Dance Techniques 2010

212 Concept and Ideology
Gill Clarke, Franz Anton Cramer, Gisela Müller
Concept and Ideology
Imagining the Body
“The body has acquired, through and for this explorative
work, the status of a ‘laboratory’ of sorts. The
body is considered a realm of possibilities that are being
explored, combined, and (if possible) integrated into a
movement form that claims to work with the individual
body rather than against it.“ group comment
Minding Motion work is based upon the notion of the
dancer as an investigative artist whose creative medium
is their own moving, sensing, thinking ‘self’. The work,
therefore, does not aim to transmit notions of right and
wrong ways to move or ‘look’, but rather to support a
dancer’s embodied understanding and awareness of their
own movement. Through processes of attention and discrimination,
it seeks to open up the choices available to
the individual dancer in how they organize themselves—
whether this be in response to their own conscious intention
/ direction, or in the movement they allow to arise
spontaneously.
In this sense, there is a political element to the Minding
Motion work because it aims to support the self–determination
of dancers and dance–makers. It views dancers
as experts in movement who bring their embodied
knowledge and imagination to actively collaborate in the
creative process, and who then act as agents in the communication
of the work through performance. It also sees
dance–makers as autonomous investigative artists / movement
researchers who will devise their own ways of working
and new movement forms.
The approach builds on a framework of embodied
study of the dynamic, articulating skeleton, yet its focus
is neither biomechanical nor aimed at an abstract knowledge
of anatomy for its own sake. Instead, through the
skeletal / anatomical / structural lens, a multidimensional
view of volume, integration, and energy is introduced and
emphasized. This perspective is reinforced by an appreciation
of dancing as a play with gravity, through a process
of continual, tiny adaptations and more conscious decision–making.
The skeletal structure is seen as deep support, yet the
bones are also seen as spacers within the body system giving
direction into space, with the limbs easefully articulating
in generous arcs around oiled joints. Compression
support through the skeletal structure to the ground is
explored, but so too is tensegrity 7 and the support that
comes from a multiplicity of directions, i.e., down through
the ground and out into three–dimensional space. In this
way, a balance of attention and an interconnectedness is
emphasized between concepts that could appear to be in
opposition: between groundedness and lightness (a sense
of a downward force and a suspension in the field of gravity),
between the settling of limbs deep through the hip
and shoulder joints towards the central support of the
spine and their clear reaching out into space.
The articulated skeleton provides a structured framework
for Minding Motion’s exploratory journey through
the moving body. Yet whilst consideration of particular
aspects of the skeleton might remain the explicit vehicle or
entry point for visualizations and explorations, other layers
of information are more subtly introduced. These include
attention to a felt sense of volume or expansiveness
in movement through internal support offered by organ
and connective tissue tone, and to the three–dimensional
sequencing supported by fascial layers that connect superficial
and deeper layers to closer and more distant locations
in the body. 8 This latter quality is often referred to
within the work as a process of ‘ungluing’, of teasing apart
layers that have become stuck together.
All individuals develop movement habits that become
the unconscious default mode in patterning daily movement
and dancing, otherwise no action would become
automatic and there would not be enough brain capacity
to keep developing new and more complex skills. Dancers
often think, however, that what restricts their range of
movement is a physical limitation and that this is what
they must overcome. Yet it can be the mental image of the
body that constrains movement choices. This could be, for
example, through a misplaced image about where the hip
sockets are located, or a pattern of use resulting from compensation
following an injury that then becomes habitual,
or from general poor use repeated over time until it comes
to feel normal. If one can visualize an action differently
and thereby direct a different intention through the body,
then the body will, in its complexity, organize itself more
effectively and produce the intended result more efficiently
than if an effort is made to consciously control the detail
of its activation. 9
7 Tensegrity is composed of the two terms
tensile and integrity. ‘It refers to structures
that maintain their integrity due primarily to a
balance of continuous tensile forces through
the structure.’ (See Myers, 2001)
8 See Juhan, 2003.
9 This approach is based on ideokinesis, a key
practice for somatic research.
10 ‘Whenever I quiet the persistent chatter
of words within my head, I find this silent
or wordless dance always already going on.’
(Abrams, 1997, p. 53; see also Lefebvre, 2004)