabling you to judge the position of each of your body parts in relation to each other within the 3D space that surrounds you. Through this awareness you can feel, control and manipulate your movements whether you are upright, airborne or upside down. This awareness is further stimulated during warm-up activities as when the mind is stimulated it sends signals via the nervous system to the muscles of the body to make corrections. This is called your kinaesthetic memory or muscle memory and you engage it to recall and save movement information. This is why your warm up should include exercises that are specifically relate to the body skills in your dance.
The greater the understanding of your kinaesthetic awareness the less likely injury will occur and you will improve the efficiency ease and energy use of your body skills.
When you are kinaesthetically aware, you are able to judge the amount of force and momentum you need to control body skills and coordination.