Dance Techniques 2010

152
Interview with Anna Markard and Reinhild Hoffmann
RH You can’t separate one element from another.
As already mentioned, it is the interplay between the
three elements—namely effort, time, and space—
or, in other words, between choreutics and eukinetics.
Has teaching changed over the years and
generations?
AM Yes, very much so. Nowadays I only speak about
rehearsal work with dancers in the theater. Dancers’
skills have become much greater and their horizons wider
over the last few decades. At the start of the 1970s, students
still emerged from school with some blinders. There
were dancers who believed they would lose everything
they could do if they allowed themselves, even for a moment,
to give in to weight, to sink. Today’s dancers are
open; their training has been more versatile or they have
learned a lot in rehearsals with different choreographers.
Dancers always learn a lot in rehearsals. A great
deal has changed and lots of things have become
much easier, but virtuoso technique has increased to such
an extent that it is difficult to train dancers for a piece
like The Green Table. They often fail to understand how
difficult it is to master this work, although there are
no striking variations in it. Restricting oneself and serving
a choreographic work are things that are often
very difficult to teach.
What has changed in the approach to the Jooss–
Leeder Technique as far as you are concerned?
AM The approach has nothing to do with it, that
is something else completely. We also have no time to develop
things from the ground floor up—not even to
name them. We have to use movement that has already
been composed, learn it, then make it one’s own. That is
separate from technique, unfortunately.
RH It is different with one’s own ensemble, where
one builds something up slowly, piece–by–piece. The
questions for me back then were: How to integrate
dancers in the creative process? How does one motivate
them to grapple more precisely with a theme, and on
a more theatrical basis? The process wasn’t always easy,
as the limits during discussions were often exceeded.
You say, Anna, that bravura—virtuosity—has become so
important. We wanted to get away from that back
then. When I worked with LABAN students on a section
from my choreography Dido und Aeneas—which I
created twenty-five years ago—most of them had difficulty
performing a simple movement correctly. There is a moment
in the piece where a female dancer begins curled –up
in a seated position, opens up into the space, and then
notices something, which initiates a walk across stage.
Just finding this motivation was extraordinarily difficult
for her. But such a simple movement can only come
from one’s power of imagination.
AM I am thinking how my father composed—the statement
was the most important thing for him. He sought
a shape for a theme—a language, as he called it.
That had nothing to do with a formal, technical exercise
sequence, however—for example, there are ‘eight
swings’ in all variations in the Jooss–Leeder Technique,
but when you watch Jooss’s choreographies, there
isn’t a single eight swing, or even a half of one. That
may be a simple example, but the vocabulary used when
working on the principles isn’t a choreographic vocabulary—the
choreographic vocabulary emerges anew
every time.
Where can we still see influences of the Jooss–
Leeder Technique, in your opinion?
AM There is ‘effort / shape’ in America, that is not
the same, but eukinetics plays a big role in it. Laban himself
created ‘effort’ and ‘effort / shape’. My father was
irritated that Laban did away with the clean eukinetics
/ choreutics separation and mixed the two. These values
will not be lost, even when there is little work done
with them nowadays. Forsythe, for example, works as a
choreographer with choreutics and has created new
configurations.
RH What’s important today is that one keeps talking
about the technique, and one obviously listens when
Forsythe says something about it. It is through him that
young people, who now have new media at their fingertips,
are most likely to have access to it. Forsythe ignores
eukinetics, because, for him, the work is more about
choreutics. I have heard from dancers and choreographers
that they intentionally avoid dealing with eukinetics,
as they fear too much expression and interpretation
in movement.
AM That is a misunderstanding.
RH Exactly, as it has nothing to do with expression
in the narrative sense, rather it’s more akin to phrasing in
music.
And who is still working with the method?
RH Barbara Passow was a discovery for me. I only
knew Michael Diekamp, who taught the Jooss–Leeder
Technique. Barbara carries on with this knowledge and
legacy in her own, profound way. She is a teacher who
still includes all the principles in her classes.
AM Jean Cébron is no longer active and has no successor,
although he enjoys tremendous respect. Lutz Förster
probably learned a lot from him; although I don’t
know how Lutz teaches, I can only assume that he carries
something of the technique forward.
How relevant is Jooss–Leeder for the future?
AM Very, to my mind, because the Jooss–Leeder
Technique is such an open system, there are no specialists
and no institutionalization. There was always a highly
talented individual who at some point in his or her
time worked further on these things—but other than
Barbara Passow, I don’t know of anyone at the moment.