Dance Techniques 2010

174 Introduction
Sabine Huschka
Introduction
“The training of a dancer is important, and this training will hopefully
benefit the dancer’s ability to learn and adapt to various movement challenges.
It will challenge dancers to function and be creative within a form
such as the one I teach…When people come to my class, I want their priority
to be to organize themselves in time and space.” 1
The research project in Linz was carried out in two phases, from 19–23
October 2009 and from 30 November–4 December 2009, under the motto
of discovering something new. In practice, this afforded students a new and
fresh perspective on their own movement repertoires. At the same time, new
collaborative possibilities were established between departments inside the
institute. During both sessions, practice and theory nurtured each other in a
lively fashion: Daniel Roberts’s workshops were rife with serious student discussion
and the time between discussions was filled with theory and in–depth
debates about Tanzplan Deutschland’s catalog of questions. The ‘journey’
was taken up in the spirit of Cunningham’s creative credo: something new
can be discovered when its intrinsic possibility is realized. 2 Daniel Roberts
(a longtime Cunningham dancer) achieved precisely this as IDA dancers
(second–year bachelor’s in contemporary stage dance and third–year master’s
program students) used the intensive two-week workshops and master
classes to explore their own kinesthetic spectrum. The project gave students
an opportunity to confront, in a concentrated situation, key issues about the
meaning and purpose of dance technique, and it provided a rich learning experience
for all involved.
A supplementary seminar given by Henner Drewes provided productive
theoretical stimuli by enabling students a more in–depth look at the principles
behind Merce Cunningham’s movement organization and compositional
1 Daniel Roberts in discussion with Sabine
Huschka in December 2009. Unless otherwise
stated, all other quotes from Roberts in this
text come from the discussions the author
had with him during this research project.
2 Sabine Huschka: Merce Cunningham
und der Moderne Tanz. Körperkonzepte,
Choreographie und Tanzästhetik. Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 2000, p. 378.