Dance Techniques 2010

292 Teaching: Principles and Methodology
next instruction. If presenting dance material, his facile
movement demonstrations provide a good example for
those participants who prefer learning through emulation.
Gries offers his personal perceptions, experiences, and
imagery as points of reference. Using this information, students
can deduce their own imagery and key words for
anatomical concepts. Personal embodiment happens in the
process. According to Gries, dancers are responsible for
their own physical, mental, social, and creative development,
and should fundamentally be independent of teachers
in their ongoing personal research practice.
Gries often chooses metaphors using space and light
to trigger kinesthetic reactions in the dancers. With his
‘golden ball of light’ 29 metaphor, he is inviting us into
an imagined spherical space for movement. Inside this
space, the body is in a balanced place and can move almost
equally well in all directions. This means that the legs
are liberated from the task of having to carry the body,
and that the body can move in circles and spirals through
space. “Feel the support of the space around your bones”
further implies spherical surroundings. This has a supportive
effect because the body’s interior spaces are also imagined
as spherical. The correspondence between interior
and exterior space assists participants in actively opening
their bodies, to feel welcomed by, and supported in, space.
Gries’s instructions subtly influence the students’
psychophysical body images. Here are a few examples:
“Bring all of yourself to standing” animates whole–body
presence; “Don’t stand under, stand on top of your bones”
changes the energetic alignment. With the metaphor
“receive yourself,” participants should welcome and perceive
themselves, returning to an already centered and embodied
self, as starting point for dancing. ‘Centering the
bones’ calls for every bone to have its correct, released
position in relation to its environment. To affirm one’s
current condition is something Gries calls “being in the
center of your own experience.” And from that, he explains,
arises the grace of a performer.
“The decisive point is that we are able to
develop an idea of acceptance and integrity
that allows us to realize that idea.
The result isn’t important, but rather
the respective action that we decided to
take to get there.” Anastasia Kostner, student
29 This figure of speech can sound somewhat
esoteric, however here it is related
to a very real process and references a
spherically shaped organization of the body’s
energy, which is thereby well distributed
and the transfer of which is transparent,
similar to rays of light.