Dance Techniques 2010

248 Concept and Ideology
Thus the technique’s objective is to holistically form the
dancer, and to teach principles that can be transferred to
other dance styles. It includes being conscious of body part
placement, as well as strengthening the connection between
mind and body (as Muller finds in Eastern thought),
and offers a basic attitude that dancers can bring into their
work.
According to Muller, dancers and choreographers
should create their art to communicate with the audience.
This means that energy flows from the dancers to
the audience, who should leave with ‘memorable images’.
Muller emphasizes that dancers must develop an awareness
about the importance of memorable images in individual
movements and their relationship to one another; this
will produce clear phrasing in which not all movements
are equally important. Ideally, a movement phrase has a
clear high point and, potentially, additional high points—
phrasing allows movement to remain in the audience’s
memory—high points are supported by movements that
either prepare for or resolve them.
Muller contends that if there is a lack of clear phrasing,
the movement sequence becomes too uniform and thus
uninteresting for an audience. Since dance is a language,
she compares the non-phrased movement sequence—in
which all movements are equally weighted—to monotone
speech. She humorously posits that the meaning gets lost
and the viewer tires when choreographies are “as flat as
Kansas”—where the landscape’s unrelenting monotony
can cause drivers to fall asleep at the wheel. Muller enjoys
using this metaphor and repeats it often when she feels
that dancers are not phrasing properly. Work on phrasing
is an essential part of Muller’s training, which is always
preparing for performance. A developed consciousness for
phrasing thus determines the quality of the dance as well.
How a movement is executed in terms of, and in relation
to, energy–work will determine the movement quality.
This is another core component of the Muller Technique.
The body should be able to execute all movement qualities,
from energized through relaxed, from floating to
grounded. Muller’s priority is that dancers be able to realize
the oppositional poles of ‘energized’ and ‘completely
drained’, and make these polarities clearly visible.
Furthermore, for Muller certain shapes have particular
attributes and / or expressive qualities. Movement quality
and emotional meaning are thus closely and specifically
related to one another; movement qualities are the basis
for communication through dance. As Muller emphasizes,
“Shapes really speak on a human level. And therefore carried
into dance, they speak even more, because they communicate
what that feeling is.”
Quality—now in the context of evaluating movement—
is defined by the movement’s credibility and the awareness
with which it is executed. Successful movement execution
can be measured by how well it is communicated or to
what measure the audience correctly read and understood
the intended communication. For Muller, unfocused and
less–engaged movements should only be performed when
a dancer wishes to express these qualities. The dancer’s
physical stature is not as important for movement quality,
as long as energy and body parts are placed and used with
precision.
Choices made in how a movement sequence is phrased,
as indicated above, play a large role in the movement quality
and, according to Muller, its successful execution. She
says, “I want to register the shape, register the next shape
so that I almost have a string of pearls. Then I can decide
my phrasing. Which shape is the important shape?
Which shape is going to come out of it, and then which
is going to serve.” The dancer should thus listen to the
phrase and mark points of interest; it is the dancer’s task
to make highpoints visible, and thus be constantly aware
and preparing for them.
A soft, ‘juicy’, grounded plié is the building block for
transitions between shapes. To achieve this, Muller draws
on her flow–of–energy principle: The plié is always associated
with a relaxation of the abdomen. 16 This ensures a
safe arrival and contains the energy one needs to rise out
of plié and continue moving.
Energy–work and movement intention are of central
importance for a dancer’s presence onstage, and Muller’s
training in ‘performance skills’ applies to both of these
elements. An energetic and clear body is preferable to
one that is indecisive and sluggish. Muller believes that a
dancer can never simply be neutral onstage—communication
is always occurring. When a dancer is ‘neutral’, unconcentrated,
or tense, these properties are communicated
to the audience. The tension, focus, and physicality that a
dancer should have is determined by the intention chosen
by the dancer. For Muller, dancers should be constantly
seeking new inspiration for their intentions.
As presence and technical skill are intertwined, Muller
trains for sustained awareness and consciousness of individual
body parts. Above and beyond this, Muller has developed
a number of exercises that she calls ‘feeling–comfortable–in–your–own–skin
exercises’. These are simple
16 See also “Understanding the Body /
Movement”, keyword ‘Center’.