Julie (Guest Blog)

Julie Rothschild is an Alexander Technique teacher in Boulder, Colorado. She is also a passionate dancer for whom everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. And some things went right – this is her (unfinished) story about the life of a dancer as she first encounters and learns… *** Alexander Technique… My Technique Alexander Technique showed up in my life at a critical moment. I was 23 years old and not ready to surrender to a less physical life and career, yet I was kind of falling apart. I’d been operated on by some big name surgeons and worked with reputable physical therapists. And yet, no one could fix me. I had to be willing to do the work myself. For me, Alexander Technique was an entirely new approach to “doing the work,” and so it makes sense that my very first taste of AT didn’t stick. My initial introduction to Alexander Technique left a sour taste in my mouth. I was in college, 18 or 19 years old, and a guest AT Teacher came in to one of our dance classes. I knew myself to be strong, agile, quick and limber. So when this woman proceeded to stop me every time I began to move, I just got annoyed and found whatever AT was to be a waste of time. I can still hear her voice saying, “stop” over and over again. Jump ahead 4 years. By this time, I had undergone 3 surgeries on my right knee to reconstruct then repair then re-reconstruct my ACL from a bad landing in dance class, a fall off of a horse, then a bike accident. Bad luck? Loose ligaments? Poor use? All three. I was not one to be deterred. I was dedicated to my PT exercises and determined to pick back up where I left off as soon as my leg was ready to go. I took off for graduate school to get an MA in Dance at Ohio State University. For a variety of reasons, I lasted only a year – and in that year I was re-introduced to Alexander Technique. Despite my grad student budget and restaurant job earnings, I always made sure I had enough for my weekly lessons. My body was actually a disaster at this point. It was time to listen and time to pause. Up until then – I had only focused on rebuilding the strength and mobility in my right leg. It hadn’t occurred to me to include the rest of myself in the healing process. I left Columbus, Ohio and returned to Lawrence, Kansas. I had spent 9 months there the previous year to figure out if I was really in love with a Phd student named Paul. I was. Still am. I knew I needed to continue to study. Becoming an Alexander Technique Teacher was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to continue to relearn how to move so that I could get back to dancing. And so in 1993, I met Marsha Paludan. Marsha changed everything. She met me at my house, at her house and in the theater at the Lawrence Arts Center. We talked. She watched me dance. She gave me incredible hands on work and I remember saying to her – “I have never experienced anything like this.” Her reply, “This comes from a place of love.” Marsha was only in Lawrence part-time so I managed to work with her whenever she was in town. Paul and I got married in 1995 and were expecting our first child in 1997. He was finishing up his degree and the academic job prospects were slim. Just when we thought we were going to have to move to Ohio so that I could work for my father’s business and provide us with an income – Paul got a post-doc at University of Virginia in Charlottesville. So off we went in our Ryder Truck. I was 6 months pregnant, not terribly happy about what was happening to my body, and lonely. Wandering the downtown mall in Charlottesville, I passed by a window with a sign advertising a dance class that included improvisation and Alexander Technique. A few months post-partum – I met a group of dancers who to this day are the colleagues and friends who most shaped my career and life. In their work, dance and choreography were inextricably linked with somatic study. I soon joined forces with the Zen Monkey Project. Katharine Birdsall, one of the founding members of this dance company, is also an Alexander Technique Teacher. Taking her dance classes and then dancing in her choreography planted the seed that training to become an AT Teacher might just be the right thing to do. While there was a training school in Charlottesville, we didn’t know how long we were going to be there. Plus, we were living on a post-doc’s salary. We were in Charlottesville for 3 years – 3 amazing years. I danced and choreographed and performed and taught dance for adults with disabilities. I even started teaching pre-natal aerobics at the hospital. We were sad to leave, but our time there was up and the next job awaited. Athens, Georgia. Paul got a job teaching in the History Department at UGA. In our first year there, I was pregnant with our second son. I drove to Atlanta once, sometimes twice a week to study AT with the only teacher in the state (that I could find). At this point, I knew nothing of the different training schools or the politics. I just knew I liked the work. I had heard, while in Charlottesville, that some people manage to train via an apprenticeship with another teacher. This was NOT an option that this teacher was willing to discuss. 10 months after moving to Georgia, Wyatt was born. 2 weeks after giving birth to Wyatt, we moved to Silver Spring, MD – Paul had a one-year fellowship at the Smithsonian. I was delirious from it all. Luckily, I found Robin Gilmore and continued my AT studies. She came to our apartment and helped me with holding Wyatt, standing comfortably, even washing my hands. Everything hurt those days. I also took on an apprenticeship at the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange so that I could continue to teach and perform. When I look back on that year, I don’t know how we managed everything we were up to. My infant was held by many arms. What a thoroughly exhausting year of growth it was. By the time we returned to Athens, Wyatt was 1 and Henry was 4. Over the next 7 years: I was an adjunct instructor in the Dance Department at UGA, then at Emory University. I co-founded a movement arts studio called Floorspace. I started a Performance series called The Handful Series, bringing choreographers to Athens to teach and perform with local artists. In 2003, Robin got in touch to let me know she was starting a Teacher Training in Greensboro with Marsha Paludan. There was nothing anyone could have said or done to keep me from jumping on that ship! Onward! I travelled to Greensboro once a month for 3 years. This is where I met Shawn Copeland – one of my true soul mates. Glenna Batson, Sarah Barker and Diana Bradley were regular guest teachers. It was worth every minute and every mile. Something else that Marsha said to me in Lawrence stayed with me. Soon after she began studying with her mentor, Marjorie Barstow, Marsha began to notice a difference in how her dance students were moving. She didn’t herself need to teach Alexander Technique for her students to learn Alexander Technique. She simply needed to practice as she taught. I was teaching large dance classes those days and I wanted my students to reap the benefits that I was. I loved that I could simultaneously train to be an AT Teacher and teach dance. Every time I returned to NC, I had a new batch of observations and questions about how this integration of AT into my teaching was naturally happening. I started attending the ATI AGMs – I even joined the board while still training. Wow was that an eye opener. Whenever and wherever we travelled, I looked up teachers. I wasn’t concerned with where they trained, how they taught or who certified them. Alexander Technique proved to be a lifeline for me and I wanted as much as I could get. I must have had lessons with at least 25 different teachers in that time period. I even managed to take lessons with Elisabeth Walker in her flat in Oxford while Paul attended a conference there. Dancing, teaching, training, raising our sons and falling in love with the South are what those years were about. There was also terrible loss and depression and fear – but the pace at which I moved kept those elements at bay. And I did lie down, every day. I had to. I still had that stubborn 19 year old’s tendency to not want to stop, but wow did I need to practice awareness if I was going to keep up with it all. In 2009, we moved to Boulder, Colorado. Paul took a new job at CU. It turns out, leaving Athens was heartbreaking. We had truly put down roots and embraced community. We all took care of each other’s kids. There were lots of eyes on the street. Someone always had a pitcher of tea or a cold beer at the ready. No kidding – it was a special time and a special place. Boulder. I tried my ‘knock on the dance doors’ thing again and within that first year found I had nearly lost all passion for my work. The wind in my sails had expired and I lost my ground. Still, I kept at it – making a bit of dance – travelling to teach and perform. In the 4 years we’ve been here, I’ve already moved in and out of 4 teaching studios. I hosted and co-directed the ATI AGM in Boulder in 2011 with Shawn. We did have a good turn out for our community class, though it didn’t bring any local students to my practice. Last May, I facilitated “Stepping Outside the Studio,” an Alexander Technique Retreat, with Shawn Copeland, Peter Nobes and Katharine Birdsall joining me on the faculty. It was simultaneously a stunning success and a financial disaster. I have yet to really figure out how best to work here, how to make any money working here – Boulder is packed with “healers” and therapists and body oriented practitioners. That said, Shawn and I have begun to discuss “Stepping Outside the Studio 2014.” Now, as a student in the Client Attraction Business School and a member of the Alexander Technique Career Success Program, I am actively engaging in steps that will help me spread the word about Alexander Technique and build my business. I want to seamlessly bring together my work as an AT Teacher, choreographer/director and all around movement enthusiast, and I have some rather grand and global visions floating around my dream space. I seek to connect people around the world through movement, be it in live performance, online workshops, private lessons, what have you! The world needs what we have to offer and we don’t have time to argue over which society or organization we belong to. We are doing really important work. I believe that with my whole heart. As I indicated earlier, Alexander Technique showed back up in my life at a critical moment. I think that AT is something of a lifeline for me – it has taught me how to pause in the midst of the chaos that I seem to attract. In the last few years, I have realized that Alexander Technique has essentially become my technique. It’s how I live my life, how I dance, how I teach, how I see and how I think, and these elements are ever changing. I talk my walk with my students, and provide them the space and freedom to create their own technique so that they can move fully into their unique potential. Julie Rothschild The Dancer No-One Could Stop (Jeremy's comments) It's a hero's journey – I love your honesty and the breadth of it all. You can go deeper as you remodel this story for your dance niche.

The lead-in paragraph will be enhanced by a concrete circumstance to increase its dramatic opening – I found myself asking: “What happened to her?!” You do mention later, but it is a more clinical recitation of conditions…

3 surgeries on my right knee to reconstruct then repair then re-reconstruct my ACL from a bad landing in dance class, a fall off of a horse, then a bike accident.

Wow – let's hear about how you landed wrong. What was going through your mind then?

There was a crack as my heel slammed into the floor at an unaccustomed angle, and the pain that shot up my leg told me something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong.

Mary Cerny, a dancer and Alexander Technique teacher in Australia once told me: "I only injure myself when I am not paying attention to what I am actually doing." She related how her mind raced ahead, worried about the audience, was being critical of something that just happened – was this going on in your mind and jeopardized the way you landed? Dancers will identify with that. This is picking up and building on the point I was making with Angela – your story becomes a disguised introduction to Alexander Technique. You do that by first identifying tendencies in you – that you also know to be universal with dancers – and then detail how these tendencies contributed to your injury. Let's hear the dramatic details of what happened, then the lessons you gained in the process. Speak to the One When you are writing these stories, be aware how you are using your pronouns. A good set up is to imagine you are explaining it all in a café to a close friend, even better to your avatar. Moving from the I (empathy) to the you (benefits) is how you use the story to hook people to you and your work – I got this, you can too. So use I and you, avoid we, they and it whenever possible. Finally, pick an elemental "signature" attitude that identifies you (your personal USP) to your niche. What comes across in this piece is a dancer who will not be defeated by anything that life serves her. You show resilience, passion, strength – all qualities appealing to dancers. Having a personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition) helps position you in the market distinctively. I am not saying this specifically needs to be your personal USP – but do work towards creating a clear identity. Highlight qualities about your Self that are in some way inspirational or empathetic to others. Thanks for a great piece. Other comments? https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATCSProMembers/