Irene Dowd
Irene Dowd majored in philosophy at Vassar College where she completed a thesis on body image in relation to movement for her Bachelor of Arts degree. After graduating from Vassar in 1968 she was accepted into The Juilliard School, Dance Division as a special studies student focusing on choreography. At Juilliard, she became a student and then the assistant of Dr. Lulu Sweigard. In six years of intensive study with Sweigard, she studied functional anatomy for dancers and Sweigard’s approach to individual instruction in Ideokinetic facilitation. During that period Dowd also undertook the study of human anatomy and neuroanatomy at Columbia Presbyterian Medical School.
Dowd’s early career provided many opportunities for her to explain Dr. Sweigard’s approach as it might apply to the dancer. At the same time, she began to infuse her own views and values, artistry, and experience into her educational practice. In her lectures on the role of Ideokinesis in movement education, she typically restated the classic definition of the term devised by Dr. Sweigard in 1974 and then explained her own views and experience of the educational process. For a workshop entitled “An Introduction to Ideokinesis for Pilates-based Teachers,” taught in October of 2003, Dowd devised this summary statement enlarging the definition of Ideokinesis:
Ideokinesis is an approach in which the cerebral cortex (conscious part of the brain) initiates new patterns of muscle activity in order to re-tune skeletal joint position and motion. The person visualizes a vector which moves from one specific point in the body to or through another point in the body or surrounding space. The timing, force, speed, etc. of that vector’s motion are all specified explicitly or implicitly. If the line moves from one specific point to another point it may either lengthen (to decrease tension and/or increase length of muscles) or shorten (to increase tension and/or decrease length of muscles.) Ideokinesis is always task/goal oriented. Therefore, it can be utilized in the absence of visible skeletal movement in order to change postural patterns, balance elements or other stabilizing patterns of muscle action. It can be utilized simultaneously with visible skeletal movement in order to fine-tune movement performance.
Dowd’s curiosity about the process of teaching and learning movement led to the study of and involvement in a wide range of related subjects. In the 1970’s she became a student of the movement sciences exploring the areas of motor control, brain lateralization, motor development, sensory motor integration, the neurobehavioral basis of locomotion, biomechanics and individualized fitness training. From 1984 to 1986 she was co-co-principal investigator in a study on the “Effects of Neuromuscular Retraining on the Mobility of the Elderly,” with Judith A. Smith, PhD. R.N.
Dowd’s immersion in dance and choreography was also a constant throughout her career. She studied with Merce Cunningham, Lucas Hoving, Antony Tudor and Viola Farber, among others. In recent years, Dowd choreographed for Peggy Baker, Margie Gillis and other solo dancers.
Dowd describes her private teaching practice as “an individualized approach to solving functional problems of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems which involve discomfort or inability to achieve functional movement potential.” She greatly expanded the scope of what she teaches and how she teaches it as her career evolved. Her studies and teaching now encompasses globally diverse ideas, belief systems, and dance forms. She began this practice in 1968 and continues it to this day. One of the many strategies she uses is the careful application of Ideokinetic imagery, adapted to the needs and goals of the individual with whom she is working.
In 2023, she completed 28 years teaching in the Dance Division at The Juilliard School, where she is now faculty emeritus. Upon her retirement, she created a digital Anatomy/Kinesiology for Dancers Archive for the Juilliard School. She has been succeeded as anatomy teacher at the Juilliard dance program by her most recent teaching fellow at the school. She continues to teach for the Hollins University graduate program in dance, and at Movement Research. She continues to be a frequent guest teacher at institutions all over the world (thanks to both in-person and on-line options).
Her longstanding teaching appointments included serving as regular guest faculty at Canada’s National Ballet School for 22 years; as well as teaching courses in the master’s program in Dance Education at Teachers College, Columbia University for 18 years, and the master’s program in Arts and Liberal Studies at Wesleyan University for 9 years.
Dowd’s record of institutional teaching activity also includes the teaching of dance, composition, functional and kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education in many other institutions, including Simon Fraser University, Queens College, Brooklyn College, American Dance Festival, Naropa Institute, American Center for the Alexander Technique, Dance Notation Bureau, Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies, and others. She served as a consultant to dancers in ballet and modern dance companies throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.
Dowd’s articles and drawings have been published in many journals (Eddy, Dance Scope, Contact Quarterly, Dance Research Journal of CORD, Pour La Danse, La Danza, Dance Magazine, Choreography and Dance) as well as in the book Schmerz und Sports (Pain in Sports: Interdisciplinary Pain Therapy in Sports Medicine) and in the International Dance Encyclopedia. Her own book Taking Root to Fly, first published in 1981, is now in the 12th printing of its third edition, revised in 1995.
During her association with Teachers College, Dowd began creating choreographies that provided a vivid kinesthetic experience of anatomy for dancers, since her students there were global and had no shared dance experience. She also created choreographies that provide fine-tuning of skills to achieve various dance goals for the dance faculty at Canada’s National Ballet School. She continued to develop new teaching choreographies for her students at Juilliard and elsewhere.
In 2001 the National Ballet School produced a very large series of videos of dance training choreographies that Dowd created, directed and edited (some of these choreographies were co-choreographed with Peggy Baker). In 2016, The Juilliard School assisted Irene to produce a series of videos of her choreographies being performed by Juilliard dance graduates, by giving her rehearsal space and a grant from the Program in Dance as well as the John Erskine Faculty Prize. In 2023, The Juilliard Program in Dance fully supported the production of videos created by Irene for her current students at the school. All of these are new viewable free in her website: https://www.irenedowdchoreographies.com
Dowd is the recipient of the 2014 Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Chair for Distinguished teaching at ADF, recipient of the 2015 Juilliard School John Erskine Faculty Prize, the 2016 Dance Science and Somatics Educators Lifetime Service Award from DSSE (Dance Science and Somatic Educators), and the 2018 Honorary Fellowship from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and the 2023 Dance Teacher Award. As can be seen in several other essays on this website, Irene Dowd’s workshops and seminars have informed and inspired many contributors to the field. Dowd is widely heralded as a master teacher and a gifted interpreter of the Ideokinetic approach.
—Irene Dowd with Pamela Matt (2023)
Please contact the author (Irene.Dowd@gmail.com) about purchasing a copy of Taking Root to Fly, or find a free downloadable PDF on her website: https://www.irenedowdchoreographies.com/
Bibliography for Irene Dowd
Dowd, I. “On Breathing,” EDDY About Dance Spring-Summer 1976.
——— “Finding Your Center,” EDDY About Dance Winter 1977.
——— “Standing on Two Legs,” EDDY About Dance Summer 1978.
——— “Pelvis/Rib Cage/Breath Relationship,” Illustrations. Contact Quarterly 4(1) Fall 1978.
——— “The Upper Extremity: Enfolding and Exposing,” Dance Scope 13(1): 48-57, Fall 1978.
——— “Visualizing Movement Potential,” Dance Scope 14(1): 24-35, Fall 1979.
——— “The Dark Side of the Brain: Working with the Dynamics of Touch through the Non-Dominant Hand,” Contact Quarterly 5(2) 12-15, Winter 1980.
——— “Taking Root to Fly: The Human Spine,” Contact Quarterly 6(1): 26-33, Fall 1980.
——— “La Visualization,” French translation by Odile Rouquet. Pour La Danse 64, November 1980.
——— “La Visualization,” French translation by Odile Rouquet. Pour La Danse 65, December 1980.
——— Taking Root to Fly: Seven Articles on Functional Anatomy. New York, NY: Irene Dowd and Contact Collaborations, 1981.
——— “How the Dancer Sees,” Dance Magazine November 1981.
——— “Ideokinesis: The Nine Lines of Movement,” Contact Quarterly 8(2): 38-46, Winter 1983.
——— “Your Muscles: Weak or Strong?” Dance Magazine March 1984.
——— “How to Arch Your Back,” Dance Magazine 58(4): 118-119, April 1984.
——— “What it Means to Pull Up,” Dance Magazine 58(5): 142, May 1984.
——— “How to Find the Turnout,” Dance Magazine 58(6): 100, June 1984.
——— “On Metaphor,” Contact Quarterly 9(3): 18-22, Fall 1984.
——— “La Visualization,” “Comment Trouver son Centre de Gravite,” “Les 9 Lignes du Mouvement,” translated into French by Odile Rouquet for Les Techniques d’Analyse du Mouvement et Ie Danseur. La Federation Francaise de Danse, Paris, 1985.
——— “Ideokinesis – La Visualizzazione,” Italian translation by Silvia Baggio. La Danza 18, 1986.
——— “In Honor of the Foot,” Contact Quarterly 11(3): 33-38, Fall 1986.
——— “Chronic Pain in Dancers: A Theoretical and Treatment Protocol.” Schmerz und Sport: Interdisziplinare Schmerztherapie in der Sportmedizin (Pain in Sports: Interdisciplinary Paintherapy in Sports Medicine), Berlin: Singer-Verlag, 1988.
——– Taking Root to Fly: Ten Articles on Functional Anatomy. Second Edition. New York, NY: Irene Dowd and Contact Collaborations,1990.
——— “The Use of Intentional Touch,” Contact Quarterly 16(1): 21-29, Winter 1990.
——— “Neutralization: Preparing for the Intentional Touch Interaction,” Contact Quarterly 16(3): 39-45, Fall 1991.
——— “Modes of Perception: Finding Pathways through Inner Worlds,” Contact Quarterly 17(2): 51-62, Summer/Fall 1992.
——— “Creating Motion through Intentional Touch,” Contact Quarterly 19(2): 48-62, Summer/Fall 1994.
——— Taking Root to Fly: Articles on Functional Anatomy. Third Edition, New York, NY: By the Author, 1995. [Available from Irene Dowd, 14 East Fourth Street, #606, New York City, New York 10012-1141] ——– “Ideokinesis.” In Selma Jeanne Cohen (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Dance. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 1998, 475-476.
——— “Challenges to the Dancer’s Hips provided by Leg Circles or the Grand Rond de Jambe en I’Air,” Choreography and Dance: Perspectives on the Healthy Dancer 6(1): 59-76, 2001.
——— Spirals. Videotape. Toronto, Canada: The National Ballet School, 2002. [Available from The Shoe Room, The National Ballet School of Canada, Toronto, Canada (416) 964-5100]
——— Warming up the Hip: Turn-out Dance and Orbits. Toronto, Canada: The National Ballet School, 2002. [Available from The Shoe Room, The National Ballet School of Canada, Toronto, Canada (416) 964-5100]
——— Trunk Stabilization and Volutes. Toronto, Canada: The National Ballet School, 2002. [Available from The Shoe Room, The National Ballet School of Canada, Toronto, Canada (416) 964-5100] Myers, M. “Todd, Sweigard, and Ideokinesis,” Dance Magazine June 1980: 17-19.
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