DANCE AND INSTRUCTION CERTIFICATION

TALAWA CERTIFICATION 

Core Principles and Techniques

At the heart of the Talawa Technique™ are the movements and principles derived from the Technical Adaptive Proprioceptic Acumen (T.A.P.A.) and the “mythotechnical animal” approach organised as the Snake, the Spider, the Bird, and the Octopus. These creatures serve as metaphors and guides for developing specific skills and qualities in dancers:

Technical Adaptive Proprioceptic Acumen (T.A.P.A.)

T.A.P.A. is a foundational methodology within the Talawa Technique™ that enhances proprioceptive capabilities, neuromuscular recruitment, and motor unit coordination. Developed through extensive collaboration with osteopaths and doctors, T.A.P.A. ensures that dancers achieve high technical proficiency while maintaining the safety and health of their bodies. This acumen involves:

• Neuromuscular Recruitment: Activating specific motor units for efficient muscle contractions.
• Motor Unit Recruitment: Engaging additional motor units to increase the strength and precision of movements.
• Muscle Synergy: Coordinating multiple muscles for complex movements.
• Neuromuscular Coordination: Harmonizing the interaction between the nervous and muscular systems for smooth and efficient movement.

What the Talawa Technique Creates:

The Talawa Technique™ offers a comprehensive and inclusive certification process that empowers dance practitioners, educators, and community health workers with a proficient and deep understanding and mastery of Africana movement practices. Through a blend of technical drills, cultural pedagogy, and holistic health practices, certified instructors are well-equipped to teach and adapt the Talawa Technique™ across various dance genres and educational contexts. This ensures that the technique remains a dynamic and respected approach within the global dance community.

• Protecting Dancers’ and Teachers’ Careers through Competence and Knowledge: This entails building a prestigious technical foundation that qualifies dancers and teachers as competent technicians in bodily practices. It includes comprehensive knowledge in culturally relevant dance and pedagogy, inclusivity, technical prowess, and culturally specific somatic practices. This competence not only enhances their careers but also ensures the longevity and sustainability of their professional endeavors.

• The Intelligence and Power of a Polyconducted Body: This refers to a body that can conduct multiple forms of energy and movement simultaneously, demonstrating a profound understanding and mastery of diverse dance techniques and styles.

• The Ability to Selfpolyficate (Polycentric Dance): This denotes the capability to initiate and control multiple centers of movement within the body, allowing for complex, layered, and dynamic dance expressions.

• The Focused Presence, Intention, and Actionability of a Ferocious Dancer (Martial Arts): This highlights the disciplined, purposeful, and impactful nature of a dancer who channels the precision and intensity of martial arts into their dance practice.

• The Stamina and Adaptability of a “Feté” and Carnival Reveller: This emphasizes the endurance, resilience, and ability to thrive in high-energy, celebratory environments, maintaining peak performance over extended periods.

• The Kinetic Extemporation Ability of a Griot Calypsonian (Chantwell): This showcases the spontaneous, improvisational skill of a dancer who, like a Griot or Calypsonian, can create and adapt dance narratives on the fly, infusing movement with storytelling.

• The Depth of a Ritual Dancer Blessed by the Ancestors: This signifies a profound spiritual connection and cultural depth in dance, where movements are imbued with ancestral wisdom, reverence, and sacred significance.
• The Pedagogical Skills of an Expert Educator: This pertains to the ability to effectively teach, mentor, and inspire students, fostering a deep understanding and appreciation of dance.

• The Technical Proficiency of a Teacher and Practitioner Dedicated to Dance Longevity: This highlights a commitment to maintaining and advancing dance techniques, ensuring that the bodies practicing these techniques can last long without injury. It includes balanced training to support sustainable dance careers and the evolution of dance practices.

• The Reflection and Dissemination Skills of a Scholar: This underscores the capacity for critical thinking, research, and the ability to share knowledge through writing, lectures, and other scholarly activities.

• The Ability to Teach Based on Correct Alignment and Placement and Knowledge About the Body: This focuses on the expertise in anatomical awareness, ensuring that dance is taught and practiced with an emphasis on proper alignment, placement, and body mechanics to prevent injury and enhance performance.

CERTIFICATION PROCESS

Online and Intensive Training:

• Initial Levels (1-3): Certification can begin online, providing flexible access to foundational training.

• Intensives: Certification is organized through intensives, where participants pay for the training rather than the certification itself. This ensures that entry criteria are based on the quality of work rather than financial capability.

Quality Assurance:

• Evaluation: Upon completing an intensive, participants petition for certification, which is granted based on their demonstrated competence and understanding of the technique.

• Ambassadorship: The goal is to certify instructors who are excellent ambassadors of the Talawa Technique™ and Africana dance practices globally.

Affordability:

• Ethos: Fees are kept as low as possible to ensure accessibility, reflecting the technique’s ethos of service to Africana dance practitioners rather than profit.

• Support for Practitioners: The technique aims to protect and build competence among practitioners of Africana dance forms, supporting their growth and development.

Benefits of Certification

• For Practitioners:
  • Technical Proficiency: Ensures dancers achieve a high level of technical skill while maintaining the safety and health of their bodies.
  • Proprioception Development: Enhances the body’s ability to sense its position and movement in space, crucial for preventing injuries and mastering complex movements.
  • Adaptability: Techniques are designed to be cross-genre, making them applicable to a wide range of dance styles and somatic practices.

•  For Educators:
  • Culturally Specific Pedagogy: Provides decolonial approaches to dance and a strong technical foundation, allowing educators to guide students through culturally rooted practices.
  • Safety and Alignment: Developed in collaboration with osteopaths and doctors, ensuring proper alignment and promoting overall health.
  • Cultural Sensitivity: Addresses issues of cultural appropriation and guides educators on how to extract and apply practices respectfully across cultures and races.

• For Community Health Workers:
  • Holistic Mindfulness and Healing: Techniques are designed to support holistic health, mindfulness, and healing, making them valuable tools for community health initiatives.

Certification Levels and Modules

The certification process in the Talawa Technique™ is structured across various levels, each building on the previous one to deepen practitioners’ skills, understanding, and ability to teach the technique. Below is an overview of the dance education and instructor certification modules:

Dance Education: Talawa-Technique

Instructor Certification: Talawa-Technique

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

The Talawa Technique™, meticulously developed over the past 27 years, represents a groundbreaking advancement in African and African Diaspora dance studies. This technique serves as both a repository and a dynamic framework, facilitating a deeper engagement with Africana dance practices and their philosophical underpinnings. It transcends cultural boundaries, offering significant value to practitioners from diverse backgrounds through its systematic and accessible approach to kinaesthetics and body mechanics.

Created by Thomas Talawa Prestø, the Talawa Technique™ seamlessly merges ancestral movements with culturally contextualized vocabulary and contemporary movement sensibilities. This innovative approach bridges the gap between diverse forms of dance, including stage dance, social dance, club and street dances, traditional and spiritual dances, and many other expressions. The Talawa Technique™ is an Africognosomatic technique grounded in the African and African Diaspora understanding of the body, rhythm, and complex polycentric movement. This fusion creates a rich, dynamic framework suitable for both stage performances and artistic productions, enabling dancers to explore a wide spectrum of movement qualities while remaining deeply rooted in cultural heritage.

Distinct in its combination of rhythmic structures, specialized grounding techniques, and traditional African aesthetic movements like trembling, shaking, undulating, and pulsating, the Talawa Technique™ enriches the dancer’s repertoire. The Technique seamlessly co-exists as a blend of danced martial arts, empowered ritual dance, classroom instruction, technical drills, movement research, aesthetic formation, cultural studies, dance and performance theory, praxis, and practice, integrating well with a multitude of purposes and expressions.

The Talawa Technique™ uniquely structures elements from African and Caribbean traditions to foster polycentrism, diverse movement qualities, grounding, and polyrhythms. This approach deconstructs and reconstructs these traditional practices, revealing the distinct qualities of each element both individually and in their combined, enhanced form when intentionally recombined.

MORE ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Africognosomatic Approach and Cognosomatics

The Talawa Technique™ is fundamentally built on an Africognosomatic approach, which integrates cognition with somatic experiences within an African context. This approach highlights how the body becomes a repository of collective memory, lived experience, and cultural wisdom.

Cognosomatics expands the spectrum of embodied experience to include a bidirectional interchange between interior somatic experiences and external actions and interactions. This term serves as a conceptual bridge between phenomenology and sociology, connecting the deeply personal with the communal. Each action is both an expression of identity and a catalyst for future experiences, perpetuating a continuously evolving cycle that shapes identity based on new experiences and perceptions.

AfriCognoSomatics emphasizes how the body, in an African context, embodies collective memory and cultural wisdom. It focuses on how dance and artistic practices are deeply intertwined with the cognitive processes that reflect heritage, history, and philosophy.

Polycentric Movement and Kinetic Selfpolyfication

Polycentric movement is a fundamental concept in the Talawa Technique™, redefining traditional bodily movement by positioning the body as an intricate landscape of interrelated active centers. Each center, operating both independently and in harmony, contributes to a complex and layered kinetic expression. This approach bestows depth and richness upon the dance, distinguishing it from unilinear physical expressions.

Kinetic Selfpolyfication, a key principle of polycentric movement, emphasizes the harmonious coexistence of multiple kinetic centers within the body. It mirrors societal concepts of polycentricity, where multiple centers of power coexist within a single entity. As the Talawa Technique™ posits, “Kinetic Selfpolyfication is the ability to multiply yourself through movement without ever cancelling yourself out,” highlighting the infinite potential for dynamic expression and interconnectedness within the dancer’s body.

Centers of Movement in Polycentric Dance

Polycentric movement involves activating various centers of movement in the body, each contributing uniquely to the dance’s complexity and richness. The key centers of movement include:

• Ankles: Essential for grounding and providing stability, allowing for intricate footwork and balance.

• Hips: Central to the body’s core movements, enabling dynamic shifts and fluid transitions.

• Wrists: Facilitating precise and expressive gestures that complement the larger body movements.

• Neck: Allowing for nuanced head movements that enhance the overall expressiveness of the dance.

• Scapulae/Chest: Adding depth and dimension to movements, emphasizing the connection between the upper body and the arms.

The Essence of Polycentric Movement

Polycentric movement in Africana dance embodies a philosophy of collective expression, groundedness, and interconnectedness. It invites dancers to explore the limitless possibilities of their bodies, allowing for a vibrant tapestry of movement that is deeply personal yet resonantly communal. This approach showcases technical prowess and embodies a philosophy of unity and interconnectedness within the dancer’s body and the broader communal dance practices.

THE MYTHO-TECHNICAL ANIMAL

A central aspect of the Talawa Technique™ is the concept of the Mytho-Technical Animal, which organizes movement practices, qualities, performance modes, cultural information, and anatomical imagery. The mythical entities—The Spider, The Snake, The Bird, and The Octopus—bind the mind, body, and spirit together in movement, rendering the Talawa-trained body as a Mytho-Technical entity embodying many qualities simultaneously.

• THE SPIDER – PRINCIPLE OF COMMUNICATION
  • The Spider symbolizes communication and storytelling. Anansi, a well-known character throughout the African Diaspora and on the continent, is a cunning trickster and storyteller who brought stories and storytelling to humans from the Sky God. The gestures of the Talawa Technique™, attributed to the principle of the spider, facilitate precise and expressive communication through movement. The 32 parallel arm positions of the technique, forming 1024 possible pose combinations, are organized under this principle, pre-programming paths that enhance precision and clarity in gestures.

• THE SNAKE – PRINCIPLE OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS, MOVEMENT VITALITY, AND HYBRIDITY
  • The Snake represents interconnectedness, movement vitality, and hybridity. It emphasizes the centrality of spinal articulation, reflecting the belief that movement, symbolized by the snake, represents life and vitality. The snake’s grounding in embodied knowledge and instinctual wisdom highlights the importance of the spine in Africana dance, celebrating life through dynamic, articulated movements. The snake’s ability to sense vibration and its symbolic role in many West-African and African Diaspora cosmologies underscore its central position in life and healing.

• THE BIRD – PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTABILITY
  • The Bird represents adaptability, balance, and dynamics. Birds thrive in the air, land, and water, symbolizing the bird’s impeccable sense of direction and balance. The 15 foot/base positions linked to this principle engage the spine and pelvis, encouraging a polycentric approach to movement and balance. These positions facilitate quick adaptation to minute changes in weight and body stance, reflecting the bird’s dynamic presence and adaptability.

• THE OCTOPUS – PRINCIPLE OF INTELLIGENCE
  • The Octopus symbolizes intelligence and adaptability, mirroring its independently intelligent body structure. The octopus’s three hearts—one pumping blood to the organs and two to the extremities—inspire the technique’s focus on heart rate and breath adaptation to movement and rhythm. The octopus’s independently intelligent body, with two-thirds of its neurons in its arms, parallels the technique’s use of polycentric movement, where multiple centers are activated simultaneously, and poly-movement, where various body parts move independently yet cohesively.

IMPLIMENTATION OF THE TALAWA TECHNIQUE™

BUILD UP AND CORE ASPECTS

Build-Up Phase:

• Technical Drills: Foundational exercises focus on alignment, conditioning, and the development of endurance, suppleness, awareness, and precision. They are designed to reduce injuries and prepare the body for complex movements.
• Proprioceptive Challenges: Using props like water bottles balanced on the head while performing rhythmic steps with dynamic alterations helps dancers to develop T.A.P.A. by requiring constant adjustments and enhancements in neuromuscular recruitment and coordination.

Core Aspects:

• Exploration: Involves studies in space, time, energy, attitude, intention, spirit, gesture, and emotion. Dancers relate, develop, and explore their inner nature and relationship to the world through movement, enhancing proprioceptive awareness and neuromuscular function.

• Application: Technical exercises are quickly applied to choreography, helping students internalize techniques faster by understanding their practical uses. This integration supports the development of T.A.P.A. by reinforcing muscle memory and proprioceptive skills through practical application.

Technical Adaptive Proprioceptic Acumen (T.A.P.A.) is integral to the Talawa Technique™, providing a sophisticated framework for countering proprioceptive deficits and compensatory mechanisms. By increasing neuromuscular recruitment, motor unit recruitment, muscle synergy, and neuromuscular coordination, T.A.P.A. enhances the dancer’s ability to perform complex movements efficiently and safely. The Water Walks exercise exemplifies the practical application of T.A.P.A., challenging dancers to integrate balance, rhythm, and full-body engagement. Furthermore, Full Corposensoric Rhythmokinetic Computation (FCRC) highlights the advanced outcomes of T.A.P.A., where the body becomes an anticipatory and integrative processor of rhythmic and kinetic stimuli. This concept, rooted in the rich traditions of Africana dance, underscores the innovative fusion of ancient wisdom and modern methodology that defines the Talawa Technique™.

THE BUILD UP

• TECHNICAL: Various movement techniques and practices, activates and engages the students in the essential work of alignment and conditioning. The techniques are designed to develop endurance, suppleness, awareness, economy, and precision in moving. These exercises are also intended to reduce injuries; including excessive spinal- tension, tension, awkward gestures, a casual carriage, and inexpressive mobility. Studies in African anatomy (different view of the body than in the Western world, this is reflected in dance, buttocks is a five directional muscle), further the student’s self-awareness and provide practical knowledge for safe and effective use of the body.

• EXPLORATION: This involves studies in space, time, energy, attitude, intention, spirit, gesture, and emotion, in which students relate, develop and explore their inner nature and relationship to the world and other people in terms of and through movement. Through improvisations and guided experimentation in a variety of movement practices, students will explore the relationship of mind, spirit, and body. How these things are expressed through an African, Black, and Caribbean body language, expression, and aesthetics, both historically and contemporary.

• APPLICATION: In TT-Tech application quickly follows technical exercises. Often technical exercises are directly applied to choreography and movement. TT-Tech believes that an informed student that understands the uses of technique stays more motivated, and is quicker to internalize technique. It also helps separate what is aesthetics and what is technique.

Dance without technique is often limited, and lacking aesthetics, but technique without dance is not dance at all.
Talawa 2009