Dance Techniques 2010

Working Somatically
139
Work on the Human Being Elsa Gindler, Heinrich Jacoby
Elsa Gindler (1885–1961) first demanded quietude (Stillwerden) from her pupils in 1917.
She wanted them to “accept and recognize what we are feeling and sensing,”as the body
is “one large experiential organ.” Having taken Hede Kallmeyer’s ‘harmonious gymnastic’
courses in Berlin, Gindler encouraged people to develop sensory awareness and interest
in themselves by getting to know themselves on a deeper and more authentic level. She
did not need a method or a theory. Instead of exercises, she called her approach ‘experimental
self–observation’—coming to terms with the dynamics of gravity, with habitual
thoughts and tensions, and work on the human being. “What ‘drive’ for dancing and
jumping, and how little real ‘drive’ in everyday work.” 9 Although her teaching was improvisational
and radical in the freedom she took, Gindler influenced the arts in the same
way as psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy, concentrative movement therapy, and the work
of pediatrician Emmi Pikler on child development. She never corrected her pupils. The
essence of her ‘experimental arrangements’, which went far beyond movement exercises,
can still be seen today in exchanges of experience in working groups. The participants
determine a theme and do not follow a set pattern.
Gindler was heavily influenced by the musician and gifted researcher, Heinrich Jacoby
(1889–1964)—and he by her. He called ‘receptive’ listening, looking, tasting, and touching
‘antenna–like behavior’ and propounded ‘self–re-education’ in order for a person to
become aware of restrictive behavioral patterns and thereby recognize what proves to be
correct, how it comes about, and why. Only experience counted for Jacoby, not knowledge.
After turning away from Dalcroze, he concentrated (like Feldenkrais later) on the
relationship between movement, fear, and perceived inability rooted in early child–rearing
errors that hinder the blossoming of talent. This gave Gindler’s intuitive body–work
analytical dimensions, including one of practical self–help in an era of war and persecution.
For Jacoby, ‘functional questioning and task–setting’—for example, when speaking,
playing music, and drawing—was also part of working on oneself when carrying out
simple actions such as walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, as well as when experiencing
load, thrust, and gravity.
Elsa Gindler shied away from working with people who had been conditioned by
dance techniques. “They have to forget what they have learned, and that is the hardest
thing to do. What we have learned appears stronger than our own nature, and our own
nature is repressed by it.” 10 Working with Gindler, the dancer Gertrud Falke was lucky
to experience how effort can be “reduced to its most simple form.” Kurt Jooss brought
Falke to Dartington Hall where he had resettled. Falke established ‘awareness’ as a new
subject at the Jooss–Leeder School, where she taught: “…the sensing of the self is no
technique and is nothing dramatic. It is very simple, and therein lies the difficulty.” 11
Other Gindler students also fled Germany. In the USA, Charlotte Selver developed
Sensory Awareness, influenced by the philosopher Alan Watts and Zen philosophy. Gindler’s
spiritual legacy can also be found in Israeli dance. Lotte Kristeller passed on her
knowledge to Amos Hetz, who is still incorporating her particular use of balls, batons,
contact, and peripheral seeing in his playful exercises today.
11 “…daß dieses Sich-selbst-Spüren keine
Technik ist und auch nichts Dramatisches.
Es ist sehr einfach, und darin liegt die Schwierigkeit.”:
Gertrud Falke Heller in Zeitler,
loc. cit., p. 83.