Class in Dancing Foundation Technique at the Ned Wayburn Studios
The foundation technique which I evolved for the Ned Wayburn courses is a limbering and stretching process for the body, which precedes the teaching of dancing steps, fitting all pupils properly with a basis, a foundation for the important work to come. Without these exercises, all of which are set to inspiring music, muscles employed in dancing would remain taut or soft and not respond properly, the pupil would quickly tire, and the attempt to dance become an unavailing effort. With the limbering and stretching course, time is saved in preparing the student for the lessons to come, and the time necessary for the training and development of a dancer is much shortened from the long apprenticeship that once prevailed under the old antiquated Ballet technique. What is known as the Ned Wayburn method brings into play all the bodily muscles that are essential to the dancer’s use, gives strength, suppleness and symmetry to the entire body. All forms of outdoor exercise are valuable adjuncts to bodily health and strength and beauty, but supplementing them the dancer must carry on with just the foundation technique I have devised, in order to waken and strengthen the dancing muscles, a result not brought about by even the best of romping sports or one’s other usual exercising.
In connection with correct diet, which has attention in later chapters of this book, my methods of preliminary exercise will aid the over-stout to reduce pleasantly and surely, and also enable the under-developed to put on needed weight, in both cases the attendant blessings of health, strength and symmetry following in due order.
My method induces perspiration, opens the pores, eliminates unhealthy tissue, and at the same time supplies new tissue replete with health, which is placed evenly over the entire body where nature wants it.
Do not let the words “limbering and stretching” mislead you. Perhaps there may be words that describe the work better than these do. But my idea in using these words is that flexibility, suppleness, grace and freedom of movement are all covered by “limbering,” while “stretching” is intended to convey the idea of a proper fitting of the body and limbs for the various forms of kicking that are absolutely essential in modern stage dancing. Some people get the idea that stretching exercises will lengthen the body or limbs. This is not so. Neither is the result of any mechanical operation whatever. You bend your body rhythmically, and by degrees acquire a proficiency that enables you to “stretch” and “limber up” yourself to an extent that may surprise you. No one was ever hurt by my exercises; you gradually limber and stretch yourself! All who have taken the exercises and have practiced them as directed have materially benefited. They bring health, graceful figures and a fitness for learning dancing as nothing else does of which I have knowledge. That is what these exercises are for, and just what they do.
And another important fact in connection with my foundation technique for dancers, it does not bunch the muscles into unsightly shape; it does not make huge, knotty muscles in the arms and legs, as has long been the case with certain Russian and Italian ballet methods. You have no doubt seen ballet dancers with distorted bodies. The American woman will not be content with any development that mars the appearance of her figure, and she is right. You have seen the Ned Wayburn trained girls on many a stage, and never yet saw one that was not pleasing in figure, to put it mildly, and that is the way we insist in developing them at the studio. Our pupils acquire agility without angularity or unsightly protuberances anywhere. We take the “raw material,” child or adult, between four and forty, with or without any former experience or training, proceed with them through my foundation technique of limbering and stretching, and advance them from there to courses in any of the various forms of dancing, with the perfect assurance that they have the necessary basis of flexibility and muscle control that will support them on their way to perfect dancing success.
In conjunction with this work, all types of kicking steps are taught, front kick, side kick, back kick, hitch kick, and the others. Since strength for kicking comes from the abdominal muscles, a workout that will especially exercise these muscles around the waist line is essential, and a series of strengthening activities is given to this end.
Imagine that you are in practice costume, one of a class of students similarly dressed, standing in line on a padded rug in my Foundation Technique studio. The instructor begins with the simple exercises, and directs you through a number of them during an hour’s lesson today, repeating them briefly tomorrow and adding new ones to those you learned yesterday, till soon you have progressed through the entire list. The work is done rhythmically to music, and all exercises are in eight counts. Each is repeated in measured time till the class masters it, and the student is requested to practice the lessons at home faithfully and earnestly, and the proficiency thus acquired is looked for in the class work of the day after.
Here are a dozen of the Ned Wayburn series of Limbering and Stretching exercises selected from my Foundation Technique:
EXERCISE 1.
For limbering and stretching the triceps,
and loosening the waist line along the sides.
Stand erect, head up, heels together, arms down at sides, raise right arm straight up over the head. Bend body to left as far as you can, sliding left hand down the thigh. Return to erect position, then with left arm raised bend to right. Alternate left and right eight times to count of “one, lean; two, lean,” etc.