Dance Techniques 2010

202 Interview
more flow, become more aware, or give them a space for
attention to their sensing and experience. So in that
context I might also draw a little bit more on improvisation
to open up choices. I am not saying one thing is right
or another thing is wrong, but as dancers, we want to have
choices available to us.
How do you conceive the process of learning?
I was aware, even as a child, there were some things I
learned so much more through my dancing than I
did at school, that some of the school education was about
memorizing something and then repeating it, rather
than about thinking or working something out. So I have
been intrigued by how we learn, and have got interested
in research and writing that explores the continuum
between analytical and rational modes of thought, and
thought that is more intuitive, indirect, or poetic.
These verbal, scientific modes of processing information,
as well as notions about objectivity and truth dominate
in our society. So it feels to me our dancing–learning
can open up this different state of attention and awareness
to allow a different kind of learning to happen.
What is most important for you in teaching
your work? More and more as a teacher, I am trying to
create an environment that can facilitate learning. That
is also about using different tools to encourage this state
of openness, readiness. Using drawing or automatic
writing or partner work, or making sound. So even if I
am not dealing with improvisation, I am concerned
with an improvisational mind. How can we be in a state
of mind and body in readiness? To be open to new
experience, to new sensation? The German word stimmen
(to tune) feels useful in relation to how we work with
our body, like tuning a stringed instrument.
What feels important to the learning, for me, is immersion
over an intensive period because the information
accumulates within the body. And it needs time for new
information to first arrive in the body as sensation
or awareness, and then to be applied and tested in practice,
and then to allow another layer of information to
come in, in relationship to this. To do really thorough
partner work and swap over takes sometimes more
than one hour—and then you want to put this into movement
and practice. That is not to say that one then
continually needs so long. Once the information has been
embodied, then one can access it more quickly, more
readily. But if it is only ever met superficially, then it is
only going to be an idea in the head, not experiential
knowledge thought through the body.
How would you describe the relationship between
teacher and student? Working with dancers, I feel I am
a co-researcher at one level. Of course that depends
on the context that you are working in. Sometimes you
are with fellow professionals, so you are just the
person that holds and frames the learning space. In this
situation here, of course, it is very clear that I am the
teacher. But I really feed off the dancers’ questions, and
their observations, and their curiosity. And I am constantly
revisiting the information and learning myself.
It is not as though I think I have found something
finite and am trying to help other people find that as a
truth. It is more like a question. It feels very important
to me to continue to be a learner.
Which skills do you need in teaching this work?
It is quite a challenge, how to hold the energy in the
room, or to sometimes let the structure become looser to
allow individual exploration, which is really important
even if I am not getting clear evidence of learning at every
moment. But there are times when, as a group, you
feel the energy disperses and one needs to re-harness it. I
come with a sense of what I want to explore this day,
but I have to be ready to change direction. Sometimes
somebody’s question might really lead somewhere
interesting and be pertinent so you need to take a diversion.
And sometimes there are so many questions that they
would distract and un-focus the group’s attention.
But then again, one has to trust the process. One day
here, I allowed the partner work to take a little longer,
we took one extra step with it, following a student
question. I could predict this would take us to a deeper
place, but would be harder to bring our energy back
out from and into dancing. But the next day, I observed
the embodiment and heard the sensory feedback from
the dancers, and realized that the investment had
been worthwhile in terms of the depth of learning.
Sometimes this kind of work can be perceived as lacking
rigor, as more concerned with feeling good in ourselves,
or about personal development rather than professional
education. But there is a real progression, a clear developmental
sense to the work, and a clear sense in which one
piece of information builds on another. I might be
working on spine and I might see something not clearly
embodied in the relationship to the ground, but I have
to know that we are not dealing with that now. In this
moment I have to hold the attention on the spine and not
clutter the information. There has to be a clarity to the
journey, so that the body will be able to absorb, and if it
is too ‘noisy’, too busy for the nervous system, it won’t
be taken in so well.
Thinking about the environment for learning has
made me let go of more of the formality in terms of the
time structures and phases of a class, and to believe
that sometimes the learning is more effective if you leave
space, some unstructured time, and opportunity for exploration.
Of course it is important that you feel like you
have achieved something in a session, and that can come
through complex dancing, but also our job as teachers is
to try and facilitate the learning, not only as evidenced
in each day but over a longer time span. And sometimes