Dance Techniques 2010

280 Concept and Ideology
The concept includes a complimentary term: receive. This
is not about, for example, one partner supporting the
other so that he or she can hold a certain position, nor is
it about lifting the other’s weight. Receiving always contains
a yielding, a giving in and abandoning oneself. Essentially,
the idea means that both partners enter an exchange
through touch that connects them to their environment.
According to this, the body’s multidimensionality has
a direct impact on general questions of human existence.
How the body is placed in space has an effect on one’s
behavior in society. Questions of gender do not play a
role here.
Being able to accept and give: this accentuates the fundamental
connectedness of the body with the space. The
space is always being actively perceived. In doing so, the
eyes and sense of sight do not play the central role. Sensing
the space behind one’s back and integrating it into the action
means to feel it, to receive it through proprioception
and kinesthetic sensibilities. The space is the body’s partner
in that it supports the body (i.e., as though surrounded
by and suspended in spherical modules), and in which the
direction of movement continues. This is not about controlling
the space. Allowing something to happen means
ignoring oneself and one’s own interests in order to be
available to a larger, societal body. Participants should be
able to gain an inner distance to their own importance and
emotionality. Watching the sequence of exercises in Gries’s
class, one can read a type of developmental pattern tracing
human development from infant to upright–standing
adult. The exercises begin laying on one’s back, continue
crawling on all fours, on to the body standing upright—
but with its lines of energy leading back down to the floor.
Music does not play a role in this movement research
process. As such, exercises are not counted. Music can
however be used in order to lead the group to another
form of energy, to allow students to react to something
external with their own internal rhythm. In this case, the
music acts as an additional partner. On the other hand,
a live musician—a percussionist would be preferred—can
support the work on more complex movement phrases
that are based on quick and direct directional alignments.
Intent
Release and Alignment Oriented Technique as taught by
Gries does not have a predetermined aesthetic; it provides
the students with tools for self–development. The work promotes
the notion that the parenthetical, the everyday, effortlessness,
lightness, and the alleged simplicity of movement
is an art. The resulting aesthetic is an anti-aesthetic when
measured against the classic definitions such as a ‘beautiful
appearance’ or the ‘sensual presentation of an idea’.
The idea of dance conveyed here does not present an
image of the body as a product that can be worked towards
or achieved—nor is it a predefined idea that the
body must express. The dance is understood as a fundamental
tool with which one can work on perception and
change the consciousness
of the body. Such a body
can, as described above, act
differently in society and is
open to other experiences.
The approach to art is
thus based on the fundamental
permeability of art
and life. Art is no longer
primarily understood as a
finished work that conveys
timeless values or archetypal
conflicts. This art,
rather, provides a disposition
or a field of perception
with which the audience
can interact, especially because
the art is not categorically
separated from its life
context. The goal is also
to perceive the everyday as
beautiful, and to shape it. This tendency was evident in
the 1960s and 1970s, in the Judson Dance Theater experiments
and the work of the improvisation collective Grand
Union, who considered performances to be more a presentation
of research results than a dance performance. This
is why events often took place in non-theatrical spaces