Dance Techniques 2010

Barbara Passow — Jooss–Leeder Technique
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Target group: Barbara Passow teaches her version of
the Jooss–Leeder Technique primarily to students at the
Palucca Schule Dresden—Hochschule für Tanz, as well as
to ambitious amateurs who regularly take classes with her.
Group classes (as opposed to private instruction) make
the most sense. The teaching can be varied in its degree
of difficulty by increasing or decreasing the complexity of
coordination along with the demands for flexibility, balance,
strength, speed, and rhythm. Passow recommends
four years of intensive involvement with the technique
for dance career. Generally, the incorporation of so many
different components will depend upon various factors—
such as previous training, talent, and training frequency—
meaning that a specific time frame for learning must be
determined on an case–by–case basis. Previous knowledge
of ballet and modern dance are helpful.
Noticeable progress was made during the fifteen–day
workshop in London, including improved differentiation
in the execution of movement phrases and more volume
was seen in swings, steps, and suspensions. Movement
expression also changed to a stronger, more outwardly
directed presence.
The approach to the work employs mimetic learning,
i.e., emulation. It is thus configured as a mirroring activity
through which predetermined dance forms, phrases, and
exercises are learned and embodied. Passow demonstrated
and discussed a many–layered ideal, using internal and
external images to orient the dancers. Partner work and
small improvisational explorations provided experiential
leeway that fostered technical improvement and strengthened
sensitivity for movement. The class is teacher–centered.
Learning is product–oriented in terms of movement
acquisition, while the development of the dancer’s self–
image is clearly process–oriented.
Passow keeps an eye on the individual and the collective
state of the class, and takes this into consideration when
making decisions about feedback, demands, forbearance,
and motivation. By paying attention to each dancer, she
functions as a partner on the student’s learning path.
Her approach to work requires that the students, for
their part, be willing to put effort into learning, actively
cooperate, and to conform to the given teaching structure.
Passow is always physically present in her students’
learning process. She is more than a witness to her students’
processes in picking up movement; she consciously,
actively, and sensitively engages in a learning process
wherein she is extremely present and in which (depending
on the situation) she alternates between personal attention,
joining her students in the exercise, and concentrated
observation. Passow supports her students, using her presence
to help them to find and maintain focus.
Pedagogical Methods
The lesson structure, as seen during the London project, 30
consisted of six sections (with a total of nine to eleven exercises)
plus a combination that, in part, included elements
from the current learning unit:
1. Movement in place; steps including torso and
arm movements
2. Moving sideways through the space
3. Diagonals
4. Frontal circles, i.e., strew and scoop circles
5. Combinations of the above exercise elements
6. Jumps across the diagonal
7. Combinations
This more or less traditional class structure was varied by
interspersing partner exercises, among other things. Training
was successively and progressively structured according
to the thematic emphases named above.
From a scholarly perspective, this technique specifically
addresses rhythmic ability as a subsection of ‘coordinative
abilities’: 31
→ The ability to perceive rhythm through an individual’s
motor abilities (kinesthetic) and realize such through
the following approaches:
› Demonstration of new movement sequences using
individual phrases, initially without music.
› Recognizing dynamic structure to improve the
execution and quality of movement sequences.
› Determining and training quantitative and
qualitative attributes.
› Attuning what is heard to one’s own motor rhythms
in movement, with frequent repetitions to music,
among other things.
The body should adapt a rhythmic flow to the music.
→ Variation of specific rhythmic processes according to
dynamic, temporal, or spatial criteria.
from the skeleton and its muscular support.”
See on this Daniel Lewis: Illustrierte Tanztechnik
von José Limón. Wilhelmshaven: Florian
Noetzel Verlag, 1990, p. 207.
29 Additional teaching goals can be deduced
from the technique’s central movement
characteristics; see the section Movement
Characteristics and Physicality under Understanding
the Body / Movement.
30 See the DVDs and Class Plan on DVD 1.
31 Coordinative abilities is the “collective
term for the conditions determined by information–reception
and information–processing
processes necessary for realizing movement.”
According to Hirtz, coordinative abilities
include balance, responsiveness, rhythmic
ability, being able to spatially orient oneself,
and kinesthetic differentiation. Hirtz in
Prohl / Röthig 2003, p. 308.