Dance Techniques 2010

Jennifer Muller — Muller Technique
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The barre is essential in your class? Absolutely,
because it is one of the best systems of training for the
legs—except we do it very differently. I studied modern
techniques in which one did the entire class in the center
of the room. I found improvement much slower than
working with a barre. You can really work on your legs,
on every single part of the leg. Barre work is logically
developed to strengthen the legs. Why not, then, take that
basic structure and approach it differently by adding
the change of energy? One leg filling up, one leg draining
down, so that there is a rain of energy—like rain drops
coming down and out through your toes. So we work
very strongly on a lot of principles of the technique during
the time we are at barre.
Where do you see the future for this technique?
I believe very deeply that the technique is the most positive
approach that you can take for your body and for your
dancing. It gives you a long life as a dancer, it gives you a
range of dynamics in movement and a very deep knowledge
of your body. Within one or two years, the body
changes through the knowledge of how to sculpt the body,
how to place the energy, and how to work with the
energy. And there is an awareness that goes along with it,
an awareness of what you are doing, of the potential
of your body, of the drama and the spirit inside your body.
Also, a lot of personal work goes along with it because
we do a tremendous amount of visualization—a tremendous
amount of spirit and heart–joining movement.
From your experience and knowledge,
what would you like to tell young people who are
learning to dance today? Not to get stuck in a
narrow band of the way they dance, the way they perform.
Do the research, do the investigation. When I was
growing up, I was very lucky to have distinctly different
companies in existence; you immediately understood
there were many ways to approach dance. Today it seems
we are accepting only a small range of what is acceptable
in terms of movement, or the way contemporary
dance should look. The choreographers who are beginning
to create have the idea there is only one or two acceptable
ways. I find that extremely dangerous. They are not
going to take on their own discovery, find something
original. We are going to lose the new voices, the unique
voices. When I was young I had so many different
examples in front of me. I realized I had to find my own
way, find out what I believed, what I wanted to say
and how I wanted to say it—to find out what felt true
and right to me.
Where is it taught? And where could, or should,
it be taught in the future? There are the direct descendants—some
of my early alumni, the founding and
senior members of the company—who have been
teaching for many years now at different universities in
the U.S., also in places in Europe and Japan, in Canada,
and in South America. Some have opened schools.
And there are people who do variations of the technique
all over.
Some former members of the company were, for a
long time, trying to get me to certify people who taught
the technique. And my executive director also would
like to see that happen so people would have to deeply
study it and would then be accredited to teach it. I
think it is less controllable than that. I went to set a piece
on a repertory company a long time ago and the director
told me, ‘I am teaching Muller Technique.’ He studied
with me for a short time and wanted to teach what he
knew of it, but it wasn’t even close. Is that bad? I don’t
know. It retains something of it. I think it is almost
impossible to control it.