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<\/a>Dr. Day has been studying how professional dancers remember their routines. Have you ever thought about that? A modern dance company doesn’t have classical terms for movements, like ballet companies do. So \u00a0some, like Pilobolus, make up names for the shapes they get their dancer’s bodies into \u2013 like “shooting seagulls” or “fat gnomes.” \u00a0Others, like The Merce Cunningham company, feel that labeling dance moves with words is limiting.<\/p>\nMemory itself is sort of a dance of associations. Pick your own associations.<\/p>\n
“There’s no right or wrong strategy,” Day says, “but certain strategies work better in certain situations and the more memory tools a dancer has, the better. The end goal is not memory in and of itself, but to get past the learning and worrying about it \u2013 to do the movement well and enjoy it.”<\/p>\n
It all seems to come down to identification and intentionality \u2013 identifying what you want to accomplish via a technique or gimmick \u2013 anything that works for you \u2013 and being intentional about that process.<\/p>\n
We’re trying, for instance, to improve our quick recognition of jazz piano passages. And we’re finding that looking at the notes as parts of chords is helpful \u2013 that’s \u00a0a structural approach, rather than a strictly visual one. But what the heck, since it seems to have potential, we’ll try to develop it.<\/p>\n
“Whatever works for you,” seems to be a decent memory slogan. The need is to get serious about remembering, and pick your own cues.<\/p>\n