Dancer . So I have been told. If we were hung up from a hook in our head to the ceiling, all our bones would hang down into the correct line. No longer would the the head be forward or the shoulders hunched. Our spine would be long and we would be looking straight ahead. Thats it.

I think that your eye position is paramount!. I cannot tell you how many times I have had a coach yell at me "look where you are going!"...

If you have ever been at comp, who attracts your attention? Not the one who has no foucs and eye contact is all over the place... It is the one with a direct focus and strong intention that you are drawn to.... It screams confidence

For dance posture, I also was taught to practice standing with my back against the wall and flatten out my spine, but I must admit that I do have an issue with this posture for normal everyday activities. The lumbar and cervical regions of the spine are meant to be curved and cannot be expected to be straight as a wall during everyday activities. You would be trying to flatten out the naturally occurring curved shape of the spine. I think the wall is more for making sure that the head is directly over the shoulders, which in turn are directly over the hips. Thats a good thing. But a completely straight spine just can't be good in my mind. I'm going to have further discussion with my AM instructors regarding this and I'll let you know what they say. Thanks.

IndySpinner. I think you were refering to the spine thing in modern. I hope you will follow this one up with some more information
In Latin you have no choice , man and lady must not have a curve in the spine. It can be taken out. Polatis has an excercise for that.That is getting the spine flat on the floor. Somebody else may know and add their bit to this that a curved spine over a period of time can affect other organs in the body. This is anybody, including people who will not dance a step in their life.

I just talked it over with the lead instructor at my AM. He said that although the spine has natural curves, the dancer must try to minimize the curvature of the spine for the correct dance posture. But a straight spine used for dance posture is not a posture you will carry all day long in your everyday activities. He said for one thing we would look funny. He agreed that there is a certain curve that exists naturally in the spine and a person would not want to try to "minimize" it all day long. So, the statement "Try standing against a door, everything touches. Walk away keeping that shape. Does it feel strange. Thats how it should be even when you are out shopping" applies for vertical alignment of all body components, but does not mean trying to straighten out the spine all day long. In a nutshell, good posture does not mean a straight spine, it means good stacking of all your body components vertically while maintaining properly curvature where its supposed to exist, in the lumbar and cervical regions.

IndySpinner. It is age plus lack of the correct exercise or maybe something to do with the type of work we are doing that gives us bad posture. Most little children stand straight. If you had one that slouched about like most of us adults do you'd be rushing them to the doctors. Steven Hillier once said in a lecture here. That as a youngster he was always being told to hold the head up. But it wasn't his head it was his middle that was wrong. He went on to say that we have three blocks of wood one on top of the other below our ribs. The thought is to keep them in line all the time. Another approach to this problem is by Slavik who says on his disk that we stretch the base of the spine to the floor and the top to the ceiling and maintain that posture.

This is a good analogy Quickstep. The stretching of the spine is fundamental to good Yoga AND Yoga has helped me with my posture for dance. There are exercises that do just what Slavik said AND you visualise the bottom of your spine going in the opposite direction to the top of your spine giving you a nice stretch along the entire spine.

Sandra. I've got that disk by Slavik also. One thing I sometimes do is to correct the posture from the feet up to the head. Ankles under knees. Knees under hips. Hips under shoulders. Head held high. Keep the spine straight and stretched The reason for this is we very often forget there are other parts of the body besides the head and shoulders. Sometimes the bottom part gets forgotten.

I have continous problem of holding my posture up and keeping my sight level up. One problem that induces the problem is floorcraft problems on crowded floors socially and competition.
Dancing with a variety of partners throws me off some too. It seems I go through periods of having very good posture and then I will develop some type of bad habit that will throw it off.

I take ballet and pilates and this really helps and I use good posture when doing these activities, but all bets are off when I start dancing challenging figures and start thinking a lot about floorcraft--especially with a variety of partners.

Some of the competition floors are jam packed with dancers and it is easy to get knocked off the floor.

I recently watched an American Smooth comp. that had 8 couples on a small dance floor. They were really flying around and bumping into each other. Don't know how the did it--maybe I need more experience to hold every thing together better or just simplify my figures, so that I can think more about
posture.

You bring up such a good point about comp floors, and something I have thought about a lot....

Just last week-end we attended a regional comp. We were on the dance floor at times with up to 18 couples. In one event we chose to let go of the material we had planned to dance and dropped down to more basic steps. We felt we would be more successful dancing "good" basics rather then trying to fit in combinations that there was just no room for...

The problem that I have with all of this is that if we spend all our training just for a crowded comp floor we will never expand our knowledge or try to master the more difficult concepts.... So I am really struggling with what is more important... A safe placement for comps, or take the risk, with opportunity to grow....