OVERVIEW

I came to structural integration from a background of dance and movement. One could say that I went from a functional orientation to a structural orientation. My movement background had a strong structural influence and effected my development as a Rolfer. Later, my perception of function and structure shifted from participation in the Continuum movement. The concepts of this article were inspired by my mentor and friend, Don Van Vleet, fellow Rolfer and somatic innovator.

An aside in this article is to review a few definitions. Some definitions of function from Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (1980) have interesting inferences. The word function derives from the Latin functio, which means performance, and fungi, to perform. Among the definitions are the following: “the action for which a person or thing is specifically fitted or used or for which a thing exists” and “one of a group of related actions contributing to a larger action; esp.: the normal and specific contribution of a bodily part to the economy of a living organism.” Other definitions carry associations with office, duty, social gathering, and mathematics. It seems worthy to note that in defining function, one is setting up an interpretive context. A caveat in defining function or structure too rigidly is the act of projecting absolutely “what a thing is specifically fitted for” or “for which a thing exists.”

One of my greatest influences regarding function and structure was Madame Dorothy Duval, a teacher of a teacher of my friend and mentor Don Van Vleet. Although I never actually met Madame Duval, her influences bled into my psyche and my body and continue to inspire me as a mover and practitioner.

Duval was a unique visionary in the field of classical ballet. Although trained in the tradition of the British Royal Academy of Dance during the era of Queen Victoria, Duval was unique in that her approach and value system transcended the paradigm of ballet. Her inquiry into dance and movement evolved into an approach where the aesthetics were expressed via a functional ideal rather than a purely visual ideal. Ballet had been particularly two-dimensional and of frontal orientation, and the dancer was expected to conform his or her body to this bidimensional aesthetic – most often to the sacrifice of many systems.

Duval was not interested in compromising the individual’s physiology to this planar aesthetic; rather, she allowed the bones, joints and tissues to express their dimensionality, and from this the dancer moved out into space. For Duval, the relationship of the dancer to the field in which he moved could evolve toward the dancer’s structural and functional enhancement. From these values, which were unprecedented in the ballet idiom, Duval developed technical concepts such as “foot shaping”, “pelvic activation”, and tracking techniques that combined unique functional and structural components. She delved into the structure and form of the body and strove for a movement technique that allowed the dancer to evolve his form toward fuller breath, range of motion, direction and expression. She searched for what the body could be and how to enhance its physiology and form, as opposed to shaping it to conform to ballet’s psycho-theatrical aesthetic. She was interested in allowing the body to move through space with an effect that might allow an organism exquisite function without compromising its structure or inhibiting its nature.

Duval used structure to lever into functionand function to lever into structure. Thiswas demonstrated by her understanding that the way you moved would shape your structure and that structural interventions would reflect in functional changes. Duval developed a tracking process called “parallel straps” that aligns the bones of the foot, shin and femur. She originally developed this device because she didn’t have enough hands to assist people with their movement. Parallel straps takes Ida Rolf’s axiom, “put it where it belongs and call for movement” and evolves it into multi-joint relationships that explore mobility and position-in-space issues, while having direct neuromuscular, soft tissue and articular effects. Parallel straps have the possibility to redirect many structural tendencies such as valgus ankles and knees, femoral hyperextension, and Calcaneus, Cuboid and Navicular displacement. On a functional level, the use of parallel straps allows the experience of having one’s joints and tissues move while being directed closer to vectors approaching a vertical neutrality. Also, one can approach changing relationships between Calcaneus, knee, sitbone and occiput.

One of the structural relationships that the parallel straps exercise brings into highlight is that of heel to sitbone. This relationship falls into Duval’s concept of “pelvic activation”: a functional idea relating to how one could efficiently activate the pelvis through the gravitational field via the Calcaneus. Duval was interested in one’s ability to “pull through” the connections of the legs and hip sockets, into the viscera, through the front of the spine, and to cascade upward through the head. These processes express a very specific and profound approach to function and structure and have deeply affected me as a person and a practitioner.

As mentioned above, I never actually met Duval. I was exposed to her concepts through Don Van Vleet, an extraordinary dancer who changed my life through my friendship and mentoring with him. I met Van Vleet when I was six years into a seventeen-year performance career in ballet companies. Van Vleet had danced since childhood, and by the age of twenty suffered from Os Trigonum so badly that operating surgeons commented that he would probably be able to walk, but never dance again. Van Vleet happened across a teacher, Frances Cott, who had studied with Madame Duval in New York in the 1940s and was known for helping some wellknown dancers rehabilitate from injury. With Cott’s assistance and his own inquiry into the body, Van Vleet transcended his injury and rehabilitated from surgery. In the process, he found himself inspired by Duval’s work, which became a foundation and springboard for some of his own somatic innovations.

Van Vleet shared with me his developments and understanding of structure and function. He inspired me to explore and evolve the possibilities of movement with a highly developed sense of structural integrity. He challenged my assumptions and beliefs about body, movement, aesthetics and myself, and I have never been the same since.

Another influence that has altered my sense of function, structure and body has come from working with Emilie Conrad and the Continuum movement. Conrad makes a distinction between what we call functional movement, which to her implies a body, and biological movement, in which the body is not a designated object and does not maintain a specificity of form: “What we commonly refer to as a body is basically movement that has become stabilized.”1

Conrad believes that our bodies are fluid systems that stabilize in order to function on earth. That is, the fluid presence in our bodies is our fundamental environment; we are moving water brought to land. She conceives that “The very nature of stabilizing impels the fluid system to coalesce, giving the support that is needed to become functional. Fluidity consolidates as new requirements are met.”‘ According to Conrad, “Stabilization is vital for efficiency, but it becomes rigid when uninformed by new probabilities. Maintaining an identity of the body as our only designated form, we, as biological systems, actually narrow our vectors of expansion. With increased stabilization there is a compromise in adaptability.”3

These views stretched my prejudice of interpreting the body from primarily biomechanical viewpoints. We come from a culture that views the body in mechanistic perspectives, and I had engrossed myself in the highly mechanical process of classical ballet. Experiences stimulated through my involvement with Conrad’s Continuum have shifted my sense of body and self. They have altered the way I value and perceive movement and have offered me amuch more varied and less limiting perspective.

For example, one of my prejudices was to view legs from a primarily mechanical, bipedal orientation. Our legs are for verticality and locomotion, but our legs (and bodies) also have many more expressions and capabilities than solely bipedal orientation and locomotion. We may be genetically coded for legs, but we didn’t always have them as individuals or as developing organisms. Experiencing movement where my orientation is not vertical – using equipment for partial or total inversion, or using the floor to rest my head while on all fours – affords a shift in orientation, usage and context that allows my legs, myself and my organism at large a varied experience and potential that cannot be accessed otherwise. Consider that the sacrum, spine, and respiratory system have only limited functional capabilities when experienced from vertical orientations.

Emilie Conrad and Madame Duval seem like such disparate inspirations, but I cannot think about structure and function without acknowledging them, as well as my mentor Don Van Vleet. I have tried to merge the vision of an organism that has highly functioning biomechanical capabilities with that of an organism that is enhanced by participating with itself in ways other than mechanical. It may be possible that as bipeds we could access the values of being human without succumbing to the rigors of being human, and that we could also develop and maintain consciousness and adaptability from experiencing ourselves in diverse contexts.

NOTES

1. Quotes and content taken from “Movement,” an article by Emilie Conrad published in the May 1998 issue of Rolf Lines and also accessible on the Continuum website: http: / / www.continuummovement.net.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.