About Lilian

“From the age of 13, when I began ballet lessons, I was taught to turn my knees outward in a straight line from side to side, like Charlie Chaplin. The fact was, I couldn’t as my knees got stuck at about a 45 degree angle instead, and to expect them to go further was like asking me to open a door backward on its hinges. “I was also told to stand tall by pulling myself up with an imaginary string at the top of my head, but I felt more like a sack of sand pulled up by a string around its neck; my head was pulling but my body sagged below. Nothing I did seemed to help. I just kept being given the same “corrections” over and over.

“Twenty years later, after my professional career as a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, I was taking classes at the Martha Graham school of modern dance in New York. Though the Graham technique didn’t require the Charlie Chaplin turn-out — most of the time the legs were used in parallel position, with the knees facing forward — it presented me with a different challenge: the Graham contraction. This was a movement that pulled in the abdomen, thrust the bottom of the pelvis forward and rounded the lower back, creating a hollowed-out look in the front of the body. Properly done, it involved contracting the abdominal muscles in conjunction with a strong out-breath. The problem for me here was that I had a swayback and nothing I did would make the arch in my lower back curve outward.

“Being told repeatedly, over what seemed a lifetime, to do what I wasn’t able to do was a frustration I lived with daily, despite the enjoyment I derived from the dance life I had so wanted and, finally, achieved. But one day, after a year at the Graham school, I had an epiphany that opened up a whole new world of possibility for me. The instructor teaching the class that day told me I should “feel my muscles,” that that was the way to get your body to work properly.”