Laboratory on Feedback in Artistic Processes 3

Listening to Feedback
Günther Wilhelm
46
In my experience, the most efficient feedback in the context of
the choreographic process sometimes seems to be a listening
practice. Listening to my inner self and to an outer perspective
at the same time—a kind of simultaneous listening. Or in other
words, finding a third perspective, a balance between myself and
the other person. The timing of when to receive feedback is also
crucial. Mostly, it is a time in the process where my relation to my
choreographic material is still in a kind of fragile state, between
knowing and not knowing, between trust and mistrust, or if I have
the feeling that I am strongly under the influence of some blind
spots I might have.
A typical feedback situation looks like this: right after having presented
my movement material, I listen to a person in front of
me (while still being under the influence of my body’s physical
echoes). I receive a lot of information—the person’s voice, gestures
and expression, words, language content—trying to attune
them to my own physical responses. What is the quality of this listening?
Is there a different way of listening beyond the intellectual
processing of the verbal information?
An example: for a while I was conducting a practice where I used
a collection of memorized text fragments, taken from Kafka’s diaries,
looping them as an inner mantra in order to establish an ongoing
physical response. I tried to empty everything else out and
just ‘be’ that chosen sentence—being moved by it. By constantly
listening to a sentence like: “Seine eckigen unveränderlichen
Gliedmaßen sich nach Belieben legen lassen” (Allow your angular
unchangeable limbs to lie the way they want to), my movements