I had another request to teach Girls’ Night Out and because there was a visitor, I decided to just go ahead and do it. I had planned to do DreamWalker and to focus on the Martial Arts energies. I kept the focus, but applied it to GNO.
I found it amazing how well suited to the change of focus the dance was. Nia Technique has 52 basic moves and only some of them are drawn from the martial arts, but you can play with the different energies no matter where the move originates. This is what is so clever about Nia Technique: the way the body of work can be ever-changing and never boring.
- Tai Chi – the slow dance, meditative, grounding, soft edges, smoothness, contemplative.
- Tae Kwon Do – bursts, power, hard edges, energy away from or directed to the center point, reactive, precision, technique.
- Aikido – harmony, spirals, breath, swirling, arcs into circles, circles into spirals, going with the flow.
An example of a move with a change of energy is a front kick. A front kick with Tai Chi inspired energy would resemble more of a lift. A soft raising of your limb. Change that to a Tae Kwon Do energy and the knee leads, followed by the snap of the lower leg – precisely where the kicker means it to go. Heal leads and “lands” exactly. The kick is recoiled in the exact opposite manner. It is crisp and exact. Enter Aikido – the front kick develops from arc, seen best by following the path of the foot. It’s got a mix of strength and flow. The energy flows from your center line along the leg bones, and out through the foot. The ending might be more of a flow back to earth rather than a lowering or recoiling.