ABSTRACT
Fundamentals classes taught by Irmgard Bartenieff quite often began with total body “Closing and Opening,” “Condensing and Expanding,” or “Concaving and Convexing.” These basic changes in total body form were an important preliminary warm-up for any later movement. As we move with the pattern of Core-Distal Connectivity, each of us begins to locate our own individual center for organizing movement. It is a pattern of radial symmetry with the center of control in the middle of the body. All of the limbs are directly connected to the center. Core-Distal Connectivity is a pattern deep within our body that is there to support basic relationship rhythms of coming into “self and going out to “other” or the world. The chapter also presents movement explorations which are suggestions for discovering what it is like to organize one's whole body by putting attention on Core-Distal Connectivity, letting the whole body action evolve from that pattern.
