What Dancers Can Teach You About Healthy Feet
– The MOVEMENT Movement with Steven Sashen Episode 151 with Emily Kent
Emily Milam Kent graduated Magna Cum Laude, earning a BSEd in Dance Education from the University of Georgia. She began working with Pilobolus in 1999 working first as a dancer and collaborator and then Teaching Artist. She has created original works for high school and university dance companies for Pilobolus and as an individual artist. She has set classic Pilobolus repertoire on high school and university students; she and her partner Matt Kent, were the first to have the process notated by a Laban Notator. During her career with Pilobolus she has created new programs to share the Pilobolus Method to people of all ages and abilities to people around the country: Pilobolus @ Play, the flagship touring education residency, Connecting with Balance, aprogressive program for the aging population, The Pilobolus Teaching Manual, to share our techniques with teachers. She spends her days teaching and training teachers to bring Pilobolus’s ideals of collaboration and improvisation to young and old.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Emily Kent about what dancers can teach you about your feet.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How many dancers have been taught to move in certain ways, and how they can move away from that.
– Why it’s a good idea to tell people they are playing games in a dance class.
– How movement and dance classes teach people how to have better balance.
– How everyone at any age can benefit from taking a dance and why you shouldn’t be afraid to.
– How pointe shoes can really mess up your feet and how they aren’t part of modern dance.
Connect with Emily:
Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@Pilobolus
Instagram
@pilobolus
Facebook
facebook.com/PilobolusDance
Links Mentioned:
Pilobolus.org
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Jointhemovementmovement.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Steven Sashen:
If you want to learn about what it takes to have happy, healthy feet or the importance of happy, healthy, strong feet, there’s pretty much no one better to talk to than a dancer. And I don’t mean ballet dancer, that’s one thing, modern dancing, that’s a whole other thing. But we’re going to talk about some dancers with a former dancer that you are going to love. And I say that only because I’m projecting because I love the person we’re going to talk to and the people that she works with and have for a long time. But more about that in a sec. On today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. Starting feet first, those things that are your foundation, I just realized that my video is off and if I don’t have this self view on when I record this, I disappear. But hey, you’ve been looking at Emily Kent who we’re going to talk to in a second, but I’m going to keep going.
So on this podcast, we break down the mythology and sometimes just the propaganda and well, flat out lies that you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or do yoga or CrossFit or dance, or do whatever you enjoy doing, to do that efficiently and effectively and enjoyably. And enjoyably is the key one, because if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep it up anyway. So find something you like and do that. All right. We call this The MOVEMENT Movement because we’re creating a movement that involves you. It’s really easy, doesn’t cost anything. Tell you about that in a sec. About natural movement, letting your body do what bodies are made to do.
And the first part, that movement part, just you can go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There’s nothing you need to do to actually join. There’s no secret handshake or song you need to sing or exercise that we do every morning. Whatever it is, there’s no money involved. That’s just where you can find all the previous episodes, all the ways you can engage with us on social media, how you can contact us and subscribe to hear about upcoming episodes. Like us, thumbs up, bell icon on YouTube, you know the drill. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe.
So Emily Kent, it is a pleasure having you here. Would you do me a favor and tell people who you are and what you do?
Emily Kent:
Sure. I’m so happy to be here. I’m excited. I’m Emily Kent. I’m the education director for Pilobolus. The next question is, what the hell is Pilobolus, right? And why do you say that? Pilobolus is a dance company. It’s also a little phototropic mushroom. But right now, we’ll focus on the dance company that’s been around for more than 50 years. We do modern dance, we perform all over the world. And at the same time, my job is teaching other people how we do what we do. Whether that be kids, dancers, people who’ve never danced at all, all the way up to older adults.
Steven Sashen:
Now let me, before anyone tunes out, because you said the phrase modern dance.
Emily Kent:
True.
Steven Sashen:
I have been a Pilobolus fan, well, for about 47 years, since I was 13, 14. And anytime I’d send someone to a Pilobolus show and it’s their first time, they basically come back saying the same thing, which is, “That is not what I expected.” And, “That’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.” So what I love about what Pilobolus does, and this is just a sales pitch for you to check them out, and I’ll say it now at Pilobolus.org. Yeah? You’re .org?
Emily Kent:
Yep, .org. Mm-hmm.
Steven Sashen:
Just go watch any of the videos, get on YouTube, just watch anything. And if you’re not amazed, there’s something wrong with you. My favorite thing about what they do is, there’s two. Well, more than two. One is just, these are amazing, amazing dancers, amazing performers. The other is that in any given show, you’ll find yourself thinking, laughing, crying, and everything in between. They have an amazing sense of humor and lightness that they bring to certain pieces, and real depth and feeling that comes to others. And I don’t mean airy fairy, it’s like ooh, looking at art and I don’t know what it means, what I’m feeling. I mean literally the kind of thing that just makes you think about reality in your life in a whole new way. And then look, let’s cut to the chase. These are people with amazing bodies.
Emily Kent:
True. At any way you want to come to it, we’re here for you. I always call it, we’re the gateway drug for dance, I think, because it’s something you can bring your, we used to say husband, but maybe that’s not PC anymore. Bring your, fill in the blank person, that doesn’t dance to see Pilobolus. And they will leave going, “Oh, I didn’t know it could be like that.” Because like you’re saying, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We don’t want people to leave going, “I think it must be good because I don’t know what was happening or what I was supposed to think.” We want people to enjoy themselves.
My dad, when he first saw the show, and he had been forced for his whole life with a little child, going to see those awful, awful recitals. And sleeping through them. And so the first Pilobolus show he saw, I saw him afterwards and he goes, “That was good.” With that surprise voice. And it was funny. And I think the thought that modern dance can be funny, that things can be slapstick, that we can be just real. I think we’re always looking for real exchanges on stage, both with the performers but also performers to audience.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and I’ll tell you one of my favorite things that you guys do is, when everyone’s just filing into whatever theater you happen to be in or whatever weird venue you happen to be in, the dancers are just on stage, lights up, warming up, and it creates this environment of like, “Oh, we’re part of this. Okay, this is not far off in the distance and we’re hands off.”
Emily Kent:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
It’s got that feeling.
Emily Kent:
Yeah. That was really important. Actually, we only started doing that maybe eight or 10 years ago and it was that we didn’t love that feeling of… Because you’re back there anyway. I mean even if the curtain’s closed, the dancers are out there, they’re warming up, they’re getting ready, and then it’s like now the show starts. No, we’re there. It helps us get the feeling for who’s there. You’re a performer, so the feeling of you want to peek out and see who’s out in the audience or peek through the curtain, you don’t have to. You can just stand out there and do your warmup and see who’s coming. Get the vibe for how the people feel as they’re coming in and set that stage for that exchange of a relationship between the dancers and the audience.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And again, just to give people a reason to check out what you’re doing. After the last performance that I saw, I came up and I said, “I don’t know which I like more, when I can see the physics of what you’re doing or when you’re hiding the physics of what you’re doing.” And what I mean by that, for people who haven’t seen Pilobolus is they do these things that just frankly, look impossible. And if you go try them, and I will say something about that in a second, you will find that they probably are for mere mortals. But you guys have mastered the art of hiding the things that make something work in a way that a lot of it just looks literally impossible or practically magic. And that’s really fun when in the middle of something, you can just hear the whole audience going, “What the hell? Wait a minute.” That’s a blast.
Emily Kent:
Yeah. Yeah. Now you tried some of these though in your youth, didn’t you?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. So that’s the thing. When I was through high school and actually through college I was a gymnast and what would happen in high school, we’d all go and see a Pilobolus show and then we’d come back and we would try to do the things that we saw and we were really fit and we were pretty savvy about movement and we could not figure out most of the things we saw. Now that said, there’s one thing, and I’ll repeat a story that it was one of the first things I asked you when we connected. I had a memory of something that happened. Anyway, I had a memory of something that I saw and I wasn’t sure if it was true because a lot of times we have memories of things that don’t match reality. And if you haven’t done that, when I went to my high school or college reunions, it was very entertaining hearing things that I remembered that other people didn’t and vice versa. I find that fascinating.
Anyway, so here’s the bit, and I’m probably exaggerating certain parts so you can correct me. But the gist will be the same. Guy walks onto the stage, turns perpendicular to the audience, lifts up one leg parallel to the ground and just stands there. And for about 10 seconds everyone’s going, “Okay, that’s cool.” And they’re waiting for someone else to come on and do something else or waiting for him to do something else and no nothing. So at about 30 seconds everyone’s like, “All right, something going wrong? I mean that’s pretty impressive, but I mean, where are the other things? Or the people or the other…” And after about a minute people are going, “You have got to be fucking kidding me. What is happening here?” After three minutes people are jumping out of their chairs freaking out. And that was the whole thing. And so I asked you if my memory was in any way accurate or not, and you said…
Emily Kent:
Yeah. I said yes. And the piece that you’re talking about is from one of our founders, Moses Pendleton, who now has the dance company, MOMIX, also awesome. Go check them out as well. But he made this piece, I believe called MOMIX, before there was a dance company called MOMIX. And the story about that, and this ties into really who Pilobolus is, because we weren’t dancers. The original guys at Dartmouth in 1971 were in no way dancers. The reason they got started is because there was a woman who came to Dartmouth to start teaching dance classes. These guys signed up probably because she was way more attractive than any of the other options. It was all male at the time, Dartmouth. And she said, “I took one look at them and went, I can’t teach them five, six, seven, eight steps and point your toes. I just need to get them making something, get them creative and just see what they do.”
And Moses had a knee injury, he was a ski jumper or something crazy like that. And he had hurt his knee. So that one leg that wasn’t hurt was really strong because he had been around on crutches and done all these things basically on one leg. And so that solo really came out of that, well, look at all this I can do on one leg because I had to for a long time. And that’s very Pilobolus. It’s really happening at this moment and how can you turn that into a dance? And it makes it easy for me as a teacher to go in any space, whether it’s a corporate education or a school for the blind or a group of senior adults at a senior center and teach a class that’s Pilobolus. Because it’s about how does your body move? How can we push the limits of that? How do you make things with other people and perform them?
That’s really at the heart all you have to do. You don’t have to be able to lift your leg, you don’t have to be able to push somebody over your head and all those amazing, amazing things our dancers can do. But because they can do those things when we are improvising and making a new piece, those are the things that come out of the improvisation and then that’s what ends up on stage.
Steven Sashen:
Well it’s funny, Lane and I got to see two shows recently and we made a comment that a couple of pieces look different and we said, “Is it our memory or were they different?” It’s like, “Oh no, they were different because we had different dancers.” Basically the structure was the same but some different things because different people doing it. And I thought that was-
Emily Kent:
Yeah. Yeah. Whenever somebody new comes in, there’s pieces that already exist that they have to learn. But also, they do make them their own. I mean we encourage them because as a comedian, something one person says, another person can’t say it and be funny. You have to find your own way to say the punchline to deliver whatever it is. And it’s the same with movement. It could be purely physics. This person has longer legs so their base of weight is going to be higher than another person who’s shorter. It could also be more of an acting thing. I want you to look like this. For this person, they did these three things. For you, you might do something different to make that come across because that’s who you are. It’s great for me as a teacher because I’m encouraging people to really just be who they are in the class. And that’s valuable.
Lots of other dance and believe me, I’ve taken lots of other dance, it’s about being the person who’s teaching you, copying their body movements, doing the things that they’re saying. That’s fine. That’s a great way to do things. It’s a great way to learn. This is just a different angle on that, which is like, “Okay, how do you move low to the ground?” Okay. How do you move? I love to play a game with the kids because a lot of times, and especially dancers who’ve had it beaten into their head that there are certain ways you move like okay, you can’t use your feet on the floor, so now what do you do? And then they do some things and I say, “Okay, awesome. You still can’t use your feet on the floor but now you can’t use your hands.” Oh. Oh. Well now what do I do? And then you figure it out.
Steven Sashen:
Hold on, let’s pause on that one. I want people to think about this. Okay. So it’s funny you were saying, I was about to think is there any movement thing that we could do with people or invite people to do? And now we’re doing one. So imagine. So I want people to think about this. You’re asked to move across the floor and you can’t have your feet touching. So what are you going to do? Now, the most common thing that I can imagine is people are going to be on all fours with their hands and knees. But I can also think of there’s some other things that you could have touching the ground. So now we’re saying, “Okay, let’s get rid of your hands.” So, I want people to ponder for a second because now, I’m imagining a couple things that involve knees and head or knees and shoulders or knees and-
Emily Kent:
Or on your back. Right? And you’re like…
Steven Sashen:
On your back.
Emily Kent:
Wiggling.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah.
Emily Kent:
It’s super cool and we actually use this, we have a kid show that we do, a lot of venues where we go, we’ll bus in kids from a school and we’ll perform for kids. And we have a show called Rules at Play and it’s really about how rules as an artist, they seem like a bummer, “No rules.” But really, it’s really hard when you have no rules at all. You want a constraint that you can be creative within. And so, this constraint for this piece was, you can’t use your feet on the floor. So we bring kids up on stage and usually a teacher and make them do this very thing on stage. You start here, you go there, no feet on the floor and that’s what they do. There’s a moment and then they all crawl or they all get on their knees and shuffle.
And then it’s like, okay now when you go back, you can’t use your hands or whatever it is. And then it’s like, oh, everything that they did was different than what they would’ve done if we hadn’t given that rule. So all the people who tried or you, if you try at home, you’ll do something new. And that’s really the idea. If you decided to make a whole dance about how many ways you could move without using your feet or hands on the floor, it would be very different than if I just said, “Okay, make up a dance,” right? Which most people would be like, okay, what are the moves that… The traditional kind of things. So those kind of games are what I get to play with in a class. Just getting people thinking in a different way about moving. But it’s not about being me, right? It’s not about being the Pilobolus dancer, it’s about how can you solve that problem? Solving movement problems really.
Which is where we find some commonality because I think you spend a lot of time solving movement problems, right?
Steven Sashen:
Well, that is true. But enough about me. Is there another exercise that we can get people to think about it or maybe even do depending on where they happen to be?
Emily Kent:
Yeah. Well, I can think about one of the other ones in that show, sometimes we do, everybody here. So there’s a dance piece that we do, I can’t remember if you saw it at any of the shows you were at, but it’s called Solo from the Empty Suitor and the dancer, it’s mostly a solo for this one guy, but it starts with all the people. There’s a bench and there are PVC pipes on stage.
Steven Sashen:
Yes, in fact. Well I’ve seen it in the past and I saw it at one of the recent shows. Yeah.
Emily Kent:
Okay, yeah. So this lovely lady tempts him with an apple, he takes a bite and then suddenly he’s stuck on these PVC tubes going back and forth and he can’t touch the floor almost, the rule is he can’t touch the floor. Kind of like the floor is lava. We’ve all played that when we were kids. And it’s just in your space, how many things could you set up and what could you do to get to those things without touching the floor? And how interesting could you make it and how far away could you put that rug or that pillow that you’re going to jump to? So that’s another one we talk about in that show. The original Pilobolus rule was how do you make a dance with no dancers? Right? 1971 they had no dancers. They were just like, “Well you do things you do every day.”
You’ve seen the piece Walklyndon. And this one also is easy to find on YouTube for anybody who searches us, there’s no music and it’s all about bumping into each other, meeting, hello, all the funny things that happen on a street. Just walking past each other and all the absurd ways you can take that as a performer, you end up jumping on them and upside down and doing a handstand over somebody’s back and then flipping back over another way. But the rule was really like, well if you don’t have dancers, you have to use movement that everybody does and then turn it into a dance.
Steven Sashen:
I love it.
Emily Kent:
Yeah. But you could play another… Oh this is my favorite, sorry for interrupting. One of my favorite things to do with kids or adults is tell everyone, okay. Because we’re never dancing, especially for a group of people that would not show up to a dance class. We’re not dancing, we’re just playing games. We’re playing movement games.
So most folks have heard of the game Twister, right? Awesome. You’ve got the thing on the floor. Well I made up a game called Pilobolus Twister. I’m going to call out a body part and you have to connect that part to another part on your body. Or sometimes it’s the same. Connect your elbows together, we’ll start really easy. Or elbow to knee or head to knee, all right. You just have to freeze and do that. Well then I’ll say, now do that connection and move across the room. So if you’ve got elbow to knee, you have to keep elbow to knee and move across the room. And the cool thing is, my version of elbow to knee might be in a kneeling position. Somebody else’s might be standing up or it might be holding underneath whatever they want to do.
And then you go, “Okay, now you have to do this with another person.” So Steven, your elbow is going to be connected to my knee and we’re going to have to work together to get across the room or my foot on your back or whatever combination we come up with. And how do you move now? Because it’s definitely different than something you would’ve thought of had I not given you that little problem to solve, that movement game to do. So y’all can try that at home with your family. It’s really fun to do with parents and kids. Kid belly to adult head, like that, that you can do. And it’s just new ways of moving yourself and being creative and like you said, having fun. Because if you’re not having fun, what’s the point?
Steven Sashen:
Exactly. And I’m just imagining little things like getting from the couch to the TV in the weirdest possible way or the most cutest way. Give me the flashback. The late physicist Richard Feynman got a dog and realized that the dog doesn’t know what sit means. The dog doesn’t know what down means, the dog doesn’t know anything, but I can use those words to teach the dog other things. So for example, he would throw a ball and say, “Fetch,” and the dog would run in the opposite direction outside the house, around the house, jump in through the window, grab the ball, go back through the window around the house. He called them counterintuitive dog tricks.
Emily Kent:
Yeah. Oh, that’s perfect.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, it’s hysterical. What’s the weirdest way that we could make you do what most people think is the simplest thing. And I just realized I have one now. So we now have our first dog ever and we’ve had him for about seven months. He’s maybe about a three year old rescue. And I realized the other day I’ve been trying to teach him down and it hit me two days ago actually, he does it perfectly on a particular rug in our house, but he doesn’t know how to do it anywhere else. He’s just totally-
Emily Kent:
He likes the feel of that rug on his belly.
Steven Sashen:
He’s just gotten the idea that down means a thing connected to that rug. And now, I’m trying unwind that and get him to realize that it can generalize and mean that same thing in other places. But I find it very entertaining when I say down, he runs over to the rug and then lies down, which is just priceless.
Emily Kent:
Yeah, perfect.
Steven Sashen:
So these are all very fun things for people to play with. That made me think of something I was going to ask you. Oh, so let’s chat more. Well, so many things I want to ask you about, but let’s chat more about the classes you started doing during COVID and balanced classes, et cetera. Because that’s something I’d love for people to hear how that evolved and then what you’re doing and what the effects have been.
Emily Kent:
Yeah. So actually, we’ll have to go back pre-pandemic, did it exist? It did. But eight years ago, we got some feedback from some funders that they were looking for things for older adults because probably you and I both know, you really have to look harder as an adult to find interesting fun things to do that are physical, right? I’m taking adult tap right now-
Steven Sashen:
Well hold on, let me interject. Where you’re not going to feel dopey going there because you’re the old uncoordinated person.
Emily Kent:
Yes, yes, yes, exactly. Yeah. And you’re not taking dance with teenagers or you’re not learning tennis with five year olds or something. So it is harder to find things. So we were like, “Cool, we can…” Because of all those things I said before, we can make a class for older adults, but also knowing that a lot of people are scared of the word dance and if they’re not there to take a dance class, it’s not like ballroom dance or whatever. I wanted people to show up. Well, what do older people care about? Balance and falling, right? It’s the number one thing that you’re hearing about and you’re thinking about. And so we were like, “Let’s put this all together.” Because of course, a dance class and a movement class does teach you balance and we can specifically focus on that and at the same time, do all the things that we do at Pilobolus anyway. Get people to move their bodies, get people to be creative and work together.
And so, we started this program in community centers. We’d go in, we’d offer the class connecting with balance and we would meet together. It was super fun. We did a lot of things that you might see in Tai Chi, pulled from Tai Chi or other physical therapy or chair yoga or different things depending on the group of folks and their ability level. Warming up, doing range of motion for your body parts, standing with something to hold onto, practicing shifting weight. And my whole thing is, as a dancer, you get to try lots of different movements all the time. You’re not stuck just… A lot of folks are either sitting or they’re laying down or they’re standing up and walking wherever they’re going. There’s not like a lot of other movements. And when those movements happen, this thing, and then whoa, they go. So giving people a chance to safely experience lots of different movement patterns so that that’s in their realm of things they do all the time.
So we did that in person for a long time with the support of some great funders, the community foundation here in Connecticut. Then when the pandemic happened, of course, older adults are hugely impacted. They’re home. And so we were like, “Okay, let’s turn this into a video product.” Which we did by recording videos like you would watch any workout video and they can access them streaming. We have over 25 videos now in that library. Those are not live, they’re just pre-recorded. And then we also do Zoom classes of these things. Now the Zoom and the at home have a little different feel because you’re not in the room with somebody else. So you’re not holding hands with somebody else or tossing a ball to somebody else and that kind of thing. And luckily, we are getting a chance to come back to some live in person ones here.
Well, when we were out in Breckenridge this summer, which is when I met you in person, we taught some outside, which was so fun and we got to use the grounds there at the performing arts center and everything. But this has been huge for us because it’s allowed me to not just meet people who live around here, but I can teach people all across the country. I teach class on Fridays at 10 on Zoom and there’s somebody in California that takes the class and that never would’ve happened without this whole Zoom idea. And it’s really about again, moving your body. What can you do now? How can we stretch that thing and how can we play with movement for this class in order to build a more stable and mobile and balance body through these movements? And so, it’s super fun for me and I was constantly telling people, in person, no one would take their shoes off because they’d come from their car and they’d come into the building and it just wasn’t something they did.
And so I didn’t push it because I wanted people to feel comfortable, but then once we were home it was like, “Oh yeah, just take your shoes and socks off.” It’s very easy. And so, once I found out about your company and got some of your shoes, this is now my go-to, I’m in the community center, everybody’s got their shoes on. I’m like, “Wow, can you see how much my foot can move in these shoes?” Well that’s because they are these shoes and I just love it so much because it’s such a problem. And I heard your story about your dad and it made me think about my own. I just spent some time with my dad who had some surgery and I was working with him on just moving his feet and how little his feet could move, I think because of so many years in these tight shoes. And he’s not a guy that ever goes barefoot unless we’re on the beach.
And I just saw this, wow, this is what happens when your feet don’t move through these ranges of motion. They just stop being able to. And so, even if I’m teaching class in my Xero shoes and we’re doing that toe yoga, your big toes are lifting up and then putting down, that can happen inside those shoes because they’re made for your feet to move. And so I’m always telling folks, “Take your shoes off and do the class. Take your shoes off and walk outside where it’s safe or put on these shoes where you can actually feel the ground,” because it’s a huge component. And we as modern dancers, we get this job where we get to be barefoot all day. I can literally just go hang out at work barefoot all day and it’s not weird.
And I know that that’s not a normal experience. It’s also not a normal experience to have your coworkers in their underwear and that’s the normal outfit of the day.
Steven Sashen:
Or less.
Emily Kent:
Or less, right? That’s life at Pilobolus. But that experience for people who don’t have a job where they can just be barefoot and that be okay and normal, that there’s other options, is huge. And if I could get every older adult that I’m teaching in these classes to just not be wearing these tight shoes that are squeezing their toes together and not allowing their feet to do what they’re supposed to do to keep them from falling, it would be huge. It would be so huge.
Steven Sashen:
There’s a rumor that there’s a study being done even as we speak, about balance and footwear. And I think we were an unknown footwear provider. I didn’t know that they were using our shoes, but they were using our shoes, and I can’t wait to see the results of the study.
Emily Kent:
Oh my gosh.
Steven Sashen:
We’ve heard anecdotally from elderly people who are like, “Oh my god, I’m doing so much better because I’m wearing your shoes. But I can’t wait until there’s something where we can talk about the science behind that.” Because for people who don’t know, my dad’s one of those people who had bad gait pattern, so his feet didn’t really work really well. Tripped on something, fell down, broke his hip and died a couple weeks later. And I know every time I say that people often think that I’m being callous at how casually I say that. But A, it was eight or nine years ago and B, we didn’t get along that well. But more importantly, it was eight or nine years ago and I’m over it. So it’s an interesting thing. But with modern dancers coming in and being barefoot all the time. When I was young, I don’t know how it happened, but I ended up dating a bunch of dancers and almost all of them were ballet dancers and their feet were messed up.
Emily Kent:
Well, think about it, it’s the worst, it’s basically worse than wearing pumps, wearing stiletto heels because you’re beyond… Your toes are squeezed together in that thing. It’s on the top of them. It’s crazy. As soon as I didn’t have to wear those anymore, they were out. They were like burning the bras. Burn the point shoes.
Steven Sashen:
Well, that’s my question. If you can talk about your experience and just whatever you may have seen from someone who may have for whatever reason, gotten the idea that maybe ballet’s not for them and they come to you, what do you see in terms of getting their feet to be functional again?
Emily Kent:
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I don’t have as much of that. “I was a ballet dancer and I ruined my feet.” Occasionally, it happens. But honestly, just the regular shoes have ruined most people’s feet and it is. Ballet and those point shoes are to the extreme and it’s for an aesthetic reason. It’s a thing. I’m not saying people shouldn’t do ballet. I’m just saying think about the impacts. It’s like someone who says, “I have a job and I have to wear heels every day.” Okay, that’s your life. That’s what you have to do. But know the trade off and know there are other things you could be doing when you’re not in those heels to try to counteract some of that and getting the heels down and separating your toes, putting some spacers in there or just walk it out on some sand or grass and feeling the ground again. I was joking with you because now everybody at Pilobolus just wears Xero shoes all the time. And my friend and colleague at Pilobolus, we started taking tap classes, adult tap. It’s so fun.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, tap is… Wait, hold on. But I want to hear this but I have to interrupt with this. Maybe it was my last master at Duke, I can’t remember. Anyway, somewhere between my junior year and senior year at Duke, I did research on cognitive aspects of motor skill acquisition. So I had to learn a new motor skill. So I took tap and oh man, it’s so much fun.
Emily Kent:
It’s so much fun and it is a brain challenge as much as a physical challenge. I never knew there were so many things you could do with your foot. I was like, I’ve been a dancer my whole life, but it’s been more about your whole body moving in space. And yes, if it’s ballet, you’re pointed or you’re flexed or you’re doing whatever, but the number of sounds that you can make with your feet on the ground and then there’s an order those go in that’s almost like a poem. Because our teacher always encourages to say the names of the move. So you’re thinking shuffle, ball change, kick, step, whatever it is.
So that’s like, “I’m thinking words in my brain, I’m trying to communicate all the way down to my feet. They’ve never felt further away from my head than they do at that hour.” But you’ve got to wear tap shoes obviously. Maybe you should make a Xero shoe tap shoe. I would be in on that because my Pilobolus colleague and I finished and we both were like, “Oh well, these are definitely not Xero shoes because my toes have been crammed together in these tap shoes for the hour. So I need some more space.
Steven Sashen:
That’s so funny. No, no.
Emily Kent:
I need more space in my tap shoes.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah. Just doing nothing but making a foot shaped half shoe makes sense except for it would be perfect for the five people who would buy it. I realized something when you were talking a moment ago, that there’s an overarching theme in these podcasts and the conversation that I’m having with people that I just realized. And that is, what we’re often trying to do in many, many different ways is get people to just break out of a pattern, or more accurately, to identify when you’re in a particular groove and then find a way to do it differently. And I’ve talked to a bunch of people where that’s really the fundamental thing we’re saying… I got the hiccups all of a sudden, pardon me. Where that’s the fundamental thing that we’re saying is, find a way to take something that you do normally and then turn that around a little bit.
Find a different way to do that, find a alternate way to do that, find a more interesting way to do that. Find the opposite of that or whatever it is. And now, even talking about tap, this whole phenomenon of just, the way your brain likes to make patterns and the way that what can be really fun and valuable is to break those or at least recognize those and have options that you didn’t have before.
As a former gymnast, most people that I know have never been upside down other than on a rollercoaster and they’ve never just spent any time upside down. And once you’ve been upside down for a while, that’s a thing that you can do and it has effects that you can discover/enjoy. And so, I really appreciate you talking about that. Backing up to the classes and then with tap too. Yeah. When did I do that? I’m 60 now, so this is 40 years ago ish, to this day, once a month I find myself literally thinking and then I have to do it, shuffle, step shuffle, step shuffle, ball change, shuffle step. And then I’d do it. I can’t help myself.
Emily Kent:
Yeah. I always tell my students, I force them to do whatever I’m interested in or whatever I’m finding really challenging. So, as soon as I started taking tap, the first thing I thought was, this is so great for my brain because I am literally making new pathways. And so I was like, “Oh, ding, that’s all my classes are going to have to do this now.” So we’ve been doing some really simple things, leg lifting, tapping your toe down, that’s always the first warmup. Toe taps, heel taps, whatever. And it’s also great for variability of the way your feet can work.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Emily Kent:
So beyond just learning how to tap, because you want to learn how to tap, being able to move your feet in lots of different ways is just going to help you solve the movement problem that is, “Oh shoot, I just tripped on the rug and I’ve got to catch myself.” Right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Emily Kent:
We can practice it as many ways as we can think of, but in the moment, you don’t know what’s going to happen until you’re there. So trying to have this adaptability, have this practice of, like you’re saying, not the habitual, well then I step forward, well what if the rug sent you sideways and you’ve got to crisscross your leg over and solve that problem, that quick thinking. And so a lot of my classes for balance, will also use a ball and will just do things because… I know you juggle too, don’t you?
Steven Sashen:
Of course.
Emily Kent:
Of course. Right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Emily Kent:
So I can’t juggle, but-
Steven Sashen:
Hold on, let me preface that. That’s because I was a boy who went to high school. So it was required. All of my friends, we all learned to juggle.
Emily Kent:
Okay, well, you can take the ball and do some of the same exercises. So for example, I’m doing an exercise where they step forward or little mini lunge forward, catch their weight, come back. Well what if the reason you have to lunge forward is because you bounce the ball or toss the ball too far in front and you have to reach out to catch it. So that gives you more variability in where it’s going to go because you can’t ever toss it to exactly the same spot unless you’re a trained juggler and you’re having to react, right? I really want people to have to react as much as possible in these classes. And that’s what’s great in person because then you got another person. If I throw you the ball and I throw it badly, you have to react and dodge out to the side. And I used to tell people all the time, I’d be like, “Now, be a bad partner. Throw it badly. Not so badly they can’t get it. But instead of aiming for the center of their body, aim over here, they’re going to have to go this way.”
And it’s like those agility drills where you have some app or whatever and it’s telling you right, left, and you don’t know what’s going to come next. It’s like that kind of thing because that’s what life is, right? It’s a curb that you didn’t expect or a rug or your dog gets behind you or whatever. And that’s the fun… This is where it connects with Pilobolus, the dance company. Because people are always like, “Well what does this have to do with what you guys do?” We create all of our dances through improvisation. The dances you see on stage are not improvised in that moment. They’re set, they’re done. But right now, we’re in the studio working on new things and they’re going through a process of improvisation.
They are having to react in the moment with each other to what’s really happening. The person goes, “Hi,” are you going to dodge under, right? Or if they put their hand on your shoulder, are you going to move away? Are you going to resist and provide the opportunity for them to be lifted by you? All of those things are happening with discovery and reacting really in the moment to what’s happening. And the pieces wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t go to them that way. Our choreographers don’t sit at home and think up all the ideas for the moves and then come in and tell them what to do. Sometimes they say, “Here’s a problem to solve.” You can’t touch your hands together or whatever. Or sometimes it’s just like, let’s see what happens when we have three people on stage together and we’re trying some movement, we’re reacting to each other. So that is another cool crossover from what I’m doing in balance class and what we’re doing in other Pilobolus classes.
And I will say to folks, we have master classes that happen all over the country. On our website, you can see where we’re performing. We start up again in January in most places. We do like an hour master class. Sometimes that’s specifically for a group and for performing at a university, a lot of times they’ll have a class for their university students, but sometimes it’s a community class and we do a summer week long. You don’t have to be a dancer to come, you don’t have to have ever taken a dance class. You just have to be able to spend a week with us moving around and expecting to be physical for eight hours a day. But you don’t have to hold somebody over your head if you physical, you’re creating the movement.
So I’ve had people in their 80s do the workshop. I’ve had a woman show up and go, “I’m a middle school principal and I have no idea why I’m here except I saw the show, I saw you do this. And I was just like, go for it.” So those happen every summer. And really, it’s so fun to just be in this space where you can try something totally new with a whole bunch of people who also want to do that thing. It’s like adult summer camp. You stay in a dorm and everybody ends at the end like, “Oh, you’re my best friend ever. We made so many things together.” It’s really awesome fun.
Steven Sashen:
How long does it take for people to get over the self consciousness and into just the play?
Emily Kent:
Not very long because I’ve been doing this a long time. And so I’ve got a good way of welcoming us all into the thing where there’s no way to feel self conscious. And the other thing is, we never use mirrors. Your idea of dance in a studio with a wall full of mirrors is our kryptonite because number one, it takes you out of yourself. You’re into a reflection of yourself, which is exactly what Zoom did. I told everybody that everyone having to be on Zoom was everyone experiencing what we dancers live through growing up is just too much looking at yourself. Because you’re like, “Oh. Oh. Do I have those? Ooh, this shirt’s ugly,” constantly. That’s what you’re doing in the mirror when you’re taking a dance class. Yes, you’re trying to get your lines right, but you’re also like, “I’m fat or my arms are different than other people’s.”
So we do not use mirrors. The other reason is, if you’re looking in a mirror, you’re not looking at your partner’s face, you’re not reading their physical cues, you’re not really communicating. There’s a third entity and it’s the mirror and you’re like, “Well I am looking at them.” Well yeah, you’re looking at them through a mirror. It’s weird. It’s a very odd sensation. So anytime we’re out and we’re in a dance studio teaching, we’re always like, “Can we cover the mirrors? Is there something we can pull?” Because that we want to create that intimate space where you’re just with another person and it really does remove a lot of that because you don’t know what you look like. There’s no visual.
Steven Sashen:
Many people have never had this experience. So let’s just say I’m nominally Jewish. That is, I was raised in a Jewish family. I refer to my family as Christmas and Easter Jews. So we would go to synagogue for the big holidays and that was really it. But one of the things that was really interesting when my father died is there’s a tradition that when someone dies during the mourning period, you cover up all the mirrors.
Emily Kent:
Oh yeah.
Steven Sashen:
And it’s a really amazing thing to discover how much you pay attention to yourself, even if it’s casual, even if it’s brushing your teeth, watching your face, whatever it is. And not doing that, not getting that feedback, it’s unbelievably liberating.
Emily Kent:
Yeah. I know. It’s so true. It’s so true. And my kids are 12 and 14 and so they went through this Zoom period at the worst, awkward time, right? It’s like you’re at your worst, you’re getting a zit, whatever, and then you’re on screen all day with the camera right up here. And it was like, I can’t even imagine what that was like. But, yeah. Because it’s almost like the mirror is the judgment. If you don’t see it, it’s not that you never judge. Maybe you sit down and go like, “Oh my waist is a little floppier than I thought it was.” But the seeing it gives you that moment of, “Oh look at my hair. Oh, look whatever.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s worse in a way because you see yourself from a particular angle and then you look in the mirror and it’s a different angle. So suddenly, you’re seeing things that you hadn’t seen just from your eyes looking down, left, right, et cetera. Yeah, it’s really interesting. God, you should remind me this. I have a thing, we don’t have anywhere to put it in our current house, I just realized, but it’s called the true mirror. And what it is, it’s basically two mirrors that meet at a 90 degree angle. So when you’re looking at them, it’s 45 degree angles because you’re looking down the middle. But they figured out a way to make the seam between the two mirrors invisible. And so when you look into two mirrors that are at a 90 degree angle to each other, you see yourself backwards from the way you see in a normal mirror. In other words, you’re seeing yourself the way other people see you,.
Emily Kent:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
You’re backwards in a regular mirror. And when we used to have this in our previous house, we had it in the powder room and we’d see people say, where’s the bathroom? We’d say over there. And then we would just go listen, because you hear people go, “What the… What?” They didn’t realize that one eyebrow was way higher than the other. Because you get used to the way you see yourself in the mirror or something… Whatever it is. And it’s just some people really liked it and some people really didn’t like it.
Emily Kent:
Right? You’re like, suddenly my parts on the other side of my head. And what does that do? Well there’s a similar thing. One thing I do a lot in the beginning of a Pilobolus workshop is you have a partner and you’re just going to play a mirror game. So you’d be the leader and I would follow. And anything you would do, I would try to just copy it. And then at a certain point, we switch and the other person is the leader. And it’s a super basic exercise. But one of the fun things, well A, you have to really watch, you’re having to really take in somebody’s whole body and replicate it. But always at the end, I feel like I know something more about that person because the things that they do are so different sometimes than anything I would ever do. And I always just think, I feel like I put on your skin for a little bit and was like, “Oh, this is what it’s like to be inside your body because you do these things and this is what I do.”
And you don’t think about the habitual movements you have, until you see them reflected on another person. Or if you’re like me and I’m going around and I’m teaching this class all the time and I’m with my partner and we’re teaching this class, and then I realize I’ve done basically the same kinds of things in this demo every time. And I’m like, “Wow, I guess that really is my habitual way of moving.” There are patterns that we do. And then you see it reflected on another body and you can see them in a different way. And a lot of times, people at the end of our summer intensive will say, “I don’t actually know you. I don’t know where you live or what your wife is like or whatever, but because we danced together and we made this piece or whatever, I have a deep understanding of you, but it’s not one that maybe your coworker has.”
Steven Sashen:
You’re going to love this. So maybe you won’t, I don’t know. I think you will. So I used to do, one of the things that got me out to Boulder was I was doing Zen archery, Japanese archery, and it was presented as a meditative thing, like doing just Zen meditation or calligraphy or a tea ceremony. It’s just another one of those things. And there’s a line at the moment of release, when you let release the arrow, the moment of release the archer’s true nature is revealed. Now, the way people who have a, for lack of a better term, spiritual bent will interpret that is, ooh, that’s when you discover your true nature. You become awakened. You become enlightened by shooting these things.
It’s like, no, no, no. What it really means… There’s another thing, our teacher was the imperial bow-maker to the emperor of Japan. When I met him, he was 80 years old. And he would also tell the story that perhaps in China, the way when some person who was in charge was looking for people to be his vice presidents, essentially, for whatever it was, they would have them do archery because you could see things about their personality. So, one day, I was watching somebody shoot and I just had this thing go through my mind. It was like a window open and I could see something about them. And just coincidentally, I was an assistant teacher.
Now my job as the assistant teacher was basically to sit around and do almost nothing. But for whatever reason, the teacher said, “Is there anything you want to say about that shot?” I went, “Oh.” And it didn’t occur to me to not say something like what I’m about to say, which was, “Yeah, look, just because when you were a kid, your parents couldn’t handle the amount of energy you had. You don’t need to be yelling, ‘Bite me,’ every time you let go of the air, you don’t need to be yelling at us in the way you shoot.”
And his eyes just got really wide and he went, “How’d you know?” Don’t say anything, just shoot again. And then suddenly completely different. So if you look and feel it, you do start to understand certain patterns that people have that you would never find in any other way. And now, here’s the punchline to that story. The other students would say, “Ooh, do that to me. Watch me shoot.” I went, “I don’t need to see you shoot. I’ve already seen enough, I can just tell you.” But the crazier thing that happened was the other teachers got very anxious around me because they could tell that I could do the same thing to them. And they had built very rigid personas about being a teacher, who whatever. And I was seeing through that. So that’s another thing. That was pretty wacky.
Emily Kent:
Yeah, I can totally see how that could happen. Luckily for me, I get to create the persona that, “Oh wow, I got a lot of these habits too. And look at this.” And we talk a lot about leading and following. Because if you’re going to improvise with someone, sometimes you’re leading, sometimes you’re following. Sometimes the movement is leading, the MOVEMENT Movement. But I always tell people, everybody has a different relationship with being a leader and a follower. Some people love leading, some people love following, whatever. And I always get to joke, I obviously like leading, I’ve chosen a job of teaching people, standing up in front and telling you what to do. I realize this.
And there’s another exercise we do where one partner closes their eyes and the other partner moves them around, walking them through the space. And I never taught this exercise until at one period of time, some of the dancers we had, they were like, “I love this exercise. You should do this thing. It’s really great.” And I was like, “Why should we do it?” And then they told me all the reasons why we should do it. And I was like, “Okay, you’re making a good case. Let’s do it.” And I realized, the reason I never taught it is because I hate it. I hate not being in charge. I hate not seeing what’s happening and having somebody else lead me around is a nightmare. And then I was like, that’s not really a good reason to not do it. Right? That’s just like my personal preference.
So I do it now and I always tell people this, “It’s my job to lead you through this experience. It doesn’t mean I’m 100% great at all of it.” Right? I’m also human and I don’t like to do this, so I probably should. I’m not good at tap. I never tapped before. So, part of the reason I like it is because I’m like, “Wow, I’m not good at this yet.” I’m not so bad that I can’t keep up. But I like it. The challenge of doing something I’m not good at.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so here’s something. When I was doing my research, what I did is, there was five different steps and I would do them as fast as I could for a minute and then I would record how many I did and how accurate I was. And what was really fun was what would’ve otherwise been an imperceptible improvement was very clearly perceptible. Because I could see the chart, if I was doing it faster, and I was doing it better, until I could do it really, really fast perfectly because it was just way back in my brain now and I couldn’t do it wrong. And so what I’m going to recommend for the fun of it, take one or two steps, do that. Do 30 seconds or a minute and tape it, and then a couple weeks later do it again. See what you find.
Emily Kent:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Because that changes the learning process. It makes it so that “frustration” that we feel, which is just laying down new neural pathways, has a reason. And it’s a really fun one. The moving people around one. I’ve done something like that and my thing, when I’m a leader, I like to find out where people get stuck. I like to see where they’re trying to resist where I’m trying to go. And then I try to exaggerate that a little bit until basically, they’re like, “I don’t want to do that.” And then I just push a little more.
Emily Kent:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
That’s my thing. I have a fondness for finding where people get stuck and then finding a way to get around that or through that or under or over, whatever the appropriate analogy or metaphor would be. Some people really like that, because it’s one of those things that when we do have a pattern and we don’t know it, we are literally stuck in certain ways and it becomes part of our identity in ways that we don’t recognize. And then you try this new thing and suddenly, there’s just a new version of you too, which, that’s my favorite thing.
Emily Kent:
Well, you’re a disruptor and that’s good. You’re a disruptor in business. You said this is the way things are going. Something needs to happen.
Steven Sashen:
What are you going to do different? Yeah.
Emily Kent:
And I think that could be a great thing. My husband Matt, who’s one of the artistic directors at Pilobolus, he’s a disruptor. And it can be very challenging to be in a meeting because then you’re like, “Would you just shut up?” Right. Sometimes.
Steven Sashen:
No.
Emily Kent:
Why? Why are yo
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free