Dancing full-out requires a lot of energy. Dancers often do what is called “marking” to conserve their energy for when they will perform or show movement more seriously later on. Marking is a way for dancers to reveiw movement and imagine it happening in their heads with few physical movements and low effort. It’s not always allowed or supported in a technique class and is typically frowned upon in a professional performance setting, like when a choreographer is giving movement to the group.
Being a more professional dancer now that I’m studying it in college, I have recently felt as though I need to put maximum or nearly maximum effort into each “run through” of a movement phrase, even when learning it for the first time. It’s crucial to pick movement up quickly and be able to reproduce what was shown as clearly as can be. Due to these high expectations, it appears logical that I would put maximum effort into each step of learning movement for maximum output. I have physically practiced to the level that I want to achieve when showing or performing and I won’t risk giving less than I possibly can. After all, athletes and peformers are always told to “practice like you play/perform”. I question the necessity of pressure from teachers to always put in full effort and to practice like one performs. Can it be beneficial to mark a dance instaed of going full-out? If so, how does this change current class philosophy and expectations?
Research by University of California and Claire Trevor School of the Arts faculty claims that marking is actually more cognitively beneficial to dancers than always going full out when rehearsing. When comparing the performance of dancers after using their full energy or going full out versus marking, the marking rehearsal method resulted in better performance (Warburton et al, 2013). Perhaps moving slowly through movement would give the brain time to attach meaning to each movement and therefore retain it in a more permanent memory storage space than if it were quickly and effortfully performed. This would mean that marking could be used as a method to retain movement or memorize it, something that going full out doesn’t provide time to do. While there aren’t many other studies that exist that are similar to this one and can provide more strength to the claim given, this is still a profound finding with major implications.
If more people are exposed to this idea that marking is more beneficial than going full out, professors, teachers, choreographers, and artistic directors would perhaps no longer hold performers to such high standards of effort and perfection during rehearsal time. Dance pedagogy would shift from stressing heavily on immediately translating replicated movement into the body to a new philosophy of working through and slowly understanding movement while using less physical and more cognitive energy. This transformation of philosophy would alleviate a lot of stress that dancers feel because it would give them time for more movement exploration and detail gathering and allow each performer to feel completely comfortable with movement before fully executing it. By allowing dancers to put more cognitive effort into their learning, it might actually help more with movement retention and leave less stress on the body. It would be very difficult for the negativity surrounding marking to disappear, but challenging current popular ideas such as practicing like you perform definitely helps to at least change the way that people see their methods of teaching and learning.
References
Warburton, E. C., Wilson, M., Lynch, M., & Cuykendall, S. (2013). The Cognitive Benefits of Movement Reduction. Psychological Science,24(9), 1732-1739. doi:10.1177/0956797613478824
Bergland, C. (2013, October 1). Why Is Dancing So Good for Your Brain? Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201310/why-is-dancing-so-good-your-brain
Data/Society/Decision-making Spring 2019 