Dance Techniques 2010

Gill Clarke — Minding Motion
201
my making movement. I really enjoy the hands–on work
that I do now, and I feel that is very influenced by
what I learned through Alexander lessons—something
about trying to notice what is going on in the tissues of
a body through touch, rather than look at the shape and
adjust it. Feldenkrais—which I also studied—works in
a very different way; it works with complex coordinations,
which felt like a great puzzle for the mind and body. It
felt a great way of noticing one’s habitual patterns and being
able to find more choices. It works a lot through
three–dimensionality and spiralling and connectivity, and
also with noticing, perceiving the tiniest movement. If
you can differentiate at that level, then you can expand
that clarity through the body.
And then I got interested, through the Klein work and
ideokinesis, in the power of the imagination and the
visualization of our skeletal structure. For example, it was
striking to me that from ten days of morning class
with Jeremy Nelson, who was working very simply but
very clear in his direction of the skeleton in space, I
felt dramatic changes in how my body was organizing
itself. I thought, ‘How can this be possible?’ I had assumed
improvement came through physical practice. This
was before brain research became so popular, but it
was obvious when I started thinking about it, when I read
about it, that our mind is the director of our intentioned
movement. So what we have to influence to change
our movement is how we are thinking, and to clarify
the intention that we send through our body to direct
our bony structure in space. And then we are more likely
to access the deep, supporting muscle. That was a great
stimulant to my own reading, and to the desire to understand,
and to my teaching.
The initial phase of my class has become simpler and
simpler because what I am interested in is not, like a
Cunningham class, challenging the coordinating and memorizing
brain, but having some form that each day we
can take a different attention to. So one day I am taking
my attention to the spine, and another day I might be
thinking into the hip sockets. So by having a form that is
familiar, although never the same, you are not distracted
by wondering what comes next. I am really trying to
be in the present moment of noticing, refining, tuning the
awareness inside the body. And then later comes a complex
sequence that is unfamiliar, as a vehicle through
which to try and apply that information and attention.
Other influences have been the work of Lisa Nelson,
of Eva Karczag, and Deborah Hay. All of these, in different
ways, are working with perception and attention, and
refining awareness of our movement—and these areas intrigue
me. There are many, many people I have learnt
from! I always continued teaching through the year. With
Siobhan’s company, we only worked for about six months
in the year. In between I would perform and teach elsewhere,
in different parts of Europe or with British Council
outside Europe, and I would go and learn elsewhere.
Are there new influences on your work? More and
more, my reading influences the teaching—trying to understand
the work, the experiments, the research that is
happening in cognitive science, for example. That might be
about how the mind relates to the body, about perception,
about attention. Also I have become concerned not to
separate our dancing from the world and, in this context,
have become interested in anthropology and social sciences.
I am also interested in how our dancing evolves
through social interactions; it is an oral tradition like folk
music, and we don’t often acknowledge that. We think
of pure styles, but in fact, everything is hybrid in a way.
We are all being influenced by the movement exchanges
and conversations we have in the studio every day.
You mentioned different worlds of training in the
UK. How did these worlds develop? Did they in-
form each other? Training in the UK developed very
strongly in the late 1970s and 80s. The Graham work
came a bit earlier, and then Cunningham took over, and
still those techniques are taught now. Release Technique
is also a strong strand. But that is a confusing term
that needs clarifying: It is not Skinner Releasing technique
developed by Joan Skinner, although that is also
popular in the UK, but usually indicates a formal training
influenced by somatic approaches in the sense that what
becomes important is the sensing experience of the dancer,
and not only the form and the line. So there is a lot of
that work happening in the UK, which I would say is enriching
the UK dancing. It is enabling audiences to enjoy
dance as the playing out of the intelligence in the body,
beyond the disciplined imprint of a technique or style.
I feel these two worlds that I once saw as so separate
have now been bridged. There was a complexity of
articulation offered through more technical approaches
(although sometimes the muscular tension remained
a little monochrome in its tone quality), and then the quality–shifts
and individuality and textures that this other
work has been exploring. Both have informed current
work. So I think the bridge is an exciting place to be!
How would you label what you are doing, and what
are the aspects you stress in your work? I tend to
resist giving a label to what I do because I think the term
Release Technique can be very misleading. ‘Release’
can be misunderstood as meaning ‘relax’. What I teach is
clearly grounded in refining awareness of the body
in movement, in experiential anatomy, relation to gravity,
integration. Yet how and what I teach is very influenced
by the context I find myself in, by the people that I
am teaching and what they have done before, and what
they are wanting to be able to do as well as my reading
of their bodies in movement.
Often I am teaching people who have trained in more
formal techniques, and I can provide an opportunity
for them to let some unnecessary muscular tension go, find