Pushing Progress’ Contemporary Training Program is based on three key principles.
- KNOWLEDGE OF BASIC ANATOMY: Understanding core muscular functioning, instructors at Pushing Progress invite guest speakers, assigns books to read (like A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle) and employ tedious exercise routines to facilitate students’ awareness of their inner body. For example, during rehearsal I witnessed each girl lying on her back; ankle extended 90 degrees, the focus was to ‘fix’ the ‘circular flow’ through foot and particular attention was paid to perfecting the vertebrae. For example, Melissa Wolfe-Rosebro who studied under Professor Irene Dowd and Deborah Lessen, founder of PMA (Pilates Alliance Method)— continues to be a fulfilling conduit of expertise and ancient wisdom. She administers monthly conditioning and anatomy classes monthly to 5-50 person groups, as of 2007 and is certainly Pushing Progress’ heroine.
TRAINING IS A STATE OF MIND: Controlling the mind as well as the body is another essential component of training. Dance and life are one and the same for dancers whose identities are synonymous with their approach to life. “Dance is life—a process of pushing past difficulty,” says Escueta, who choreographed “Crawling on the Surface”:
“Either you’re the person who gives up or you embrace the human experience. We’re trying to give the dancers the strength to face those adversities, to come through with will, discipline and the belief that they can.”
- Habit cultivates discipline, and dancing three hours a day- four times a week constructively implants in these girls the habits necessary for them to improve technique, style and attitude.
- Dance saturates every arena of a dancer’s life outside of the classroom be it walking, talking or dream—each girl is alchemized by the very art form dictating her body. She is perfecting her spine and positively enhancing the quality of her breath, life just by coming to class each day.
ACCESSIBILITY: Everyone has the tools to dance, and though some have better chances of becoming dancers than others, the skills to perfecting a pose or to beautifying a technique are achievable by all. This reality is exactly why Pushing Progress exists: It aims to transcend boundaries; exclusivity and elitism inherent in many conservatory dance institutions limited to the qualified few. The programs are an outlet, a room by which emerging dancers learn to develop their artistic voice—“a voice they can use and control,” Maya notes.
Pushing Progress revolutionizes the way dance is taught by transferring the core, deepest principles to everyone, anyone interested and willing to dance and learn technique. For example, Melissa Wolfe-Rosebro who studied under Professor Irene Dowd and Deborah Lessen, founder of PMA (Pilates Alliance Method)— continues to be a fulfilling conduit of expertise and ancient wisdom. She administers monthly conditioning and anatomy classes monthly to 5-50 person groups, as of 2007 and is certainly Pushing Progress’ heroine.
“Crawling on the Surface” was the 5 girls’ second piece performed and choreographed by Maya for Sunday’s showcase. Based on Henr y James’ Portrait of a Lady in which he says,” we are mere parasites, crawling on the surface; we haven’t our feet in the soil…A woman, it seems to me has no natural place anywhere; whereas she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more or less, to crawl,” (James 171), the girls grip, crawl and emerge freely only to return to the ground, their ‘natural place’. They wear all white Victorian petticoats and corsets, and black chokers and accoutrement provide a relevant contrast– a black to white polarity rooted in the theme of woman as both free and bound. Part parasite and part angel too, women are bound to earthly delights and suffering; yet they are transcendental and free. She is mortal, destined and influenced yet immortal and in control of her response, body and dance.
Chris Hale’s solo performance “Hovering in Doorways” too evokes the feeling of being trapped or confined, in limbo. Walking, dancing in place, he has nowhere to go—he is both entranced yet electrocuted by the eeriness of not knowing of what is to come. Convulsively full of fear, he has no one to save him. Be it a lynch mob or one locked door after another, Hale moves to, with and from the music’s core– from an imaginary door to the floor—and to yet a second door. Trapped, all he can do is dance–it is his only outlet. It is his salvation.
