Taking Root to Fly: Articles on Functional Anatomy

by Irene Dowd

This text includes 10 articles covering such topics as "In Honor of the Foot", "Finding Your Center", and "Visualizing Movement Potential". With grace and finesse, Dowd illuminates essential topics for the dancer or anyone practicing movement arts, such as grounding and the source of core postural support.

Genres: Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1990

Reviews

[ice_butch .jpg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how visual she is. Yes, functional anatomy for orientation to movement, alignment, pain, can i imagine something pouring into or out of me, my eyes the size of my head,
what can i say, i've been healing up and it helped.

[Devyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible.

[Mihir T Desai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I chanced into this book after a progressively frustrating journey as a serious social dancer that got suckered into the dance industrial complex of expensive lessons and rote based steps. Irene Dowd does an even better job than her teacher Sweigard and influencers such as Mable Todd, author of the Thinking Body published in the 1930s, and explains movement from the perspective of specific body points. What I enjoyed the most was her emphasis on visualization. Occasionally she goes off on the deep end by imagining her students eyeballs to be the size of their face in order to reduce neck pain. In other instances, she pictures fountains of energy exiting her body. I had a hard time grasping some of that stuff. On the other hand, she does an exemplary job of organizing explaining body movement using diamond metaphors. I considered one of the most important series of essays I have read on dance science.

[Ramya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her sane but imaginative imagery as well as wonderfully fluid drawings which illustrate quite beautifully her points - basically helped me find my foot, my body parts, and not such align myself physically but psycho-emotionally as well to dancing and that struggling artistic expressive side that has been anything but happy these past years.

Just being able to finally articulate through my feet and having all 10 toes on the ground has opened up joy in my yoga practice and my ability to be expressive with my feet in dance and find joy in the music danced to.

Thank you so much!

[Dexter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taking Root to Fly is a very ... surreal ... read. Irene Dowd focuses on anatomy and imagery to discuss the human body with an underlying focus on dance. While there's no question that she's knowledgeable of the human body, her imagery and thought processes do give the average reader cause to question her sanity. Most of my classmates are sure that she was high when she wrote half of the stuff.

That may be the case, but lots of it makes a very strange kind of sense to me. It may be insane and bizarre, but the idea of fire bursting from my core and spreading light throughout my extremities does make a difference in my dancing.

So while this book may not actually help every dancer, I would consider it a very useful and one-of-a-kind experience that probably shouldn't be passed by.

[Lady3jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

All people should read this book. If we all had an understanding of our anatomy and the most efficient, functional use of it, we'd be in less pain and our bodies would be more useful. Not only does Irene Dowd write about functional anatomy in this text, but she teaches how to re-educate one's body.

[Hye-yeon · Rating 5 out of 5]

do you think you know about your body and how to move? read this book to discover new life of your own body