Dance Techniques 2010

16
Introduction
The research sites
All university dance departments in Germany, as well as a few foreign dance
departments, were invited to take part. In an open dialog with interested
institutions in 2007, we discussed participation and a respective thematic direction.
Once Tanzplan Deutschland assigned the universities a fixed budget,
the first task (of phase one) was to choose the experts and assemble research
teams. Individual institutions were able to work with a renowned contemporary
or modern dance educator who was interesting for them. Decisions were
made in consultation with Tanzplan and the university, taking the artistic
profile of the respective training location into account. The aim of the entire
project was to examine a diversity of approaches to dance technique while,
at the same time, stimulating an exchange among practitioners, theoreticians,
teachers, and students. It was never intended that this project provide a comprehensive
survey of dance techniques or teaching models and include taste
or history in its scope, nor was it intended to be conclusive. However, when
choosing our experts, we ensured that the projects were related to modern
dance, the emergence of postmodern dance, as well as to the hybrid dance
forms that exist in both the U.S. and Europe. Individual projects are categorized
by experts’ first names so as to avoid any form of hierarchy or historical
classification.
The texts have been developed either by teams of authors or by a single
author, but in all cases students, teachers, and experts were involved. At the
Institute of Dance Arts Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz and at the
Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, students contributed to
the research not only as observers of the process but also as participants;
they were also encouraged to provide reflections and written analyses as part
of a theory–based framing for their project. The invited experts were also
involved in the writing process, for example at the Inter–University Center
for Dance—Pilot Project Tanzplan Berlin. University scholars (like the newly
appointed dance studies professor at the University for Music and Dance
13 See pp. 24–27.
14 The questions for the chapter Understanding
the Body / Movement are based on,
among others, Rudolf von Laban’s movement
analysis theories and on Claudia Jeschke’s
“Inventarisierung von Bewegung” (Inventory
of Movement). Regarding these methods,
see Wibke Hartewig’s contribution
Observation Techniques.