Dance Techniques 2010

154
Interview with Katharine Sehnert
Why did you continue to use Wigman’s method or
technique? Wigman’s teaching method was so open—
constantly changing and in a state of flux. When I started
studying, one still thought one was entering a world of
late expressionism. But that changed quickly, as we didn’t
want anything more to do with pathos and feelings. We
still moved in this way, but we already had a completely
different approach, a completely different attitude to
movement. And we worked on becoming more technical.
That was also the reason why I took ballet classes. This
escape from pathos also led to our taking off the long
skirts in class, at least in technique classes, simply so that
you can see the legwork. And we no longer shied away
from lifting the leg as high as we could back then (laugh).
Producing or even paying attention to such technical
skills were not at all important for Mary—she was looking
for something completely different. We also cut our
hair and wore tight–fitting tops. We focused on the body
and tried to shape it into pure movement, pure shapes.
How would you describe Wigman’s influence on
your work? I think it is definitely there, because everything
I did afterward was built upon it. You got the
basics from her: namely what it means to dance, what
comprises movement, how you recognize its structure, its
dynamic, where movement comes from, and what it
can express. That is what we learned from her. The body
was seen and addressed holistically. And wherever one
went in the course of one’s life, you could build on this
training, which meant finding one’s way relatively quickly
in any other technique. You may not have been fully
faithful to the style, but you knew straight away that something
‘comes from there’ and that something ‘goes
there’, and so it was easier to grasp a movement sequence
quickly.
This is how it was when I went to the then dance
mecca, New York, and trained at the Limón Studio.
There I thought, ‘Oh, the swing! That was a part of
Wigman’s teaching, and here is an entire technique built
on it! The people can’t do anything else. They can’t vibrate
or glide because they only move in their swing–fall–
break way.’ I thought that we had had the best training
with Wigman because we experienced a wide range of
movement; it was up to the individual how far he or she
fleshed it out or used it.
We used to hold it against Wigman that she had not
developed a system, that she had not systematized her
teaching methods. What one learned depended upon the
respective teacher and how this teacher had internalized
the material and passed it along. Every class was different.
And if you were not in class or did not give one
hundred percent, then you missed something. That was
also a good lesson: Always get fully involved with
everything available, have one-hundred-percent presence.
What does Wigman mean for your work today?
I have internalized it all to such an extent that I really
couldn’t say whether this or that movement comes from
Wigman. But this approach was never part of the
training anyway. For Wigman, it was about developing
the student’s own creative potential, and of course,
about training the body so it functioned as an instrument.
That was her concern—that the student master and
control the body as an instrument, even in seemingly uncontrolled
movements, and knows at all times what
he or she is doing, along with why and how it is being
done. So I cannot say at all, when I develop movements,
that this or that movement is a Wigman movement.
It is now my movement, though it has, in a
sense, been nourished by Wigman’s ‘mother’s milk’ (laugh).
I have tried out a lot, for example I have also done
Graham. One asks oneself, ‘Is that my thing? Can I
identify with it?’ And then one does something else. There
may be other elements that have flowed into my work,
but again, these have been discovered and made into
my own. I am not oblivious to outside impressions, but
I have worked continuously on this analytical path,
on this consideration of movement, and I have therefore
drawn a certain line through time, regardless of the
current zeitgeist. I was always more interested in creating
and the creative process than in the end–result. I have
never worked toward a certain end–result but constantly
tried to discover where the logic in the movement lies,
and what emerges from it. That also harks back to
Wigman’s legacy.
You also taught and still teach. How would you
describe the connection with the Wigman legacy?
Here, too, I have always tried—apart from in my technical
training—to get students to recognize correlations
and relationships. Why is someone doing this movement,
now, exactly? And what does it produce? What could
follow? I teach awareness of what one is doing, not just
copying movements. A dancer has to find his or her
own way to this technique and ask themself what he
or she wants with it. We never worked with etudes,
and also never used a mirror. There was no mirror in the
Wigman Studio. I had one in my studio, but it was
always covered (laugh). When I see people training today,
they all stand in front of the mirror—even the teacher
looks into the mirror—and the students stand behind and
copy. I find this a terrible way to communicate.
Would you describe what you teach as being ‘in
the Wigman tradition’? No. I would never call it that.
The tradition in which one teaches something is not
at all important. There are no Expressionist dancers any
more, as time has moved on. And back then, when it
was still called Expressionist dance, it was contemporary
dance as it existed in its own era. Each era has its own
terminology and imagery. The tools of the trade are