Small Chair 1978-79
After recuperating with her family in Regina, Amelia returned to Toronto. She performed in Ann Ditchburn's Nelligan. She developed her teaching at NBS, Toronto Dance Theatre and Coccolario Umbrella (a gallery and studio space Ditchburn established). Betty Oliphant supported her successful application to the Canada Council for a three month study intensive in Alexander Technique with M. Cohen-Nehemia. In 1978, she was accepted into a three year Alexander Technique training program in London, England, and again applied for Canada Council support, this time without success.
Kerry Flamon: “At the Canada Council audition, she taught a sample class. One student had terrible problems doing “turns around the back” on the floor. Amelia had solved this before by employing M. Cohen-Nehemia's suggestion that such dancers could be seated on thick telephone directories. In lieu of a phone book, Itcush spontaneously tried a small stool. She said that “after ten minutes on the stool, (the student) was able to unlock and get a sense of spine which he had never had on the floor. It opened up his body."
When York University Dance Department Chair Yves Cousineau offered Amelia a position teaching Graham technique (1979), she signed a one-year contract with the proviso that she could have chairs made and teach her own work.
Small chair exercises are adaptations of Graham exercises, based on the Mitzvah principle and the balancing forces central to the Itcush Method. Martha Graham was at ease seated in second position, sit bones resting on the floor, hip flexors relaxed, with spine straight and legs resting at ease, in 'neutral' and could access her full range of motion from that position. However many bodies can't achieve this ‘neutral’ pelvis on the floor. The position is a place of tension, not balance for most.
David Wood: “I still have one of the low wooden "Alexander stools" she designed and ordered built when she was teaching technique at York U. I believe she had 30 made by the carpenters in the Theatre Department and the cost was charged to the Dance Department. They are wonderfully designed with a slight forward angle to the seat. Amelia would modify Graham exercises to be executed on these stools. The height of the stool facilitated torso movement, spiral movements in particular. I still use the stool/chair for my personal "Amelia style" alignment exercises. They work well. Needless to say, the York Dance faculty at the time were... perplexed. She spent only one year teaching at York University. I remember her mother was furious. Amelia's only shot at a decent job (tenure!!) up in smoke!!!”
Ashley Johnson: “When having the stools made, she knew why she'd use them - just not how. Entering a York dance studio to find 30 students expectantly perched on stools, she burst out laughing. She knew what she wanted to do, she just didn't have a technique yet!
Maintaining an open ‘neutral’ pelvis aids us in releasing tension – keeps it from building in the first place! A core belief of the Itcush work is that we start from where we're at. Each body's place of openness is different. Our own body's ‘neutral’ moves us forward more effectively into space (and faster) than starting from a place of tension. The small chair offers a more forgiving relationship between my spine and pelvis and the floor. I can flex, extend, twist, rotate and move off my centerline with full range of motion. I can return to center (where my body is ‘neutral’) and rest, releasing tension.”
Jennifer Mascall: “In body work we talk about habit, and how, in order to repattern, the learner requires guidance – the hands and instruction of an outside eye. The habit can't be seen and corrected by the student on her own. The habit can be likened to the ‘blind spot’ we have when driving a car. Amelia was interested in ways of releasing the student's practice from total dependence on one-on-one work.
Between 2003-2009 Amelia guest taught five times at an intensive summer school MascallDance holds annually called Way Out West in Vancouver. The first year she wrote and asked us to supply chairs. The supermarket near us gave us Sealtest containers, which weren’t perfect but worked well enough. She asked for paper. We were doing a show called Homewerk that used huge cardboard flats 8 feet by 6, so we brought them out, and she drew anatomical drawings all over them. In subsequent tours, the dancers would perform using sets with her drawings all over them.”