Dance Techniques 2010

270 Interview
compilation of quotations by some people about whom
one could say their work fell into the Release category
because of their history, of their lineage—but then that
person would say, ‘No, my work is not Release Technique.’
So people had a different reaction to being part
of a classification. I personally don’t feel any conflict
being inside the classification or not, but I think it is important
that people understand how messy, how crazy
the classification is, how difficult it is to pinpoint. And it
is really important that people understand the difference
between Trisha Brown repertory and a technique
that allows you to do better at performing repertory.
When I am able to be with a group of students longer,
then I do some kind of historical building, perhaps
introducing some repertory, and I try to emphasize that
before Release work became so associated with a
style of movement, there were other options. There was
simple pedestrian information and people who worked
with images, people who did other kinds of crazy
improvisation that fell into Release Technique. Overall,
I believe there is something that is constant about
this research that is beyond a style or quality of moving—
something about coming back to the reality of the
body and the functioning of the body and trying to understand
it better, trying to make it more efficient,
more elegant, more personal. Almost all of these people,
like F.M. Alexander, are trying to get back to some
holistic balance in the function of the body—to the anatomical
base, the relationship between awareness
and function.
What do you like about training, and what not?
When I am teaching, I get full of new thoughts and new
ideas. It is hard to find a balance between just letting
things be okay and trying to come up with new adventures.
When I exchange ideas in a group and I understand
that a person thinks differently, then, how am I going to
help? An idea of Release is that the body is working
in multi-directions and the thoughts and awareness are
working in multi-directions so we cannot get too
rigid in one idea—which has to do with also learning
that every person has a different point of view.
What is difficult about teaching is that I have a hard time
turning my head off. Also, it is difficult to make a
separation between teaching and research and making
art. There is a categorization, still perceived and
enforced, that teaching is only a pedagogical experience,
sometimes a research experience, and rarely an artistic
experience. Sometimes I even see it from the student’s
side: Are we researching now? Are we learning?
For me, it is all–together.
What is most important in teaching your work?
Hopefully a teacher might sense, if working one–to–one,
how the student can accept certain information. I can
listen to how the other person is organised, and can say,
‘Maybe you feel it this way.’ I think I’m trying harder
now because there is also a different generation of
dancers; there is a resistance, they don’t want to be told
what to do. There is no didactic way of giving information,
and I have to be able to accept that one person’s
entry point is different than another person’s entry point.
I am thinking more and more that information is not
fixed. Information is not the truth. Information is here to
be tasted and worked with.
What does that mean for you as a teacher?
I have to realize that some information that, for
me, seems very precise and necessary is not necessarily
the truth for someone else. I ask people to always
consider the question: How are you building your support
system? On an individual basis, the student is
responsible for building knowledge in a way that works
well for him or her.
I find that to be a real responsibility for the student.
Hopefully the dialogue, what we research in class,
and connecting it to what the student has researched or
learned in the past, creates something. In terms of
Release work specifically, I offer this very open idea: The
initiation, or the key to a sensation of release, can
start in many different places, and it is different for different
people. In terms of the physical sensation of release,
or in terms of the psychological sensation of release, I find
there are different keys for each person. It is an individual’s
responsibility to find what those are. I am there
to give lots of information and to be helpful in guiding
each person towards that. I think it is a part of the work,
in general, that there be a personal responsibility to
developing a web of information that takes the student to
the next level and supports the release experience.
What has changed in your teaching over
the years? The way my teaching has changed is
pretty much what I just articulated, which is a kind of
trusting that the information I put into the room
does not have to be the final information. And that the
information is out there for all of us to work with
in a mode of research, of personal responsibility. That
modality really changed a lot in the last twenty years—
along with the confidence that I now have to let go
of my own information in a way.