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Accelerating
the Learning Curve
[subtitle]
Exploring systems for teaching Contact and partnering
by
Kurt Koegel
How to give beginners a good first experience of Contact Improvisation
is a topic I’ve often discussed with colleagues. I’ve
heard it said that the test of skill as a dancer or teacher is in
working with the raw beginner, and I have experienced this to be
a good indicator of my own facility with the material. Recently,
however, I’ve seen that working with advanced dancers can
provide another challenging perspective. My question has shifted
to: What manner of introducing a skilled dancer to Contact and other
partnering skills will be effective in nurturing the inquisitive,
discriminating awareness that promotes safe, informed, and creative
research in this field of dancing?
During the past six years, I’ve been developing arrangements
of information to help enrich the process of learning Contact Improvisation.
This has involved deriving lists and organizing them into “palettes”
of principles that I’ve experienced in Contact and partnering,
which can be used to facilitate the assimilation and creative application
of skills to a wide range of dancing.
My approach is highly influenced by an approach to architectural
design conceived by Christopher Alexander. He calls this system
“a pattern language” because it is concerned with the
development of an architecture based on human living patterns rather
than external conceptions of form. For example, let’s say
an architect’s client is a writer for whom it is customary
to sit at morning coffee and write. Instead of conceiving of a quadratic
space called a “kitchen,” the architect might imagine
a cluster of environmental patterns—a view on a quiet garden
space, a transparent wall to let sunlight filter indoors, cozy seating
with accessible shelves—to use as inspirational guideposts
for designing a living/working space that responds to the unique
way of living of his or her client.
As Alexander describes it, “Each pattern describes a problem
[or situation] which occurs over and over again in our environment,
and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in
such a way that you can use this solution a million times over,
without ever doing it the same way twice.” Taking off from
Alexander’s model, I began to develop a method of teaching
by identifying a range of patterns in Contact Improvisation and
organizing them into charts that both establish a vocabulary and
graphically illustrate a spectrum of working relationships between
partners.
I have found that with this logical, graphic organization of the
material, the dancers can grasp the partnering principles rapidly
in relation to their own choice making. They are also better able
to observe the choices of others and make informed responses. Additionally,
their problem solving becomes less personal and more objective.
The palettes provide concrete tools to identify problems in physical
terms—Why are they getting tangled up in the limbs of their
partner? Why do the transitions between weight-sharing moments seem
heavy or awkward? Why does a moment of flight feel reckless or unstable?—and
develop concrete solutions in the dance.
These pedagogic principles have proven to be successful for getting
students not only to really fly with Contact Improvisation but,
perhaps more importantly, to be able to research and perform with
these skills in an articulate, intelligible, and safe manner. They
begin to realize a wide spectrum of working possibilities and choices
with one side of their awareness—a questioning, reasoning
mind that, somewhat counterintuitively, needs to be engaged in order
to be quieted. The playful, creative, right side of the brain is
then open to be in the moment and engage in the subtleties of movement
interaction.
For all its benefits, I sometimes found this systematic approach
to be a bit dry and tedious. I would find myself encouraging the
dancers to “bring the material more to life” and joking
about how they might increase the “fun factor.” I realize
now that my approach was not maximizing the intuitive part of the
learning process—the part that makes a bit of magic come around
in a session.
During the past year, I’ve been involved in many teaching
situations with established dance companies and with young professionals
in advanced training programs. I’ve had the pleasure of working
with graduate students at the choreography department of the Korean
National University of the Arts in Seoul, with the dance companies
Ultima Vez and ROSAS in Brussels, and with the students at P.A.R.T.S.,
the professional training school of Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker in
Brussels. In each of these cases, the dancers already had a firm
foundation in contemporary dance techniques and improvisation, and
at least some background in partnering.
Working with ROSAS suggested a new direction for my teaching. The
dancers from this group are open, inquisitive, and highly skilled
in a wide array of movement techniques and researching methods,
including various forms of performance improvisation. They’ve
worked extensively with a number of contemporary improvisation teachers,
including Elizabeth Corbett—who teaches “improvisation
technologies” inspired by the working processes of William
Forsythe, former director of the Frankfurt Ballet—and improvisor/choreographer
David Zambrano. Feeling their Contact Improvisation skills were
lagging behind their other improvisational abilities, they invited
me to train them in Contact, for they wished to incorporate this
type of material in an authentic and sophisticated manner in director
Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker’s new stage production. This piece,
Bitches Brew/Tacoma Narrows, is sculpted around the jazz compositions
and improvisations of Miles Davis and requires the dancers to shift
between a variety of improvisational approaches during the performance.
One of the givens in this teaching situation was that the amount
of studio time with the group would be quite limited—between
one and two hours daily, preceding the rest of their demanding rehearsal
schedule. With this time frame in mind, I found a very different
rhythm of presenting the material than I was accustomed to. As I
compressed the time for bringing their bodies to readiness at the
beginning of each session, I observed how adept these professionals
were in accessing different body states and changing from one body
tone or frame of mind to another quickly and creatively. As a result,
I found an exciting change happening in my guiding process, shifting
more spontaneously from one principle or pattern to another and
discovering innovative pathways into the material.
I was discovering a more encouraging balance between clarity and
mystery in my teaching. I was allowing myself more freedom to swing
between field-tested approaches and letting the group delve into
their own creative interpretations of the material. In the best
sessions, the dancers were constantly in the process of dancing.
There were no timeouts for mental analysis or reflection. Evident
in the way they practiced and later spoke about the work, their
conceptualization of the material was embodied in their dancing.
As I experience it these days, I have a sense of a fluid, intuitive
realm where the real body-learning takes place; and submerged within
it, and essential to its ability to exist, is the skeletal framework
of the design principles, which underlies each session’s research.
In relationship to his “pattern language,” Alexander
reflects upon this theme:
“This
language, like English, can be a medium for prose, or a medium for
poetry. The difference between prose and poetry is not that different
languages are used, but that the same language is used, differently.
In an ordinary English sentence, each word has one meaning, and
the sentence too, has one simple meaning. In a poem, the meaning
is far more dense. Each word carries several meanings; and the sentence
as a whole carries an enormous density of interlocking meanings,
which together illuminate the whole.”
Presently, rather than beginning by describing the structure of
an exploration, I am finding it more supportive to weave a journey
through experiential phases of material, creating a pathway that
leads to attentive and inspired dancing. Then, after the session
has finished, I’ll ask the dancers to share with each other
what was original or exciting about their dance. As the talking
subsides, I will refer to and describe a conceptual model from one
of the palettes, or invent a new one, with which to remember and
order the principles that helped their dance. I now also display
the palettes as large illustrations on the walls of the studio,
which we add to as we go, as a concrete reference for the dancers
in their efforts to bring awareness and consistency to their improvisational
work.
My reward is seeing the dancers light up and take wing in their
dancing. Their discoveries have originated through focused practice
and have gained levity and playfulness by avoiding excessive analysis.
However, I am fulfilled to see that the functional limitations and
conceptual underpinnings I’ve offered support the apparent
free flow they are enjoying. ?
“Accelerating the Learning Curve” is part of a writing
project describing my evolving curriculum. I welcome any comments,
questions, or discussion. [K.K.]
Partnering
Polarities
5
ways supported
To
contact the author: kurtkoegel@mac.com
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KURT
KOEGEL was first introduced to contact improvisation by David Woodbury
in New York in 1979. Since 1988, he has been living, dancing, choreographing,
and teaching in Europe, and more recently Asia, in both university
and workshop environments. His background in architecture, theater,
and the visual arts; Feldenkrais, Pilates, yoga, and Body-Mind Centering;
combined with a passion for being in the natural environment, informs
his movement research. He loves to perform and is always seeking
new opportunities to work for the stage.
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