Dancing English Teacher

Beam you up – and smile!

Posted on 21.2.2015 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

Presence starts from the face! It needs to be active and alert. Beaming. This week I ran into a 2500-year old face that made the deepest of impressions on me. A face illuminated by the archaic smile. The expression belonged to a sculpture on display in the Mediterranean Museum in Stockholm. The Archaic Smile often appeared on Greek sculptures during the period of 600-450 BC and it is supposed to have signaled good health and wellbeing, as described by John Fowles: “timelessly intelligent and timelessly amused”. Today some historians interpret the smile as artificial and representing the equivalent of expressions we put on when photographs are taken. Thus, the archaic smile could be regarded as the Antique equivalent of “say cheese!” Nevertheless, a sad fact is that dull expressionless is far too often encountered in Finnish service culture. Finns might regard this as a sign of being authentic and genuine, the opposite of putting on a fake smile. This is what I often hear student say in terms of an explanation to their sullen faces. However, it should be remembered that a foreign customer would interpret a bland facial expression as disinterest or even hostility, the opposite of hospitality and service excellence. Therefore, at the beginning of my own lessons I always ask students to “do the eye lift” and I remind them that the eye is our quickest muscle. Secondly, I ask them to do the face lift – this resulting in a sort of archaic smile, I realize after having encountered this alluring limestone head.

I have numerous exercises in my Business Ballet tool bag for practicing presence, the latest addition being the Star Trek-inspired “Beam me up” routine. Despite the reference to the vintage TV series, students have responded to the exercise with surprising ease. The instructions are very simple: you step into the transporter, the teleportation device used in Star Trek for getting to a planet. The teacher counts to three and says “click” and you dematerialize – this happens by shrinking and breathing out. Then the teacher says “beam you up” and you slowly rematerialize, making sure that every single molecule falls into its correct place and you become fully visible on Campus. In sum, this is a process of fading out and fading in; any experienced teacher would know that students often remain slightly faded out. That’s why we need to make sure that they concretely understand the importance of being totally present in the classroom. Recently, we also did this exercise with the Resto competition team. In April four determined young ladies from POMO, the Finnish tourism programme, will be off to Rovaniemi where they will compete in the national Resto hospitality industry competition, this year being hosted by Lapland University of Applied Sciences. I have been appointed their movement and presentation skills coach and naturally I need to make sure that the team will stay beamed up and 110% present at all times. Here you can admire the beaming ladies from our first Business Ballet session in January:

Finally, I am teleporting myself back to the Mediterranean Museum in Stockholm. Once again I’m asking the limestone head: “Who are you with that mysterious smile? I noticed that you have dancer reliefs on your crown! Why? Did you use to dance in the shady halls of the Vouni palace? Would we have been kindred spirits and danced together on ornate mosaic floors? Hiding away from the scourging midday sun, forever shining on the ancient hills of Cyprus.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged archaic smile, beam up, Business Ballet, presence, Star Trek | Comments Off

To the Point or the Point of Breaking into a Ballet Shoe

Posted on 18.1.2015 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

Never say never! This weekend, on the eve of a new semester, I am contemplating my brand new point shoes in some disbelief. It has been more than fourteen years since I last time wore point shoes and I had sworn to never wear those again in Ballet class. I would even go as far as claiming that point shoes represent the ultimate form of discomfort! Yet, there are many useful business lessons to be learnt here. Firstly, one has to break into the new shoes. Yes quite correctly, “break into” is the appropriate idiom for taking possession of new ballet shoes. When an ordinary shoe is chosen according to perfect fit, a ballet shoe initially feels like a lump of hardwood. The foot has to be used as an organic tool for moulding and crushing the shoe into use. What can this bone-breaking process teach business students? At least it teaches the lesson of not passively waiting for the perfect pair of shoes or the perfect career/ life to materialize. Actions have to be taken to find your own path and your shoes can initially feel uncomfortable upon taking the first step on the chosen road. There will be blisters and toe nails falling off, talking about getting out of the comfort zone! However, at the end there will also be lightness and spritely dance à la Marie Taglioni, the first ballerina to embrace the “en pointe” technique in the Romantic Era ballet La Sylphide (1832).

Then to the second lesson learnt, that of risk-taking and high ambitions. When in January 2013 I first dragged my post partum body to ballet class after a pause of 12 years, I told myself that basic pliés and battement tendus would be sufficient. After three pregnancies with four-kilo babies I had no illusions of ever again being even close to the ephemeral state of Marie Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Lucille Grahn or Fanny Cerrito for that matter. (For the uninitiated, these were the three greatest ballet divas and rivals of the 19^th century ballet scene). However, when I gradually advanced to higher levels it became evident that not doing en pointe was not a choice in a class with everybody else struggling with their relevés on point (getting up on your toes in ballet vocabulary). So here I am now with my point shoes ready for action. Of course I am painfully aware that at the beginning I will look like the ugly duckling, or at least the wobbling duckling, among more graceful swans. So what is the business lesson to be learnt here? It is the following: don’t be content with doing things you already master well, look for challenges even with the initial risk of appearing ridiculous. With enough practice the limp duckling becomes the pas de bourréing swan!

Finally, I come to the last lesson learnt, that of sales and service excellence! In the dance store Piruetti I cautiously approached the sales lady, requesting point shoes after a 14-year break. I was taken to the secluded area of shelves filled with point shoes of different brands and a forbidding “Don’t Touch” sign. A sight for sore eyes! The lovely sales lady then scrutinized my feet with her expert eyes and I timidly told her that yes, I had indeed danced very much in my youth and advanced to taking Repertory classes where we were taught variations from Giselle, Sleeping Beauty and Le Corsaire. However, needless to say that this was ancient history. Obviously my wrists are now only gradually building up their lost strength and thus the sole of the point shoe needs to be flexible enough. Finally, after fitting more than a dozen different shoes, I ended up with a pair of Gamba point shoes. Funnily, here I am almost four decades later purchasing a pair of point shoes of exactly the same brand as back in Christmas 1977, when I got my very first pair. Talking about being back to scratch! During the entire process of purchasing the shoes, the sales lady and I were involved in an animated ballet conversation. She wanted to know how I felt about my come-back. And I happily told her about the stiff muscles, the unflattering transformation from XS (Extra Small) to M (Medium) in terms of leotards and to make it even worse, the feet flattened by three pregnancies, proof of which she could witness right on the spot. But one thing has improved considerably, my sense of balance, so now I can do the pirouettes much more elegantly. This being due to the fact that by know I know for sure where the center of my body is. It is where the fetus used to give a punch with his/ her tiny heel. In sum, I have seldom experienced as good service as when buying my point shoes. As customer, I was recognized, respected and cherished – not at any point undermined despite my obvious difficulties of getting completely on point. Obviously, the sales lady had a true passion for her work as profound expertise on what she was selling as well as excellent communicative skills and at the end she found the perfect shoe for the time being.

So now, being on point, finally to the point regarding business studies and later professional career: don’t stick with the easy and obvious – expand, trip over, start from scratch and then at the end, spread out you wings and fly. Yet, I have to admit that I also purchased an item I have never owned before called “Ouch Pouch”, a silicon cushion for the toes to make the impact of the point of the shoe less harsh. So a little cheating here! But maybe I’m excused due to being considered a pensioner in terms of the retirement age of ballet dancers! Here I come Marie Taglioni, slightly wing-broken and battered, yet ready to rise strongly and proudly on point.

P.S. This text is dedicated to a strong and proud woman who does not hesitate to break into new shoes and challenges! Thank you for always ordering me up on my feet when I trip! Happy birthday today – dear Chryssa! May your wings take you far and everywhere!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ballet, business, point shoes, risk-taking | 2 Comments

Birth of Business Ballet or Dancing during Halcyon Days

Posted on 31.12.2014 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

For me New Year signifies birth. Tangibly. Concretely. My body remembers the violent contractions accompanied by the sound and smell of fireworks illuminating the pitch-black December sky. My two younger children were born on New Years Day 2005 and 2008, thus New Year does not only carry a symbolic meaning of birth and new beginnings, it is BIRTH. Furthermore, giving birth is not a pretty event in white linen, it is a violent and messy affair. It is Life itself.

Year 2014 is soon to reach its end and I find myself thinking of the symbolic births of this past year. The first and foremost thing that crosses my mind is of course the birth of Business Ballet, a method that has been burgeoning for years in my teaching. This autumn I was privileged to teach an entire course based on dance and movement as pedagogical resource. It was thrilling to see how the method emerged out of the course framework in close cooperation with the students. The group was small yet brave and inquisitive, ready to stretch beyond what I could ever have expected from non-dancers. I believe that the heterogeneous mix of different ages and nationalities as well as the small size of the group contributed to the success of the course. Thank you Alexandra, Elli, Essi, Jenni, Kymberly, Niklas, Riikka, Sanelma and Vy for your tremendous courage and commitment. I’m eternally grateful for having once in a lifetime experienced a course where all my dreams and ambitions came true. Additionally, my dear friend and colleague Chryssa joined the class a couple of times with her invaluable insights and sparkling enthusiasm. Thank you for your collegial support and superb blog post Business Ballet for the Body and Soul!

We met on dark Thursday mornings on Porvoo Campus and usually the lesson lasted three hours without any breaks. Well, the last lesson of 18 December lasted four hours without interruption as there seemed to be no end to the discussions. I kept tentatively asking whether anybody was in a hurry, yet everybody stayed past lunch hour. I had named the course Business Ballet: Advanced Presentation Skills – with advanced I was looking for ways of teaching students how to stay within your skin while performing. How not to let the mind wander without focus. How to stay in contact with your audience, constantly being aware of the three Aristotelian pillars of rhetoric: ethos, pathos and logos.

To an outsider our exercises might have seemed odd, sometimes even bizarre. For instance, we chose the third floor corner with a view to Porvoo to practice entrées. Naturally, Nordic Business Forum with its five- thousand audience served as model for how to enter a stage. With the big windows and open sky, the feeling of standing in front of a huge audience became true. Another exercise involved covering the entire length of a corridor without being distracted by a partner who was walking alongside. Obviously, in this exercise we practiced staying within your skin. Inside the classroom we had several more exercises, one particularly memorable moment was the “transition dance” where movement was smoothly passed on from one student to the other. Initially, the purpose of this exercise was to demonstrate how there should be elegant transitions in a presentation. However, this ended up becoming a beautiful choreography with a life of its own – existing in the moment and never to be seen again. Just as fleeting as any professional stage performance.

In sum, the “Master Performances” at the end of the course showed that everybody had grown as performers. The presentations were genuine and embodied. Many chose to speak without PowerPoint. Everybody took risks, some even improvised on the spot. As teacher I have never experienced anything similar. However, it should be mentioned that as method, Business Ballet is not meant to be taught in big groups. It needs the intimacy and individual attention. I would say that the maximum size would be ten students. In the future, if the course gets established, the solution is to have two separate groups. Yet, I am painfully aware that this might have been a one-time opportunity for me to teach the course in an educational context. The school finances are getting tighter and groups are growing in size all over the country. Yet, I’m happy for all of us who were involved in the process. As one student concluded: “this is so unique and wonderful that you almost wish to keep it a secret”. Thus, in the future, Business Ballet could be developed into a product to be sold as company training: a unique combination of language learning, presentations skills and well-being at work.

Year 2014 is reaching its end and my body will always remember this as a year of dancing with students during halcyon days. As I said at the beginning, birth is not pretty but violent. It has taken me long to reach this point of authority in my pioneering work as Dancing English Teacher. For long I have been mistaken for a mere village fool or a harmless nuisance in an orderly environment. Yet, from now on I demand to be taken seriously – through years of trial and error I have come across something very valuable, a way to teach students to love being on stage. A skill they will definitely need in their future careers as business professionals. Simultaneously, I am at this very moment remembering the births of my children Valter and Silvia. The miracle of new life. Embodied. True. Present in this moment. As we all should feel when being alone on stage. Happy New Year and welcome to join my next Business Ballet course!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Business Ballet, embodiment, presentation skills, well-being | 4 Comments

Keep going – Serendipity in the social media cloud

Posted on 11.11.2014 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

This is a story with a lengthy introduction before reaching my point. It begins already in 1978 when I started frequenting international ballet competitions, first in Varna, Bulgaria and subsequently in Helsinki. In summer 2001 visits to ballet competitions came to an abrupt halt when I suddenly found myself stuck in my home with my colicky first-born, reading in the newspaper about Helsinki International Ballet Competition that was taking place only 1,5 kilometers from our Alppila home. Yet, it could have taken place on another planet as far as I was concerned. In summer 2005 the situation repeated itself with my second child. He was of the kind who refused to take formula milk from a bottle, so once again I found myself reading about Helsinki International Ballet competition in the newspaper as the infant kept me on duty 24/7. Meanwhile we had moved to a new home in the district of Töölö, so now I was only a stone’s throw away from the National Opera where the competition was taking place. I kept noticing that there were several reports about a stunning 17-year old prodigy, Daniil Simkin. Finally, after some consideration, I decided that I would not miss the gala performance even if I would rather have followed the entire competition on spot. So I left the infant with his grandmother and rushed off to the Opera House together with my husband. Exhausted from constant nursing and sleep-deprivation, the only number that I recall as sharply as if it had taken place only yesterday, was Daniil Simkin in Maurice Béjart’s Les Bourgeoise performed to the famous song by Jacques Brel. Yes, he was stunning, as could be expected of the Grand Prix winner! And he had an additional quality rarely seen in classical ballet dancers. Humor!

Now I make a nine-year jump ahead in time and land in this very moment. My colleagues, students and family know that I have recently been very much preoccupied with my new course on Haaga-Helia UAS Porvoo Campus: Business Ballet: Advanced Presentation Skills, where I get to combine my expertise as Business Communication lecturer with my background as ballet teacher from many years ago. I have a firm belief that business students can benefit from kinesthetic learning, where they learn understand the importance of physical and esthetic competence in working life, a concept presented by researcher Jaana Parviainen in a recent study for the Finnish Academy. Finally, the world premier of my Business Ballet course took place last Thursday with a very small group of students. Thursday mornings are generally the worst time for lessons as students usually have a big party on Wednesday evening. Initially, I was slightly discouraged as so many were missing from the early morning class. Yet, I soon pulled my energy together and got the lesson under way. At one point we did a set of three exercise in the Campus upstairs gallery: slouching walk with head hanging and feet dragging, Drama Queen Walk inspired by Mezzo-Soprano Joyce di Donato, and finally, the Simkin and the City Walk based on Daniil Simkin dancing in the streets of New York in his Don Quiote costume. Naturally, all walks have different qualities: the slouching walk feels endlessly long, isn’t this how many of us go about in our daily life? On the other hand, the Drama Queen Walk might make you appear too rigid and soldier-like. When we finally reach the Simkin and the City Walk, students are instructed to take poses, do a jump a turn etc. The result is a feeling of lightness, elegance and ease, pure joy – and naturally a performance in space! Finally, at the end of the Business Ballet class I took two pictures to commemorate the Grand, or should I rather say, Petit Opening of the course. In the evening I posted them on my Dancing English Facebook site, at the same time noticing that my site likes had decreased from 135 to 134.

And now comes the dramatic twist to the story. On Friday morning I woke up to a rainy day in Helsinki, and as always, I picked up my smartphone to check the schedule. A mother of three, I need to be very disciplined with my timetable. And what did I see: Daniil Simkin had posted a commentary in reference to the Simkin and the City Walk: “keep going;)” It’s still a mystery, how on earth had my obscure posting ended up to the attention of superstar Daniil Simkin? Serendipity in the social media cloud, indeed. Moreover, the timing was perfect. I come from a culture where you are taught to “stop going” rather than to “keep going”. Thus, I’m often filled with doubt and hesitation and a resilient voice keeps nagging in my head “stop going”. However, having seen this “keep going” after the premier of Business Ballet nothing will stop me from developing kinesthetic learning methods in a business school context! Thank you Daniil for posting that commentary! And me and my students hope to see more ballet in the street or some other unusual venues!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Business Ballet, Daniil Simkin, Porvoo Campus | 5 Comments

Kinesthetic Language Shower – notes on Michel Chekhov

Posted on 27.10.2014 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

I am posting the program for Kinesteettinen kielisuihku (Kinesthetic Language Shower) and welcoming a group of teachers from Eastern Uusimaa to my workshop on Porvoo Campus. The program with short notes on exercises and a few videos can be accessed here: http://prezi.com/nlbcymjzqzbr/kinesteettinen-kielisuihku/

On the eve of the workshop I am reading Michel Chekhov’s classic, To the Actor (1953). This is a handbook with concrete exercises and, surprisingly, I recognize many of these from my own kinesthetic language lessons. The exercises are familiar, however, the vocabulary belongs to theatre studies. I find Chekhov’s writing very lucid and I immediately note that his instructions are applicable to dance and movement improvisation classes as well. I quite agree with contemporary choreographer Joona Halonen who claims that dancers should stop maintaining the myth of not being able to conceptualize movement. Accordingly, I am looking for ways of explaining embodiment, corporeality and kinesthetic awareness to my students.

Since my field of interest is to teach students to become better speakers and performers, I am particularly fascinated by Chekhov’s concept of “Psychological Gesture”, defined by Lisa Dalton in following terms:

If we define gesture to mean a movement that has intention, we could say that the Psychological Gesture is a movement that expresses the psychology of the character. Chekhov defines the psychology to consist of the thoughts, feelings and will of a human being. Hence, the PG is a physical expression of the thoughts, feelings and desires of the character, incorporated into one movement. You can liken it to a moving logo, like the Nike logo, which captures the essence of Nike in one image.

So, in one movement, the PG awakens the essence of the character in you thus aligning your thoughts, feelings and will (objective) with that of the character. When this happens, your walk, your expressive mannerisms, your voice and line delivery are all inspired by one moving image. You perform the gesture prior to your scene to trigger your artistic nature. While in the scene, if your inspiration weakens, you simply envision the gesture in your imagination as you are acting and it will revitalize you.

Thus, as language teacher I ask my students what is the Psychological Gesture of a confident speaker? It does definitely not include slouching shoulders, fidgety leg movements, clasped arms or unfocused gaze. Chekhov emphasizes feeling of ease, form, beauty and aesthetic wholeness. All these are applicable to spoken skills. How do you walk to the front of the room? How do you catch the attention of the audience? How do you maintain their interest? The answer lies in clarity and focus. The posture should be good and gestures should be clear and simple. Moreover, the speaker should know the purpose of his/her use of space. Everything starts from the feeling of being comfortably embedded in space, which in turn will result in ease and clarity of speech.

Finally, yes, Michel Chekhov was related to the great Russian playwright: he was Anton Chekhov’s nephew. Now as I have discovered his legacy, I will definitely have a closer look at his oeuvre. Interestingly, great Hollywood actors such as Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson and Sir Anthony Hopkins have been instructed in the Chekhov Method, all being actors I greatly admire. So this is certainly something worth pursuing in language teaching, after all, it is the interaction between human beings that makes all the difference.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged kinesthetic, Michel Chekhov, psychological gesture | Comments Off

Triptych on Corporeality

Posted on 5.8.2014 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

LEFT PANEL

A sorry sight back in June: football practice in arctic Finnish summer. Men in ski caps, woolen socks and Long Johns running back and forth in the Töölö football fields. Though, upon looking out my living room window I can hardly distinguish them through the heavy curtains of icy rain. They seem to be professional players, so why are they here in the first place? Shouldn’t they be in Brazil where the rest of the world is playing? I recall what physiotherapist Jarmo Ahonen once concluded in our dance physiology class at the Theatre Academy: Finland will never produce a top class national football team since half of the year our children have to waddle around looking like Michelin men in their winter overalls. Consequently, their kinesthetic awareness will not develop to the full. Moreover, I would argue that being driven in a SUV to indoor football practice cannot be compared to running after a provisional ball in the dusty streets in the equatorial regions. Our climate being as it is, shouldn’t we pay special attention to not sitting all day in schools and offices? Recently, to my great joy, I heard about a young primary school teacher who has every now and then been seen jogging around the school building with his class in the midst of lesson hours. A much welcomed break to memorizing multiplication tables and learning the alphabet it is. However, a mother expressed to me her doubt regarding the teacher’s competence. Why does he not stay indoors in the classroom? What is this nonsense about? So much for innovative teaching methods – conservative parents are likely to put an end to such frivolous practices and lost is the possibility of ever seeing a Finnish football team play in the World Championships!

CENTER PIECE

Arriving in Venice at the end of June is as overwhelming as ever. Italy being the epicenter of La Bella Figura, one becomes painfully aware of what the Finnish climate does to the body. Having spent the long winter season draped in bland colors, the dilapidated Renaissance splendor is just too bright for the eyes to behold! And the locals seem to carry the sense for elegance in their genes. Summarizing La Bella Figura in D’Agostino Mautner’s words: “The foreign visitor to Italy is typically amazed to observe how polished the men and women of the bel paese look, how good they appear to feel about themselves, and how graciously they interact with one another. Italian life is undeniable lived with a constant eye toward aesthetic beauty, dignity and civility. Learning to enhance the body and mind one is born with is more important than having been endowed with genetic perfection.” As goes for dignity and Finnish winter, there is not much dignity in slipping on icy roads or being splashed by wet snow when waiting for the bus to arrive. And regarding the choice of shoes, in most cases aesthetic beauty has to give way for practicality. Incidentally, Venice is a merciless city for disembodied tourists: a maze of canals and narrow lanes, stairs up and stairs down, hours of walking in circles with blistered feet. As a matter of fact, the most undignified sight of this summer was the heavy carcass of an American tourist dragging her suitcase up the stairs when heading for Santa Lucia railway station. In this case bella figura had been replaced by drive-in figura. Apparently, her knees could hardly carry her weight and were bent into an unnatural angle. Another sorry sight indeed! And I promised myself to schedule an additional morning ballet class once back in Finland.

RIGHT PANEL

July became the month of lifting, carrying, heaving, bending and collapsing from fatigue at the end of the day. This was due to our five-person family having to relocate as a result of

the impending water pipe and sewage renovation in our apartment building. Putkiremppa in Finnish –an almost onomatopoetic word for the horror of it. Yet, it´s not altogether horrendous. I would argue that it is actually an extremely embodied experience. Moreover, as it happened to be the warmest July in half a century, one truly became aware of the existence of the body. For once, the skin turned into the primary sense for perceiving the world around. When clearing out the clutter from all corners, we gradually saw the past ten years of our lives unfolding: joys and hardships, the slowly ticking years with infants and toddlers. A lost decade represented by a couple of blurred memories and faded post-cards. Day by day the air became easier to breathe as the dust lifted and vanished into the womb of the vacuum cleaner. Dust and clutter symbolizes stagnation whereas empty space gives room for dance and movement as well as flight of imagination. Accordingly, in Hinduism the creation of the world is seen in following terms: “the world was created when God invented movement. God began to dance, particles were aroused and danced with him. The world took shape in a symphony of movement.” (Stockholm Dance Museum). So now when a new academic year is about to start, I promise myself to move more, not letting the dust settle in the corners of my mind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dance, embodiment, Hinduism, movement | 1 Comment

Five Steps In…Five Steps Out…and Movement in Between

Posted on 7.6.2014 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

My preparation for wearing summer dresses: Scrubbed elbows and knees and a bruised hand, just as back in the summers of my 70’s childhood. The visible evidence of having this week taken part in a course called Havainnon harjoitus ja kehollinen ilmaisu at the Theatre Academy. I hope I did not scare you away by this graphic description of my red badges of courage – this is a course I can warmly recommend to anybody interested in the concept of embodiment and the relationship between cognition and movement. The course has been developed by contemporary choreographer Joona Halonen, who is also the instructor.

On Monday morning seven women of different ages assemble in a dance studio on the seventh floor at the Theatre Academy. The room is spacious and light with an open view over the rooftops all the way to Hakaniemi and Siltasaari. The vast space itself is immediately inviting to movement explorations. I also like the fact that we get started without lengthy explanations, Joona Halonen just tells us that the meaning will unfold as the week proceeds. The first thing we do is a series of five Tibetan movements: turning five times in circular motion with hands dynamically stretched to the sides; lying flat on the floor and lifting the legs straight towards the ceiling; standing on the knees and tilting backwards; sitting on the floor and moving into a bridge and finally, the most difficult one for me, diving down and getting back into a stretched out position. The whole Tibetan series of movements is repeated three consecutive times. The very first morning I realize that this course is going to be physically and mentally demanding as we will be working between 10 am and 3 pm for five days in a row! But I am not going to give up that easily now when I have finally got myself here. And as the instructor says, the mind can make the body endure a lot of challenge. Actually, at the end of the day it is my brain that is the most tired after so much thinking – the body could still drag on. And who says that dancers don’t reflect or conceptualize? Articulate movement demands lots of thinking, otherwise everything becomes blurred and muddled.

On Tuesday morning I am painfully aware of the consequences of having lived such a sedentary life for so long. Yes, I used to be quite fit fifteen years ago. But that was back then – now I’m aching all over when I am limping down the steep Viides Linja towards the yellow Theatre Academy building, a beautifully restored old industrial facility on Haapaniemenkatu.

Downstair lobby at the Theater Academy

Yet, I am already curious to face the second day of the course as I have by now figured out that this is going to be something extraordinary. Again we settle down into the space through the Tibetan routine, I can feel my vitality growing. Despite the aching tie muscles, it is already more easy to get the breathing right and I feel more embodied than the previous day.

Day after day the course is gradually unfolding and I am regaining my lost body and dancer’s identity. I also gradually get used to being under the gaze of others. Every now and then Joona Halonen asks us to perform solos in front of the the group. As English teacher I am wearing a mask of professionalism, whereas here I am totally exposed. At the beginning it is scary, however, when the week proceeds I learn to enjoy being seen and more importantly, I learn to stay focused on what I am doing without letting the gaze of the others distract my concentration. Most importantly, I learn to carry on an inner dialogue between my mind and body, sending out orders to previously undiscovered surfaces and body parts. I often find myself exploring the floor, that’s why elbows and knees are scrubbed. The horizontal floor level is an interesting element for somebody trained in the vertical mode of classical ballet – at times I feel as if the perspective of the room had changed and I am hanging from the ceiling. I make a conscious decision of moving through resistance, not choosing the most obvious path that my body would normally take. This again opens fascinating discoveries about blind spots in my body and the vast amount of possibilities. Finally, I cherish Joona’s golden piece of advice: “don’t get stuck by what you just did, it’s already the past, now is now: now, now, now already passed by…now, now, now (nyt, nyt, nyt meni jo, meni jo!)

Especially joyous are the duets based on the following pattern: five steps in, five alternating steps in, rhythm with feet, rhythm with hands, five alternating steps out, five steps out. This basic form grows with additional variations over the days, bringing in something new such as carrying your partner in a still shape or shadowing your partner, not in canon but rather by anticipating your partner’s next move. Non-verbal communication of this kind is so genuine and true, happening in the moment. It is fascinating trying to understand the Other on the basis of movement only. And the results are very surprising and joyous when people of very different body types and dynamics meet.

The week is over too soon. I am left wondering how I am going to hold on to my rediscovered dancer’s body. Already next week I am supposed to sit for hours in meetings, this is not a bright prospect at all. During this course I have got a glimpse of how I would like to live the rest of my life: being embodied – being in motion – feeling vital and strong – being in genuine and authentic interaction with other people. Having a voice – yes we practiced air-boxing and screaming as well in the midst of more subtle forms of expression. And I was extremely pleased to notice that I can scream because for long I’ve been thinking that I have lost the ability to scream hard. Again, this is an exercise that many of my students would benefit from, but where to do it?

From the point of view of my own language teaching in Haaga-Helia there is so much I can directly implement from the insights I’ve discovered this week. First of all, I want to continue helping students to feel comfortable in their bodies and to understand the three-dimensionality of space. They also need to learn to focus and concentrate when being under the gaze of an audience. When speaking, the idea of now already being past is very applicable, too often students get stuck by language mistakes they just made. They need to learn to move on: now, now, now already passed by. Pick up a new thread! Continue, don’t hesitate! Take linguistic risks! I believe that training the body will particularly help in risk-taking.

When writing this, it suddenly occurs to me that I did not even know the names of half of the people in the group – of people who became very close during the week. Somehow it was not the point. And when you think of it, far too often we put names and labels on things, thus nailing matters down instead of letting something new and unique emerge. The memories of this week are very embodied and it will take some time for the bruises and scrubs to vanish from my body – these will remind me to keep moving and stretching. Thank you Joona for giving us your precious time and for opening new doors and new beginnings!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged embodiment, havainnon harjoitus, Joona Halonen, movement | 1 Comment

A Season for Drama Queens, Dancing Queens and Passionarity

Posted on 20.5.2014 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

After a year of dancing together, I am honored to have been appointed Dancing Queen by Tobba13 students. The same week I come across a documentary where mezzo-soprano Joyce di Donato is exploring the concept of Drama Queen. Her journey starts in Venice, where accessorized in black shades, red scarf, lips carefully contoured, she is crossing the lagoon in a motor boat. She is standing upright, her posture is regal and her head is high. She is an incarnation of the Baroque. This is what I call 5-star posture and next semester I am going to teach it in my brand-new course Business Ballet: Advanced Presentation Skills. There is even a course code already: ENG8PO011:1. So by now I should believe that the course really exists. If yet only tentatively as a distant and hazy dream. But one thing is already for certain, we are definitely going to exercise to Baroque Drama Queen music, opening the chest and arms into all directions. Embracing the transparent space with a grace and style never witnessed before on Campus.

This has indeed been a year of great drama. Many dreams have materialized after working for two decades in total obscurity. At times all the positive attention towards my work with kinesthetic learning methods feels quite overwhelming and I keep asking myself whether talking so much about it will eventually lead to the banalization of my work. The benefit of operating in the margins is that one can be completely uncompromising. I fear that coming into the lime light might result in more talking than doing. As I have stated in previous posts, to me creativity is an everyday practice, not meaningless jargon in meeting rooms. My classroom doors are open to anybody wishing to learn more about my method, but please do not ask me to explain myself in an email or a traditional lecture. Finally, after this eventful year the title Dancing English Teacher seems a bit narrow, yet Dancing Queen might be too excessive, over the top baroque– trop de Drama Queen, n’est-ce pas? So I will stick to the original even if I seem to have moved further away from pure English teaching over this past year.

In the midst of the Dancing Queen and Drama Queen reflections I have lately come across a third wonderful term: Passionarity. This is a concept introduced to me by my formidable Russian friends Pavel and Ludmila, true practicing passionaries from Saint Petersburg! This is how they explained its meaning to me: “This term by Lev Gumilev means a person full of passion which prevents him or her from leading ordinary life. These people differ from others being charged with passion and inspiration of changing something.” Yes, I am happy to fully embrace this term! Moreover, I feel very honored and grateful being associated with “passionarity”. And I recognize some of these traits in myself: I am easily inspired and foolish and stubborn enough to believe that I can contribute to a positive change by challenging myself over and over again into taking considerable risks. Notably, ethnographer and historian Lev Gumilev defined this psychological characteristic as being opposite to the instinct of self-preservation! I also have a particular liking for the word Passion as related to music and works by Bach. Passion always involves an element of suffering, passion is definitely not a comfortable state of mind.

Finally, the end of a long semester is a season for Drama Queens. There is room for excessive emotions, for tears and for joy! For speeches and for contemplative silence.

A toast to passionarity!

In a couple of weeks I will be off for Venice, following in the footsteps of Joyce di Donato. Meanwhile, thank you all for an eventful and dramatic year and there is yet more drama to come…And please don’t forget to sign in for the Business Ballet course next autumn!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Dancing Queen, Drama Queen, Joyce di Donato, Passionarity | 2 Comments

Three Rivers in Two Weeks – Notes on Words and Music

Posted on 15.4.2014 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

This is life, not logic. Yet, if trying to make any meaning out of my past two weeks, there seems to be one common denominator: rivers.

Philological Faculty, Saint Petersburg

The point of departure being of course the river Porvoo running through the small town where I work. From there I suddenly found myself crossing the river Neva on my way to the philological faculty of Saint Petersburg State University. And one week later I woke up in a hotel room to catch a glimpse of the river Drava through my window. I had arrived late at night into a dark and rainy town, Maribor in Slovenia, without any sense of orientation and doubtfully asking myself “What am I doing here?” However, the mild spring morning was a promise of a fresh beginning and wonderful surprises. Finally, of course there is yet another unifying factor: my love for dance, music and languages. It was in Porvoo where I first developed my method of combining language learning with dance and movement improvisation. These experiments eventually took me and my students to Saint Petersburg where we danced through the immense city in the footsteps of the great ballet legends. And Maribor, even the name of the place sounds like music to my ears. So it is only natural that its university organizes a conference called Words and Music II.

Upon stepping into the Faculty of Arts building I immediately sense that this conference is going to be something out of the ordinary. The creative energy is tangible from the very first moments. The conference assembles creative people who don’t drop the words “creativity” and “innovation” sloppily around like old dish clothes. I am superstitious, these are words that should not be mentioned aloud in corporate talk or appear on lifeless PowerPoint slides, since that might cut off the sensitive sprouts of creativity in its bud. First and foremost creativity is a way of being. It is also very much a practice: singing, dancing, playing together and being embedded in space. It is corporeality, not dead words on paper. At the Music and Words conference I run into a linguist who has her own band, a composer who is also a novelist with a mesmerizing reading of his novel accompanied by the tunes of his own symphony.

Posing in croisé

And then there is another linguist who is also a classical ballet dancer. We share the background of having had to drop our dream of becoming a ballet dancer in favor of academic studies, thus immediately connecting when we discuss whether we should pose “in croisé or efface” for a photo. Finally, there is the chair of the organizing committee, Professor Victor Kennedy, who surprises everybody by performing with his band before the last panel session! What a wonderfully energizing intervention in the midst of academic paper presentations!

I always remind my students that the natural movement for human beings is the curve and lately I have been particularly preoccupied by spirals: going into a spiral and coming out of a spiral. So maybe it is no coincidence that the first keynote speaker, Hugo Keiper, has based his presentation on the perfect pop song The Windmills of your Mind: “Round/ Like a circle in a spiral/ Like a wheel within a wheel”, thus transporting my thoughts to Medieval dance. The second keynote, Associate Professor and song writer Katarina Habe, starts her presentation by stating “I don’t like to operate just with words”, perfectly echoing how I myself respond to the world. She goes on discussing the close connection between music and movement and quotes Plato: “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” Thinking of it, I am slowly learning to operate with words, this is after all necessary for sharing ideas outside my own classroom.

Transitions between panel sessions happen through music. Maybe this is what makes the ambiance special. Instead of having a mundane coffee break, what in Finnish would be referred to as “kahvi ja pulla”, there is also food for the soul. After having grabbed the cup of coffee we move to a room where a musical performance will take place. These are sublime moments where music students of Maribor University are invited to demonstrate their talents. So when we are returning to our academic quarters the music is still resonating in our bodies, making it easy to follow presentations.

Baroque space in Maribor

In the evening there will yet be another concert in Maribor Castle, a beautiful Baroque space in Austro-Hungarian style. Here we get to enjoy the music performed by a guitar duo for one hour. Naturally, the evening ends with conference dinner, a splendid finale to a day full of impressions. I should not forget that the next day I am to give my presentation, Embodying Music, Movement and the Arts, so I need to return to the hotel to powerpose a bit (see my previous blog on powerposing).

I have constructed my presentation as a thriller: how the arts became an integral part of business studies on Porvoo Campus, my talented TOBBA13 students once again being in focus (see my previous blogs La Serenissima and Poets, Bridges and Ballerinas). I start from the end, where we are dancing in the streets of Saint Petersburg, visible to all world. And this is what the paper is basically about, making the arts visible in a business university. It is my firm belief that the arts give a strong foundation for any professional field, not to forget future business professionals. Yet, I have been working for so many years with movement improvisation in great obscurity, so it always feels strange to present ideas in public. I am grateful that my first public appearance abroad takes place at Words and Music in Slovenia, the perfect forum for discussing integration of arts into learning. Here everybody is doing that as naturally as breathing, I don’t have to explain nor justify myself. And thus I find the words coming out with great ease and coherence, dancing out into the space.

It is only when the conference is over that I find time to go down to the bank of River Drava to reflect upon everything I have heard and experienced.

Swan River

The spring evening is mild and people are sitting in outdoor cafés. I am greeted by a défilé of graceful swans, this is not Swan Lake, yet the soundtrack might well be Tchaikovsky or just the leisurely flow of the river – the third river in just two weeks. The river Porvoo, Neva and Drava, all connected by words and music in a universal symphony.

Spring light – a five-angular Renaissance tower

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arts, Maribor, Music, Words | 2 Comments

Bridges, Poets and Ballerinas – preparing for a business visit

Posted on 7.4.2014 by Pia Kiviaho-Kallio

What could be a more appropriate meeting point for our walking tour than Pushkin´s statue at the Arts Square in Saint Petersburg on a sunny afternoon in late March. I have named the tour Bridges, Poets and Ballerinas, as it turns out there will be a lot of ballet, much less poetry. And the bridges of course refer to the Venice of the North. Pushkin is very soon to be dismissed in favor of Mikhailovski Theatre. Here I saw my very first Russian performed ballet in the late 70’s, after I had been callously dismissed from Kirov (Marinskij) by the ubiquitous guardian ladies. “No malinkij allowed in the evening performance.” Thus, I have always had a preference for Mikhailovskij Theatre. Later, when I studied in Palucca Schule Dresden summer academy in 1990, the head ballet teacher was Ludmila Safronova (b. 1929), long-term Prima Ballerina of this very theatre. Another strong reason for my preference for this particular venue. Finally, there was also simply a practical consideration, the interactive ballet walking tour would have been far too long if I had included the Marinskij in the itinerary.

Here we are finally, TOBBA13 International Tourism students, after having danced together all year in various movement improvisation workshops. How I ended up here is a long story – I am not even supposed to be here as I am not officially employed in the study programme. Yet, I feel that I am in the perfectly right place as this is the capital of classical ballet. So dear TOBBA13 dancers, lets learn the five basic positions of the feet. Madame Safronova is still actively teaching and strikes a perfect fifth position when demonstrating a movement à la barre. However, I advice you to stick to open third position, otherwise you will wreck you knees in no time. And now we’ll lift the arms into third position. Watch out, you are not supposed to lift your shoulders to your ears! There are pictures taken, also by some random tourists stopping by to observe this peculiar performance.

TOBBA13 striking a first position in the Arts Square

The next stop is Architect Rossi Street 2. No distance whatsoever on the map, however we end up walking quite far, crossing the street at the corner of the Eliseev store and walking past the neoclassical Aleandriskij Theatre. In photos the Rossi Street is always pictured with the theatre elegantly closing the perspective. Looking the other way we are mainly spotting cars everywhere. Can it really be here, the prestigious Vaganova Academy, the most prominent ballet school in the world? Yes, there is the plate all in Russian. These doors have seen Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky, Nurejev, Makarova, Baryshnikov, Zakharova and Vishneva passing through. The list of names is endless. The students are listening reverently when I tell them that Ludmila Safronova was one of the last students of the legendary ballet pedagogue Agrippina Vaganova. So even I have a connection, yet small one, to this sacred place. We see a dainty first-year student skipping out of the building and being picked up by car. They are all so cloned, yet someone will become a star of international class. My own ballet teacher used to say that it takes 20% talent and 80% work to become a ballet dancer. And then she would viciously add “of which my colleague ballerina X is a clear proof”.

In the footsteps of Agrippina Vaganova

Are you still with me? We are walking down the endless Nevskij Prosect and turn left to reach Isak’s Square, still some walking left. This is definitely not the tour for American cruise tourists. This is more likely meant for ballet fanatics. Finally there, facing Hotel Astoria and its annex L’Angleterre. Now it’s time for the second poet of the tour, Sergej Esenin. The one who hung himself in L’Angleterre after having written his farewell poem in blood. This short summary is of course only a pretext for transferring the attention to his far more luminous wife, Isadora Duncan, the mother of modern dance. She used to hang around in Astoria in her Greek gowns. “Je vais à la gloire”, were her last words before getting killed in Nice when her long scarf got entangled around the wheels of an open sports car. And still my brave TOBBA13 students have some energy left to pose in Duncan manner, as she used to when dancing to La Marseillaise. Time for the final Reverence! It has been a long day of walking, but now the topography of the city is forever imprinted in our muscles.

And what is the point of all this dancing in a business school? Well, we will get the answer the following day on a business visit to Hotel Astoria. One of the managers, a sophisticated young woman with the posture of a ballerina, is taking us on a tour in the historical establishment, a Unesco World Heritage site. We soon discover that all rooms have ballet pictures on the walls. We are told a lot about the dance pictures, much less about figures and statistics. I hope the students now understand the importance of knowing the context of a place. We REALLY are in the capital of ballet and here you cannot do business without a knowledge of culture. So now I think we have deserved to enjoy our afternoon tea in the elegant old-world atmosphere of the Astoria tea salon.

Dancing English Teacher enjoying her afternoon tea in Astoria

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ballet, Saint Petersburg, walking tour | Comments Off