A Decade of MA Solo Dance Authorship

Mime Centrum Entrance
(2008)
Photo © Ric Allsopp
The curriculum that was formulated for the pilot phase of SODA in
2006 perhaps predictably underwent some considerable rethinking
and remodelling in response to the realities, reactions and
critical feedback from the pilot SODA group between 2007–2009.
Ric Allsopp - a member of the International Advisory Board - was
co-opted to join Rhys Martin in the delivery of the pilot phase from
October 2007 and, between July 2009 and March 2010, to work on
the further development of a programme handbook and curriculum
for the first ‘incorporated’ MA SODA student intake (2010–
2012) in April 2010. The ‘scope and content of the education project’
that was to be developed over this period established the
terms ‘solo dance authorship’ as a generative problematic to be
understood, experienced and transformed at the level of the individual
within a flexible institutional framework. The ‘structural
surroundings’ of the HZT as Franz-Anton Cramer put it, the proximity
of, and interaction with the independent dance scene, students
and staff from other academic disciplines, faculties and institutions
and the wider cultural, artistic and social resources and
opportunities of Berlin also began to seed collaborative crosspollination
- for example in the SODA WORK flyer (July 2009), and
the student organised network / artist / student meetings and
performances (see Networks). The international artistic and educational
networks that both staff and students could draw on underpinned
the gradual shift from the initial ideas of ‘solo dance
authorship’ to ‘body-based practices’. The aims set out in the
2006 draft stated that:
The course shall be learner driven. The program has as its focus
the enabling of a highly skilled autonomous contemporary dance
performance / choreographer as both researcher and artist. It will
provide opportunities to extend knowledge, competence and understanding
in the theory and practice of dance as an art. It recognises
the creative and intellectual freedom of talented individuals
to seek out, develop and determine those areas of knowledge that
will best serve their own field of enquiry and which facilitate their
artistic development. It recognises the primary importance of
establishing and encouraging a unique artistic sensibility and
voice in new practitioners. (Cramer, 2006: 22)
16