Nia – Sink and Pivot Table Wipe
Posted by terrepruitt on June 22, 2013
One of Nia’s 52 Moves is the Sink and Pivot Table Wipe. Ha! Sounds funny. I always think of cleaning when I say this move in class, but not many people LIKE to clean so I don’t like to remind them of cleaning while we are in our Joy! There are many other ways to describe the movement, but “table wipe” really gets the point across. It could be a dramatic sweep of the table. Regardless of what spirit might have me say in the midst of the move there is a particular way to do it. As with all of Nia’s 52 Moves there is a specific way to do it. And . . . as I have said . . . often times the specifics are adjusted to work into the song and the moment’s choreography. To me the Sink and Pivot Table Wipe is a combination of an arm movement and a bow stance.
To practice the Sink and Pivot Table Wipe you start in an A Stance. Doing one side at a time, say the left, you would place your left arm out. As you lift up your left foot you turn your body towards the right, your left arm sweeps across the horizon to the right. Your left foot lands gently on the earth on the ball of your foot and your left leg is bent. Your right leg is also bent. The bent legs become the “sink” part of the move. Your arm sweeping is the wiping part of the move. That “table” part is the imaginative part of the move to assist in knowing how the arms sweeps. The arm is straight out and just moves parallel to the ground. Doing the other side, you would you would place your right arm out. As you lift up your right foot you turn your body towards the left, your right arm sweeps out and around to the left. You place your right ball of foot gently on the floor with your right leg bent. Your left leg is also bent. The legs are similar to a bow stance.
In most instances — the ones I can think of — in the choreography, I usually do a tiny hop so that my front foot ends up with the toes facing the same direction as the foot in the back, the foot that is “ball of foot”. So as I continue to say, the instructions in The Nia Technique book* show the exact perfect way to do a move. Which is the way to learn it, but then once you know the move the choreography dictates the exact way it is done.
The book recommends the word “Whoosh” be said while doing this move. Of course that is just one of many words and sounds that can be made. Sounds are dictated by so many things. The “Whoosh” can be used in the practice of the move, if you would like. When in a Nia class anything goes!
I believe this move is a great stability move because as I said I am normally moving both feet in order to sink, pivot, and wipe the table so I need to “land” stable. Also, I think it is great for the legs because any sink type of move helps condition them. It is also good for coordination because you are moving both the upper body and lower body at the same time, but in a little different manner.
Tee hee . . . . it is really great for a lot of things, depends on what you put into it. The last couple of times I did it in the current Nia routine I am doing I had the class stretching the arm as far as they could reach as they wiped that table. It was a HUGE table and we wanted to wipe it all in one pass!
So what do you imagine you are doing when you do this move?
*The Nia Technique written by Debbie Rosas and Carlos Rosas
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