Dance Anatomy

by Jacqui Haas

Powerful, expressive, and compelling! Now you can see what it takes to be a stronger, more elegant dancer. Featuring over 200 full-color illustrations, Dance Anatomy visually depicts the unique relationship between muscle development and aesthetic movement as never before. Dance Anatomy features 82 of the most effective dance, movement, and performance exercises, each designed to promote perfect alignment, improved placement, proper breathing, and prevention of common injuries. In stunning detail, the accompanying illustration captures the dancer in motion and highlights the active muscles associated with each movement. You’ll learn how to modify exercises to target specific areas to enhance flexibility and reduce muscle tension. You’ll also learn to put it all together to personalize a program based on your style of dance, level of expertise, and individual needs and goals. Whether you seek to optimize performance, add a new movement to your repertoire, or minimize muscle fatigue, stress, and injury, Dance Anatomy is your perfect partner.  

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, Fitness, Health, Education, Medical

208 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2010

Reviews

[Jennifer B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is extremely useful! With the exercises in this book you can target very specific muscles to help improve strength and flexibility. It is focused on exercises to help professional dancers, but it can certainly help novices as well. As a person recovering from injury, I find this book especially helpful.

[Carolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great

Very usefull from any anatomy perspective. Even thought if you are not a ballet dancer. As myspace case. Nice work.

[Astri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting learning more about the body, but you can get all of the exercises off dance training IGs instead (in a better format)

[Robyn B · Rating 3 out of 5]

The images are great and useful for learning/teaching movement analysis but much of the information is dated and incorrect according to more recent research.

[Charlotte Wolf]

This book is very helpful. I've done lots of the stretches and exercises it has told me to do and I can already feel myself getting stronger and more flexible. This book not only tells you what exercises and stretches to do but it also explains in complete detail how to do the exercise or stretch and it explains how that exercise or stretch will help a dancer improve her technique and what choreography that specific exercise or stretch will help with. I think this benefits me and all other dancer's a lot because you could just do any exercise or stretch that you want but in this book, it tells you why that one is necessary or helpful. Overall, this book was helpful and I will continue doing the stretches and exercises it tells me to do.

[yamiyoghurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most concise and easy to follow dance anatomy book. I've read a couple of others and what I really liked about this is the way it illustrates which muscles are involved in each dance move and recommend ways to improve the technique. The flow of the book is structured and organized, layout is visually appealing.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent resource for dancers and dance instructors. The layout and organization of the book makes it easy to find exercises and information to help improve your (or your students') areas of weakness. I wish it included as many helpful flexibility exercises as it does strengthening ones, but I still found it helpful.

[Lynn Tweedie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taught this to my Academy girls this year and really loved the breakdown. I think they could've used some better visuals to really "see" the muscles they should be focusing on during barre or floor work. The breakdowns were really helpful to me.
{Bonus points that I was able to incorporate that into teaching barre}

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated the emphasis on posture & breathing. Sections of the body are addressed first in prose (describing anatomy and its application), followed by exercises paired with application to dance. The applications seem largely focused on ballet and modern styles.

[mozart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good

Im a 13 year old black male dancer. Im a competitive dancer and travel with my dance school to perform in cities and even out of the country. This book did teach me well.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great detail. Good pictures.