Dance Techniques 2010

10 Introduction
Ingo Diehl, Friederike Lampert
Introduction
“Thinking about dance technique has
been almost taboo in recent years. That
is something that needs to change.”
Anouk van Dijk
Contemporary dance is characterized
by many styles and ways of working,
and the different types of training each
have a unique role to play. Dance teachers
can source a hybrid network of dance forms and body–work techniques,
along with presentation methods and teaching forms. Yet, at the same time, the
method of training contributes to the style: the way of working informs any individual
artistic practice. How do these factors relate to one another?
What exactly do contemporary and modern dance teachers teach? What
influences factor into a teacher’s fusion of material? What is the relationship
between artistic production / process and technique? Might we be even more
general and ask: How do we define dance technique today? And, moreover,
what constitutes good teaching?
Until now there has been no comparative study examining practices employed
by contemporary and modern dance educators, a fact that became
clear during our initial research in 2007. This publication intends to close
this gap—and can be seen as the beginning, not the end, of practice–based
research into dance. For three years we worked and researched with approximately
one-hundred-and-eighty participants in dance departments at seven
universities. Our aim was to look at both artists’ and educators’ practice,
as well as theoretical approaches taken by dance scholars. Our goal was to
learn more about the histories and contexts of contemporary dance techniques,
about approaches taken toward the body and movement, and about
the principles behind the teaching methods. Our ultimate goal was to make
this knowledge available.
1 Practice here refers to the knowledge
of dancers, choreographers, and dance
educators in relation to physical and mental
processes, as well as dancing itself.
2 Theory here refers to the contextualization,
written documentation, and analysis carried
out in the field of dance studies.
3 Edith Boxberger, Pirkko Husemann,
Claudia Jeschke, and Antje Klinge.
4 Scott deLahunta, Nik Haffner,
Andrea Keiz, Yoann Trellu.
5 Alan Danielson, Anouk van Dijk,
Barbara Passow, Daniel Roberts,
Gill Clarke, Jennifer Muller, Lance Gries.