Centering work: integrating movement.

A bunch of dancers lie in a quiet studio on their stomachs, trying an unfamiliar move--lifting their heads without relying on muscles in the back and neck, instead initiating the movement from deeper in the torso, from the level of the heart. Elbows lifted slightly and palms pressing into the floor, they practice the beginning of the movement again and again, with the Body-Mind Centering practitioner's touch guiding them toward finding the new sensation.

Lifting the head like a sunning salamander is just one of the exercises in "developmental movement," a cornerstone of BMC, a practice originated by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. As babies, most of us mastered a sequence of movements before learning to walk, from reptile-like crawling to "brachiation," the monkey-like pattern we use to reach out and pull ourselves up. But most of us have lost the easy movement integration that allowed us to perform these actions. So BMC seeks to re-pattern our movement toward efficiency and effortlessness by practicing developmental movement patterns and by investigating the body's internal systems, including its bones, mucles, and nerves.

If we've already learned to walk, not to mention leap, why go to the trouble? The fine-tuned awareness developed through: practicing BMC brings major pay-offs for dancers. "Fuller, more three-dimensional movement" is one, according to Martha Myers, Dean Emerita of the America Dance Festival. She also cites BMC's value in "helping dancers extend technical skills and creative options." Cohen points out, "If you can recognize movement that causes stress and find a more effortless way to accomplish it," your dancing skills will improve.

Bonnie, as all her students and associates call her, contracted polio as a child. Now in her 60s, she credits paralysis with helping her tune in to internal movement. As Cohen explained recently, BMC explores how, even in stillness, the body is "moving internally, and how the movement through space is supported by that internal movement."

Having always loved dancing, Bonnie got a degree in occupational therapy at Ohio State University, and then returned to study as a dance major. A year later, she came to New York City to work with Erick Hawkins and to teach at Hunter College, melding her scientific and therapeutic knowledge with dance. A lifelong student of different somatic approaches, she had many teachers including early proponents of release technique and dance therapy, yogis, voice coaches, physical therapists, doctors, movement analysts, and aikido masters--all of whom informed her approach.

BMC today is taught one-on-one or in group sessions with practitioners and teachers certified by the School for Body-Mind Centering, founded in 1973 and now based in Amherst, Massachusetts. With props like physioballs and stretch hands, they make exploring different body systems a playful but profound experience. Training starts with visualization, learning anatomy from pictures and skeletons, and goes on to "somatization," feeling the nature of the body's structure through hands-on work and movement exercises. For many dancers, practicing BMC is transformational, promoting a depth of mind-body understanding that translates into "embodiment," a quality of moving where, as Bonnie says, "the cells are aware of themselves."

RoseAnne Spradlin, a BMC teacher and Bessie Award-winning choreographer, says, "Improvisation out of BMC was my main exploratory form for finding things to do in choreography. I had loads of emotion and inner power, but I didn't have a way to show it. Bonnie helped me find ways to express myself through integrating the inside with the outside."

Roel Seeber, a dancer in the Limon Dance Company who studies with practitioner K.J. Holmes, finds BMC is "really like magic. When the physical instincts are close to the surface you can move more expressively, and move larger and smaller and softer and slower. All the ranges are more dynamic."

Dancers from the companies of Trisha Brown, Liz Lerman, Bebe Miller, and Doug Varone have found BMC to be helpful in exploring new qualities of movement and dimensionality. Bonnie's work is wide-ranging in its applications. She helps special needs children in her private practice. In her video and book series, Experiential Anatomy in the Training of Young Dancers, she outlines methods for improving turnout, extensions, jumps, and more. She's also starting a two-year training program for applying Body-Mind Centering to the teaching of yoga.

BMC's usefulness for dancers is in applying the principles that help them to find embodiment. Bonnie says when dancers find it, "they're inside of what they're doing. And they know it. And we know it." And that's beautiful.

Lisa Kraus currently teaches at Swarthmore College and is a dance critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer.