Dance Techniques 2010

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Teaching: Principles and Methodology
It is also important to slowly bring movement into these
newly sensed connections; the freshly developed, delicate
interplay between the skeleton’s support, the freedom of
the joints, and harmonious muscle activity should not be
endangered.
In order not to be seduced by the outside world’s demands
for ‘more’ or ‘bigger’, Gries instructs, “Don’t dance
out of your range. Respect your range.” One should not
move beyond personal limits of integrated body organization,
since this can lead to lopsided stresses and to an
increased risk of injury over time.
Unidirectional attention on a body region, for instance,
or overly intense concentration on an exercise is not beneficial.
“You should distribute your abundance.” And as
detailed as Gries can be in his information, parts must be
studied by going back to the whole. Students react to his
recurrent instruction “globalize your sensation,” by sensing
throughout their entire bodies, and perceiving each
part as being equally important and thereby integrated
into the consciousness and the movement.
Repetition of a short hold in the movement allows participants
to practice non-doing, namely to do nothing out
of habit, to mindfully pause and come to a new solution
either through kinesthetic memory or a mental instruction
bringing new information.
Gries often says, “Don’t prepare.” Dancers should not
prepare—not save their presence for dancing correctly or
execute the warm–up with reduced attentiveness. Dancers
should live in the dance in each and every moment, without
thinking that they must do something else beforehand,
for instance take up a tensed stance, hold their breath or
become stiffer. This internal freezing up interrupts the energy
flow.
Gries eschews imitation as a learning path for the most
part; to a greater degree, he allows participants to feel out
differences through improvisation and body–work. To
accomplish this, he alternates between complex and simple
exercises. A quiet, internally oriented exercise can be
followed by an outwardly oriented group improvisation.
A complex series of movements can conversely be interrupted
with meticulous detail work. While the specific
movement specifications may be simple in their outward
form, their interconnectedness is complex.
One example: students practice getting up from a stool.
The concentration on this simple activity enables them to
identify when and how individual body parts edge forward
in every phase of standing up, and when they are under
too much tension. They practice releasing excess tension
and returning to a multidirectional alignment. They learn
that the entire body must change at every moment, and
that they cannot hold on to anything.
Along with an exemplary embodiment of Release principles,
workshop leaders also require the skills and abilities
that include risk–taking and decision–making in situ.
If improvisations come to a standstill, Gries steps into the
dancing. He adapts his plans constantly—starting from a
change in word choice for anatomical details on down to
the choice of the next work topic.
Regular discussion rounds between all participants are
key elements. The teacher must therefore be aware of social
processes and deal with conflicts in the group, which
requires a sensibility for when intervention is necessary.
What the Frankfurt research team found more important,
however, was the leader’s trust and patience in leaving
participants alone, even in frustrating learning phases,
and not interrupting the autonomous learning process—
except when asked for assistance.
Gries explains the skills required of him as follows: that
he, with his own body–mind, is able to sense small changes
in participants’ anatomy, energy, and cognizance; then the
ability to induce small changes in anatomy, energy, and
cognizance with his own hands and / or instructions; and
finally, the artistic temperament to trust the unknown and
to follow it, even in unproductive lines of research. And,
when teaching, to recognize what is artistic, and pursue it.
Rhythm and motor learning are not determined through
music, rather by use of the teacher’s voice, which is always
present. Gries’s calm voice promotes easygoing concentration,
an affirmative attitude toward the working process,
and patient inner–sensing. Participants experience a high
degree of freedom to pursue embodiment 27 of technical
skills—as wild or gentle, complex or simple, as appropriate
to themselves and their individual bodies. There is a
very narrow dividing line between a pace that supports
movement research and one that, because it is overly self–
reflective, is too slow and inhibits opening. That is why a
slow phase for re-organizational processes is followed by
time ‘just to move’. Seldom–used live music, or often recorded
music brings participants to a high physical energy
level that supports quick and light movement over a large
radius. Musical qualities that suggest lightness encourage
the muscles to work with less tension.
Conceived by Gries as a holistic body–mind development,
his Release Technique offers differentiated tools
for self–observation and self–determined changes that
27 Embodiment means the incorporation of
thoughts, ideas, and knowledge of a sensory–
physical and holistic experience and has been
used in American body–awareness methods
for the past several decades.
28 See: Understanding the Body / Movement;
Movement Characteristics and Physicality.