Independent Dance Forum

Article by Anaïs Bouts.

Anaïs lives in London and works internationally as a performer and choreographer.
After completing a degree in Philosophy (2000), she graduated in Dance Theatre from the Laban Centre London (2005), where she was awarded the Simone Michelle Award for outstanding achievements in choreography.
She is a founder member of MIKS (www.miks.org.uk ), a dance theatre collective interested in collaborative processes and alternative states of performance.
Anaïs was recently awarded the Bonnie Bird New Choreographers Award, to pursue her artistic career as a choreographer.
Recent works include: n+1 (2007) with MIKS; Burlesque (2007), a collaboration with filmmaker Tim Shore for Capture5 Awards ;Inventário (2007) with Joclecio Azevedo, Portugal; Only On Mondays (2007) with MIKS; Things Behind The Sun (2006), a Leche Commission for EDge.

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On Collaboration…or not

Tonight I went to a talk at the ICA with my friend and MIKS colleague Sara Lindström. The talk was entitled ‘The way we work… Collaboration’, and its outline on the ICA website was as follows:

From collaborations to collectives, strategic partnerships encourage the solitary creator to engage with a potentially stronger proposition. Are we diluting our individual expression or are we simply expanding our resources and knowledge transfer? In the current artistic climate, patchworks of people are ever-increasing. Consequently, how long before the common objective is crowded and the patchwork unravels? Is individuality lost in the process, or are there ways to ensure successful collaborations? Join us to discuss the past, the present and the future of collaborations.

Five artists (Tamiko O’Brien, Mark Dunhill, Moritz Waldemeyer, Oonagh O’Hagan, Matthew Stone and Robert Bidder) had been invited to talk about their individual works involving collaboration, and discuss this peculiar form of artistic practice.
Both Sara and myself came out of the talk very disappointed, as none of the people involved in the talk (which looked more like a showcase for individualities to present their work than a panel discussion on collaboration) managed to address the questions and issues we were eager to talk about: the notions of authorship and ownership; the practicalities of working together with a group of people, from the beginning to the end of a project; how people divide and share responsibilities; how artists manage (or not) to make compromises on their artistic views and own aesthetics…

Tamiko O’Brien and Mark Dunhill, who work together, introduced the talk by briefly presenting their link with collaboration (which unfortunately on that evening was nothing more than a webpage link www.collabarts.org) and by giving a short historical background to collaboration within the arts and more generally within a socio-political context. Then most of the artists invited exposed their own work within a timeframe of 10 minutes each…and that was it! No collaboration amongst the artists themselves during the talk, as it was announced at the beginning by Mark Dunhill, and no sign of collaboration as such within their speech. Matthew Stone, maybe, started to raise questions more closely related to the core of our talk, about how we actually collaborate and what it means practically. He was the first and only one to talk about the processes artists go through rather than only focusing on their final product. Robert Bidder also, in his own way, was closer to what I was expecting to hear about, as he described what collaborating meant for the group of people who formed the Mentalists, although he remained quite vague and in the end still focused on what was done rather than HOW.

After the talk (which didn’t allow any time for discussion or questions from the audience), we were invited to share a glass of wine with the artists and the rest of the attendees. Sara and I talked to Mark Dunhill and Tamiko O’Brien about our frustrations regarding the talk, and we finally started the debate, delving deeper into what should have been at the heart of the discussion from the very beginning. Mark and Tamiko talked about the 3rd person or entity that occurs when two people start making work together. I mentioned how the work I do collectively with the other members of MIKS is somehow both very familiar and alien: I share the responsibility for it, but it’s not resulting from my own creative mind only, therefore it has an extra layer of meaning which will never be completely mine, and which I accept as such.

Collaboration needs as a base the sharing of a common ground. We start from a common concept that we build together, then we define a methodology, on which all the various aesthetics and artistic visions of the collaborators start aggregating, often randomly and anarchically. This aggregation becomes a mixture that is neither an individual vision nor the simple sum of each artist’s mind. There is a constant reassessment and re-questioning that occurs in the process of collaborating with each other, and the intellectual stimulation that we bring within the group is of infinite value compared to the process of a solitary work.

I suppose the appetite for learning from/with the others is also a very strong reason for getting involved into collaborative work.

During our vivid discussion last night, Sara and I ended up by defining various degrees of collaboration, drawing directly on our personal experience within MIKS:

- the first degree is between the three active founder members of the collective (Sara Lindström, Ida Uvaas and myself). We share the ownership and the realisation of the artistic project from beginning to end, while still having different roles within it (more or less tacit, depending on the phase of the creative process).
- the second degree of collaboration is between MIKS and the invited artists, who often come in at a later stage of the conception of the artistic concept; they are given this initial concept to work with, and they bring in their skills and ways of seeing to enrich the project and give the depth that we can’t find within the restricted circle of MIKS (i.e costume designer Corinne Felgate for Only On Mondays, 2005; visual artist/dramaturge Rodrigo Valero Puertas for n+1, 2007…).
- the third degree is then one that we have to go through within the context of performing arts: it is any kind of collaboration with people who help us producing our work (theatre directors, technicians, marketing, web designers…)

I felt yesterday that some of the artists (especially Moritz Waldemeyer and Oonagh O’Hagan) talked about collaboration without actually really collaborating - in the sense I understand that concept, which could be as defined by Michael P. Farrell on www.collabarts.org:

A collaborative circle is a primary group consisting of peers who share similar occupational goals and who, through long periods of dialogue and collaboration, negotiate a common vision that guides their work.

Collaborating is not, to me, just a matter of working with people (as for instance O’Hagan was explaining in her so-called collaboration with her publisher or lawyers, when she published her book I Lick My Cheese ) – we all work with people: when I ask a plumber to make a new bathroom, I am maybe collaborating with him (giving him specific tasks, choosing the tiles, the colour of paint…), but it is on a very superficial level. Nevertheless some of the artists tonight talked about their collaborations in a similar way as I talked about the plumber. However, collaboration is not, in my opinion, about that kind of subordination for the sake of egoistic purposes.

My aim within collaboration is not to get rid of my ego, but to merge my artistic vision with people of similar views and sensibilities, in order to learn, expand and create a work that is richer and multilayered.

When I work in rehearsals with MIKS, I can propose a situation, a choreographic system or an image, and then get stuck about how to carry on with it. One of the collaborators will probably come up with a solution, because it will come from a different angle (i.e. a different brain!) and will thus propose a new way of approaching my initial idea. This problem solving is a constant in the collaborative aspect of our work, and it allows everything to go faster and grow bigger within the frame of our group.

If we have a look at the second part of the following definition of ‘collaboration’, from www.wikipedia.org, we raise again the question of methodology and means of collaboration, which is a topic I am very keen on discussing with other collectives, as I feel I would learn and gain extraordinary benefit from sharing how other people work:

Collaboration is a structured, recursive process where two or more people work together toward a common goal—typically an intellectual endeavour that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Collaboration does not require leadership and can even bring better results through decentralization and egalitarianism.

Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behaviour and communication. These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving.

This is what stimulates my interest into collaborating with other artists: a constant discussion, questioning our work and our ways of doing, and a way of pushing each other’s limits and going beyond our comfort zone within the safety of a group of peers, who are both critical and understanding. Within that context, the notion of disagreement takes another dimension, which becomes more about our way of communicating amongst each other: how do we manage to convince/get convinced by others? How every idea and proposition is submitted, discussed, explained, evaluated, agreed or not, re-worked, abandoned, elected…?

The debate is still open.

London, 19 November 2007 - Anaïs Bouts

This festive gathering drew together Hugh Brody, anthropologist and author of ‘The Other Side of Eden’, alongside dancers/artists/musicians Miranda Tufnell, Gill Clarke, Chris Crickmay, Niamh Dowling, Sylvia Hallett, Lucinda Jarrett, Cecilia MacFarlane, Brenda Mallon,Will Menter, Filippa Periera, Helen Poynor, Lucia Walker, and Simon Whitehead.

The focus of the day was a wish to expand understanding of the sensing, imaginative, perceiving body in dialogue with other disciplines, and to articulate and develop a language that can express the experience of the body and its relevance to the quality of everyday living.

This section of our forum has been created in relation to this event, and we invite you to share your thoughts and words as part of it.

This is Part 3 of 3 transcriptions of the open Winlab 2006 discussion centred around improvisation with Eva Karzcag, Jane Carr and Kate Brown.The documents can be downloaded from our Winlab page on the main website.

We hope you enjoy reading them, and if you have any thoughts or comments, please use the forum to share them.

Part 3 – Improvisation within other forms and final questions to Eva

J – Partly why I became part of this conversation is that way back whenthis building (SDS) was happening and I was down the road in my sort of cubby-hole, I was very aware of the relationship between this building and what the local community would make of it. And Gill and I had been talking about maybe one of the links, in dance, in being the idea of improvisation, as it’s something that’s very integral to this building. And it’s integral to a lot of the dance practices in the communities around here. I was interested, really, because I also talk to other people about their process in different kinds of dance, and I don’t have an answer to this question, it’s a question that I’m still going round asking. It is -Is what we value in improvisation in this independent dance sector, similar to improvisation practice within say, free-styling, or Flamenco…Do you recognise similarities or is it just something very different? And this is really my question.

Audience -Improvisation if it’s similar to those dance styles? Or…

J – Yes because within other dance styles, there are huge ongoing traditions of improvisation. It’s often linked to music and sound.

Audience -like Salsa

Audience -or Tango

J – Yes, but the sense of immediacy, the sense of responding to other performers, to other people in the space, the audience, that sense of immediacy. And maybe that’s a dance that’s embedded in the social, and is really integral to them. That was just my question, do we feel there are cross-over resonances?

Audience -It’s a really interesting question, it’s difficult because in a way those forms, from the outside, I don’t know much about any of them, but from the outside they’ve all got their set forms and shapes and patterns which people play in and out of. And that’s an interesting thought because maybe, we do too.

Audience -(general laughter) Yes because we don’t wear shoes, we wear certain clothing…

J – I must admit I’ve talked to people about their view of this sort of work and I think it is seen as to have a certain style and a particular-aestheticism. Anyway I was just curious to get a reaction to that as when I’ve talked to people what fascinates me is that, from a completely different context, there are those same moments when it works. It seemed to me to be the same kind of thing they’re talking about. One of them said ‘that’s where the juice is’. Whether I suppose in a sense maybe people think there is some potentiality for…

Audience -We were talking earlier about tango, so I felt I had this image of when we were working earlier, saying how the male leads, doesn’t he, you have to obey the man…

E – Except sometimes people say it’s really the female.

Audience -I don’t know the second half of the sentence, but just, that’s interesting isn’t it, that’s the traditional principle. There must still be that sense of play, sense of connection and presence, fun and flirting, all those things. But is that a principle that prevails it, that there is all that, but the woman must obey the man.

J – I guess it relates to culture, and I guess that probably, are there certain norms within an improvisation, in some independent sectors that actually…

Audience -That the man must obey the woman?

J – No…

Audience - Men that perceive a very (lost word ‘?’) energy. The question is do I obey this energy, or I would rather say, respond, maybe with the more feminine or female energy because I am a woman? Maybe it’s more a way of interacting, which just comes from the gender itself, and which makes sense or is as it is, but I wouldn’t say obey, even though I might respond in a feminine way, but that is because I am a woman.

E – But I’m wondering whether your question, Jane, isn’t about…it doesn’t matter whether it’s dance or it’s music. I was very intrigued when I found out that most music wasn’t notated, and that a lot of the great composers, like Bach and Beethoven, improvised. Only some of this was written down, which is what remains for us. But I wonder whether your question is not about the ecstatic moments of improvisation which, how would you describe it? This is when it’s happening, when you’re at one with . . . You can certainly get that feeling doing things that you know already – in fact, a lot of the times that feeling comes through doing things you know already, when you start riding the flow. For me, improvisation definitely has the aim of looking for that moment, the juiciness. And when it works, that’s when I think ‘Wow, I really want to do this’, ‘I KNOW I want to do this’. And watching – it’s very compelling to watch that, whether it’s folk dancing, or tango, or…I was also thinking about martial art, that you repeat forms, so that you can then improvise with them in real life situations. When someone’s attacking you and you need to respond, you really have to be on the ball.

Audience - The form is available to you.

E – Yes and that’s technique, it allows you to have choices so you can respond.

Audience - Capoeira is great for that isn’t it.

Audience - Yes.

J – My mind goes back to the idea of humanness, because theoretically there are always these issues of how much things are culturally bound and how much you can appreciate things cross-culturally. But I had this lovely experience of watching these kids watching something completely not being their culture and being entranced, and it was an improvisation moment. So I’m wondering on some level, are there things that we can recognise across some different cultural resonances. That we recognise at some level -Is there something similar going on?

Audience -I would guess that those other forms you’re talking about are less strange to their culture than ours is to theirs?

J – Well this was street dance kids watching Flamenco, and it was quite nice, there were a couple of them who were just really obviously, I felt, ‘dancers’, (whatever that means), but they engaged in a certain way. And they were all about 13 years old, trendy, and there was this very much older Spanish woman doing a Flamenco improvisation, and they were just like
‘this’. And I know you can see Flamenco on tv, but I don’t think it was something particularly they’d seen a lot of, and I guess, well we all live in Europe, but…

Audience - She was improvising on her own, did you say?

J – No it was actually in a class, and she wasn’t really supposed to, but she got up, and then she got a bit carried away, and it was wonderful, so no one was going to stop her. It was just one of those really nice moments. But I was just really intrigued watching them, because a lot of people, when it’s not their dance form they kind of switch off. But I’m always interested in people who get interested in something different.

Audience -But there’s also differences between improvised dancers, and dancers that are essentially social, or essentially about fun and participation, and then the art form – doesn’t mean it has to be improvised, but the main poem, the thing that is the stage form.

J – Yes I guess the interesting about Contact is that it had blurred some of those boundaries, and certainly with Flamenco and that style of street dance, they were working towards a performance, even if it [the dance form] originated in something social.

E –There’s a very lovely film, very short, Public Private, three different views. One is people walking on the street, and the camera is just watching this ‘improvisation’, then one dancer (Judith Dunn) working alone in a studio, and the third is, I think Paxton and Deborah Hay, doing social dancing. It’s very beautiful to see these three different solo, duet, group…you know, we improvise all the time – we walk down the street, and we make the choice to shift this way when someone’s coming, or….

K – I’m just aware of the time, so first of all is there anything that we just talked about that we haven’t kind of…what do you feel? The only thing that we haven’t talked about that I can think of is the sort of lineage of this body of work, which you (Eva) have a bit. It would be nice to have some time for anyone who’s actually come with questions that we haven’t thought of. That we haven’t talked about.

Audience -I’ve got a question…

K – Would you feel it would be important to talk a bit more about where the body of work has come from?

E – Well I don’t know, if people are interested? I could maybe speak a little bit about what I know about it – but you ask your question first.

Audience -I’ve done all of these three weeks of Winlab, and have encountered three people teaching a movement practice – improvisation as their focus I guess Rosie less, but still it’s a big part of her work, and I’m just really interested – you did answer it actually – why improvised rather than set, but this whole thing about choosing to improvise, but still making a piece of work. From what you did on Saturday, that was a content based piece of work, presumably it was improvised, was it?

E – It was.

Audience -But that was a piece of work that was about something specific, which presumably you perform several times…

E – It was the first time we performed it but we want to continue working on it, so yes.

Audience -So I was just interested in that…

E – Well there are different kinds of improvisation. Why I improvise- because I really don’t like setting material…No it’s not really why I improvise, although it is true that I’m not drawn to setting material like some people are. One way I’ve used set material within improvisation is improvising with it. I was telling Jane that when I was working with Strider, one of the things that we used to do was to set up ‘events’. ‘Events’ were a Cunningham ‘invention’ but we did it somewhat differently. Cunningham would figure out exactly what he wanted his dancers to do, often using chance procedures, but we would choose, one, or two or perhaps even three pieces from our repertory, (for instance, Rainbow Bandit, Common Ground and Headlong), and then we improvised using any material out of those pieces. So we were building the events from set material during performance.

Trisha also used that kind of improvisation. She has a piece called ‘Locus’. One section is improvised during performance, using the set material of the piece. Also we built pieces through improvisation. Trisha would teach us material, then we’d improvise with this material within a structure that she would give – and, increment by increment, we would build up the piece. Some of my work has some of those elements in it as well.

But then, going back to Steve Paxton, one of the first pieces I saw him do, he came into the space and began to dance, and the piece consisted of warming into dancing. The performance was him improvising into improvising. It was incredible.

So I think there are many different kinds of improvisation. Sometimes, say, if I know a musician very well, then I go into the space, and we don’t know anything other than the fact that here’s the beginning…and we’re going to end it at some point. Come to think of it, that’s also happened with people I don’t know. But I find it AS exhilarating to work out a particular pathway that I will follow every time, and within that pathway, there’s a lot of unknown. So yes I think there are many forms of improvisation, that can be used both to explore and to inform, and they’re all interesting. Did I answer your question? I don’t even know what your question was!

K – I was just thinking that.

Audience -No I don’t know what my question was either.

Audience -The question that I wanted to ask Simone last week, but didn’t get the chance, was, and also I could ask you – Do you always and only perform improvised work now, by choice? Or would you create something that you would just believe stands, and re-do it?

E – I saw Simone re-doing an improvised piece.

Audience -Yes, the one…yes she did on Saturday night.

E – She re-did a piece that she made in ’68. The answer is yes.

Audience -But that’s not necessarily doing set material. That’s re-doing an improvisation and that’s re-doing a piece.

E – Yes it’s a piece, a choreography. You know quite a lot about what you’re going to be doing. But you also don’t know a lot about what you’re going to be doing.

K – But there’s a degree of that, isn’t there.

E – Oh absolutely.

K – From knowing nothing to knowing really quite a lot, like what sorts of moves.

E – Yes.

K – Should we hear a little bit about the lineage, and where’s it come from? From your perspective.

E – Well I think Anna Halprin had a lot to do with what we’re doing now. Simone, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown – were some of the people who worked with Anna Halprin and then went to New York and took part in the experiments that were going on in the late 60s and the 70s. That particular time period around the Vietnam War and what was happening in America politically and socially had a lot to do with how this work evolved. I think the growing interest in Eastern ways of looking at the world, which also included things like Aikido – which was a big source of inspiration for Steve when he developed contact. Drugs. They were very prevalent at that time. And…Judson and the experiments that were happening then, like the introduction of pedestrian movement into dance vocabulary, Yvonne Rainer’s ‘No’ manifesto, the happenings and involvement of a lot of these dance people with the visual art world and music world and experimental theatre. Release work – definitely filtered in there through different people. Danny Lepkoff for instance was a major person bringing that in. Then things like Authentic Movement, that I think a lot of us now use as part of our training. And then the way choreographers began to use improvisation. Curiously, Deborah Hay once came to EDDC as one of the teachers during an end of year workshop that focused on improvisation, and said: ‘I don’t improvise’.

Audience -That first week of Winlab when Rosie did ‘The Suchness of Heni and Eddie’ – it looked very improvised, but you could see the decisions trying to be transparent, and that was all that playfulness and real. But afterwards talking to Heni, she was like: ‘It wasn’t improvised…’ I mean of course it was, but they knew their pathway really clearly, and she said that she would expect the same level of communication and engagement from herself as when she did Fin Walker’s piece earlier on in the year, which was every second….it didn’t feel any different to her, really. Because I was saying – how do you put yourself out there? We’re all sitting there so expectantly and you’re walking around – what’s going to happen, anything. And she said ‘Well we know where we start, and we know where we finish, and we know each other, and we know ourselves.’

Audience -What’s EDDC?

E – It’s the European Dance Development Center, the school that used to be in Arnhem in the Netherlands. I used to teach there. Gill used to come as a guest.

Audience -And it’s closed now, you said used to.

E -Yes it became absorbed into another school.

Audience -In terms of an education model, were you involved in any setting up of…you know you talked about the workshop model…in terms of sharing and delivering this work, was that something you talked about a lot on how to do that and to honour the work?

E – I came into ideas that were already there when I started teaching at EDDC, but while I taught there we did a lot of talking about the program and many things changed as we went along. That particular school in Arnhem was an off-shoot of SNDO, the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Some of the ideas germinated there. Some ideas were brought from places like Bennington College, where Judith Dunn and Steve Paxton taught. Many artists who are involved in either performing improvisation or who work with improvisation taught at EDDC.

K – Do people have other specific questions that they would like to be part of this kind of discussion? Or do we feel that that’s long enough, kind of altogether? How does everyone feel?

Audience -One of the questions that came up for me today in the workshop but didn’t have the space to ask, was – I think you were referencing to this…but do you do one-on-one work? Or have you done that?

E – I sometimes do one-on-one work, you mean outside of teaching a group?

Audience -Yes, just something about the practice of working with a lot of different people, different bodies.

E – Yes, I do one-on-one work because I’m also an Alexander teacher.

Audience -Just curious about the influence of that and your practice.

E – Yes it definitely has a big influence although there are periods of time when I go through NOT doing one-on-one work. I get lots of ideas for my group classes from working with individual people and seeing what comes out of each body, what is the issue that they’re dealing with, that we’re looking at, trying to solve, what are the images that work here, and as they surface I think to myself, maybe many of us could benefit from looking at this particular issue, so I bring it into a group class. I find it very inspiring to teach one-on-one, but I don’t like doing it exclusively, because I enjoy being in the studio so much, moving with other movers. I also sometimes work individually with people in a studio, rather than in a room, so that I can help them take the information they just discovered through the body work immediately into moving. In group classes I have people touching each other from the beginning because I think there is so much to be learnt, both from touching and from being touched. Plus I think touch is such a wonderful thing. When I used to teach students for 4 years at EDDC, by the time they left they knew a lot about bodywork. They weren’t Alexander Technique teachers, but they knew a lot about the body, they knew about touching, and how to create change, and how to receive that kind of information and pass it on.

K – Shall we finish there?

Thank you all very much.

This is Part 2 of 3 transcriptions of the open Winlab 2006 discussion centred around improvisation with Eva Karczag, Jane Carr and Kate Brown.The documents can be downloaded from our Winlab page on the main website.

We hope you enjoy reading them, and if you have any thoughts or comments, please use the forum to share them.

Part 2 – Improvisation and somatic practice within Institutions

Eva -Jane was talking about how there is Experiential Anatomy in certain courses or improvisation in certain schools…

Jane – Yes I was thinking about the difference between what starts by linking in to a whole different way of ‘being’, and what becomes a timetabled subject. I have students who have studied ballet and Release, and they can choose to write about those techniques (ballet, or Release or Cunningham) and I’m interested to see how a technique evolves, how it changes.

K – You were also talking about, from your perspective, it feels that this body of work is more obvious to you now for example from being in colleges, and is that true and why.

J –I think that is a question because I have been so burrowed away in my own little world, only peeking up to see what’s going on, so I can’t quite work out whether…there seems to me to be more improvisation or more awareness of somatic technique generally. I’m not quite sure if it’s just I’ve woken up to it or whether it is something that’s beginning to consolidate at least in Britain. I just wondered how people felt.

Audience -Definitely. And not just in Britain.

E – Yeah I think it’s worldwide and I have the feeling that some of that is happening because people are realising that actually, it does work. That when you enter the body somatically, certain changes happen and people can do their plies better, they can point their feet better etc. Although I do have a question about how students do ballet, pulling up, and then go and
do Release, and then pull up when they do ballet again – how productive is it?

Audience -I think there’s a healthy tension of somatic practice and also the growing dance science department, and also how we balance that in a timetable, do we need both, and which approach are we identifying as ours.

Audience -What is dance science? Is it a course?

Audience -I don’t know, I have my own impression of it -there is quite a growing dance science department there (Laban).

J – It’s an MSc.

Audience -Yes and it’s also being integrated into the BA programme in terms of fitness and injury prevention.

Audience -There’s a sort of …

Audience -attention to classicalness you mean?

Audience-No not necessarily, I think it has a bit of affiliation to sports science in the sense that the way they’re evaluating or analysing/measuring the body. But that doesn’t mean to say they’re not looking at the body somatically, because they do.

Audience -Yes as sports sciences are increasingly doing that. And these experiments in improvisation for athletes – that kind of thing, they are increasingly going that way.

Audience -So perhaps there’s a bit of a crossing over, that’s evolving as well.

Audience -But the reason I mention it is just trying to give students the experience of everything and how confusing or useful (that can be) or is it the different stages in their lives that I think they find difficult. They find it refreshing as well, to go from Release to fitness to Ballet

Audience – Yes for example, I’ve just finished my degree at Laban. I found it very often confusing because my body didn’t have time to digest messages. But I was changing before I could taste what I was doing, that means I stayed very much at this surface because I was rushing through everything. I could feel that I didn’t use my body efficiently, I could sense it without being able to get there, which was a huge amount of frustration. I felt I was abusing or forcing my body and not have the choice not to do it because I’m not given the time to work it thoroughly. I found that there was, this is just my own opinion, that there was a lack of depth in physical work and also staying longer in something, which would have been useful for me.

K – Maybe that’s the other side of it, that is this bodywork that we’re talking about, is it being compromised by being taught just after Ballet? The lengths of time that we spend each week, the amount of time we’re allowed or offered to stay with one idea or one physical state. Everybody has said that is very important in terms of the depth of understanding. So I think that sort of flips – one side is what’s it like for the students and their bodies, and the other is what’s it like for the work to be put into an institution. Yes, it’s great everyone’s learning Contact, but is it great if…

J – I think every single department grew like that. We all want more time for depth of experience.

E – But then maybe choices need to be made as to how many subjects are included. For instance at the beginning at EDDC, we taught using a workshop plan so students would have sometimes even 4, 5 or 6 weeks with one teacher. If the person dealt with training their own body, the students would have morning training with them, then in the afternoon workshop they had the opportunity to put the training into practice. It was rather like a company situation, with a choreographer, so you could really get into the mind, or the mind-body of the artist you were working with. Which is very different to having an hour and a half class, which is nothing. The other thought I had was it seems very important that people realise that to be an independent dancer is a choice. It’s not that one is a failure at something else. The commitment to doing this body of work as opposed to another body of work is a choice. When I first started exploring Release and Improvisation, one of the great things about being independent and not training at an institution was that I could make a choice when I felt conflict in my body, when my body didn’t know how to deal with both ballet and Release, because this was asking for one thing, and that was asking for something else. I could say I don’t want to do that, I want to focus my attention only on this body of work. And then my interest just helped me dive deeper and deeper into it, and explore different facets of it, rather than have to deal with this other thing, that I was wanting to move away from, at the same time.

Audience -Did you do that alone? Or with others when diving deeper into it?

E – Well, at first I did it as part of a group. At the time when I made that decision for the first time I was working with Strider in London, with Richard Alston, and Dennis Greenwood. And then when I made that choice again I was in New York, where I started out taking classes at the Cunningham Studio and quite quickly decided that actually that wasn’t where my interest was any longer, so I gravitated to the Downtown dance scene and worked with a lot of different people. And of course while working with Trisha (Brown), my training was primarily Alexander and other body work, Contact classes or jams, sometimes workshops with people like Simone Forti, Bonnie Cohen . . . . . Trisha’s background is traditional, and a major part of her un-doing of that was through Elaine Summer’s Kinetic Awareness work.

K – Coming back to Jane’s question, it seems to be agreed that this(improvisation/somatic work?) is more integrated into institutions now but why….(to Jane) you can say your question.

J – I’m curious, (now that I’ve just woken up to it), but if there is more of this work around I was wondering, whether at a deeper level that says something about what dancers or even their audiences want from dance. This interest in something more connected, more immediate. And I was just wondering about this, as in a sense you were talking about that immediacy and humanness being something that attracted you. So my question is for most people, is that what has attracted them to improvisation, or does anyone have a radically different interest?

K – Meaning in which that’s why the more people who know about it, the more they want to know, and it does have that appeal.

J – Yes I suppose that there is something about this immediacy and connectedness that is attracting, and it’s attracting more people. And I’m just curious – I have my own thoughts as to why it is that this is happening now when most of our lives are so much pulling the other way, and whether if that’s what’s attracting people, and I guess it would be good to test it out.

Audience -Yes I think it has something to do with how improvisation gives the chance to join in at any stage, and to grow with it, and you don’t have to fight with being older. I think it’s beautiful and it has space where in traditional techniques it’s more exclusive. Therefore if you want to dance, and you’re older, how is that possible? So in improvisation the training is more approachable even if you don’t have traditional training I think you can find very particular ways of moving and communicating and hopefully communicating with everybody else, while for example in Ballet, I don’t see there being any chance because the body is stylised.

E – Also, choreographers are realising that improvisation is a really fantastic tool for sourcing and developing material. And I think, probably choreographers are finding that dancers who know how to improvise are much more valuable when making a piece, since they’re able to contribute more, and in more interesting ways, to whatever is being created.

K – And then as well as part of that thought, that the way the work is being absorbed into more mainstream performance – sometimes it can feel that you’re watching a piece and suddenly you see like one little contact spin lift thing, and you think: What are they doing, ruining that bit? I’ve experienced a sort of quarrel with that, in terms of, well they’ve taken the look of it, but they’re just using it as a sort of…

Audience-…style

K -Yes, exactly, the style, or a piece of vocabulary like that – let’s put one of them in. So I suppose that’s a similar question isn’t it – the clarity or the original intent of the work of exploration and constant change, expansion, development and availability, is that being compromised?

J – I was just wondering whether in some ways that happens to a lot of dance – that it encapsulates bodies at a certain time, as I’m sure people have said that about Ballet or Graham…they’ve just got the shape of it! So I guess maybe that is how as time has gone on, like in a lineage, something maybe begins to happen with the way of working. But then is it more that because it’s a process, the form can change. Can you prevent that [the compromise] from happening?

K – Yes well I think the absorption into the mainstream probably happens with everything, like you see punk songs in adverts, so yes it’s not unusual. It’s just a question of how to…

J – So I guess like we were talking about, within the form in which it was originally developed, and trying in some ways to stay alternative or counter to something, how do you prevent yourself becoming absorbed? And I guess that goes back to what you (Audience) were talking about-incorporating techniques and is it about getting back into your awareness or…?

Audience – I think from how I experience improvisation, there are some techniques where I can get a more clear idea within my body, I just think how I use it can be more efficient, and it opens possibilities to going back to this present state, or being available, it just makes so much more sense.

Audience– I wonder if it’s culture as well in that sense, or not the word culture, but there’s a time when things go in phases, like a feeling or need to feel connected or closer to self. And yes it’s a technique for performance or for making work, for preparing the body and also, I’m equally committed to it now, even though I don’t plan to perform. I just want it for my life, for my own growth, and I wonder if that’s also why there’s an increase/ hunger or curiosity for this kind of work in the same way as there is for meditation. We’re all over-loaded, over-stimulated, distracted, busy.

Audience -But I think there’s a difference for example, in some forms of yoga, something that still has instruction, to foresee those body-mind connections. I feel that with improvisation there is a certain freedom, that you aren’t dependent, you make your own choices, there is nobody to tell you what to say, or what to do, so you have your own responsibility.

E – But then we also have to learn how to work with that responsibility. We’ve talked about present-ness or presence, and we’ve talked about availability, but I think in the practice of improvisation there is the learning of real-time composition, for instance, or the practice of working with tasks, which I think is very different from someone saying: this is improvisation, we just stand up and do it. There’s actually extensive practice that goes into creating an improviser.

Audience -It’s also a real way of addressing time and being present in time, and that’s such an issue for our contemporary living. It’s about being in time and space, virtual communication and time spinning by. It’s obviously a way of addressing that.

K – And this relates to being an independent dancer also, the absorption into more mainstream, and the choice to remain on the fringe, really, to make work with small groups of people, or to not form a company for example, but continue to make work. The fact that that being a choice rather than failing to be professional maybe, or something like that, which, sometimes is implied by various bodies who give out money. I don’t know what people feel about that. I appreciate you saying your interest isn’t about performing, but there are a lot of people who are interested in performing who continue to keep out of the…(to Eva) Do you have any thoughts?

E – I have many thoughts. I started out in very mainstream situations and often when I tell people that I left Trisha because she was getting to be too successful, they look at me in a funny way. But I felt that she was actually sweeping me back into a situation I had come from. I felt that her work was becoming so successful, and getting performed in such large venues, that the subtlety and detail that was there in more intimate situations, was getting lost. It makes a big difference to me, that I perform to an audience that is very close to me. I like it. Maybe that goes back to how, coming from being involved in spectacle, I found these early performances, where I saw the humanness of the performers, so moving. So yes that’s very important to me that being an independent dancer is seen as a choice and I think about it a lot. I don’t think it’s an easy choice to make because it’s never easy to struggle for a living, and I feel I’ve been among the lucky, for being able to live off of what I do, where many of my
friends often had to do other things to be able to survive and do the dancing work that they wanted to be doing.

K – So this brings us to another question of yours, Jane, about whether that existence is harder.

J – Yes, from reading student essays, where they’re writing about contact improvisation, somatic techniques and the time that they’ve developed. And I was thinking – how much harder is it to do that now since the 1980s, with the big factory era, and the commodification of everything. My impression is that it’s probably harder, if you’re starting off now. I think about our students finishing and saying they want to be an independent artist, and I wonder if there’s a romantic view towards Steve Paxton or something?

E – I think it’s both harder and easier, I think it’s harder because there are more pressures and people are expected to produce slicker and more presentable…

Audience -…the surface of their work is expected to be more finished

E – Yes. But I think it’s also easier because there’s a bigger community. When I was starting to do this kind of work there were very, very few of us.

Audience -Do you think that colleges are generating too many graduates in fact that there are too many people who are practitioners for the audiences to support.

Audience -I think that’s horrible ..????

Audience -I hate that when people say that.

K – But it’s a question isn’t it.

Audience -Yes, it’s just that I work as a designer, and one of the criticisms I have is of the pressures the government puts on institutions of further education to pressurise them to generate more graduates, and the country doesn’t need that many designers. Does it actually need that many dancers? Can the economy support that many dancers? Are the students being sent out into the world with expectations that the world will never ever meet?

Audience -Yes but an education is just an education, isn’t it? It’s not that anyone that does a degree in something is going to be that.

Audience -No it isn’t, but if they’re being sent out into the world with expectations that it is possible for them ALL to be dancers then there must be an awful lot of them that are going to be bitterly disappointed and actually feel that their lives have been severely fed up as a result of that because nobody ever told them that it wasn’t going to be possible.

Audience -There are a lot of issues there and I think a lot of people DON’T expect to be dancers…

Audience -Yes….an English degree I don’t see why a student can’t just do a Dance degree, in that way.

Audience -Yes well if you’re doing it because that’s what you want to do, but it’s just a matter of the expectations that come out at the end of it that concern me. And it’s a case not only in dance, but with a lot of other creative activities, that they are commodified, and the government views it as a set of targets that have to be met. And they’re not interested in what actually happens after those targets have been met.

Audience -But I was thinking that it’s not that you do it because you…it’s something you just do because this is how you enter a world -this is why you do it, and you will find your way to do it. And this might be very different from how it was when you started, but if this is your approach towards the world, then this is your approach, and you do it, because you do it. That’s it.

Audience -Isn’t it also true that the more people that are educated in dance the bigger the audience and therefore the more dancers we’ll need, and so if you just keep on, if it grows and grows and grows, it will accommodate itself.

Audience -I still have the same question about whether, just in terms of actually doing it to make a living, a body of population can only support a number of people who are dancing for a living, and how many of them it needs.

Audience -But if that society places dance as very important, then it will need a lot of dancers, and the more people that learn it, the more important it will become within the culture. It’s only because our culture..

Audience– if it were stockbrokers, there would be no problem, we’d have lots of them, because that’s what the culture is, so if we keep feeding it into the culture, it will accommodate itself.

Audience – But the economy has to work, somebody has to be producing commodities that are going to be sold and that part of the economy has to be functioning as well. If people are dancing they’re not doing exactly those things, I’m just saying there needs to be a balance.

Audience -But the economy as we understand it will never work for dance. And it never will. We have to separate it out because it doesn’t produce anything that works within our idea of an economy, in the capitalist idea.

Audience -But I would say that’s because the measures that are being implied are inappropriate measures. It is possible to measure the value or worth of what any cultural activity has. But those measures aren’t applied effectively and then fed back in. It still doesn’t answer my question. I’m sorry, I still think too many colleges are being forced to produce too many people.

E – I think we could pose a question about what kind of education dance education tends to be. If dance education remains very narrow with the aim of creating dancers who then go into companies and the traditional dance workfield, then I think your question is very valid. But I think if dance education opens its doors out and educates people to understand themselves, to understand their own creative process, and creative process in general, helps them learn how to make choices, how to be independent thinkers, then even if not all of them will choose to go into the dance field, whatever other creative endeavours they enter, will draw on the education they got, and will include an embodied understanding of moving. To me, that’s the direction that I’d like to see dance education go, and I see around me people who are thinking in that way. Hopefully some time, those older models will be outmoded.

Audience -As I was saying, it’s to some extent to do with the expectations of the people that are being sent out from places that they’ve been trained.

K – I think there are two things – one is that probably a lot of people that study dance have always not become dancers because it’s always been a very competitive field. But also it’s a question of where the decision comes because, for example, me, I tried to get into Laban and The Place when I was 18, and didn’t get into either of them and was really fortunate there was such a thing as Middlesex Polytechnic, before they were abolished and turned into universities. But if that choice was made then that ‘I’m sorry you can’t be among us the elite’ then I don’t know what I would’ve done. I would’ve had to get a job, or you know. So who knows which students will actually go on to become dancers? And there’s no point where you can go, ‘Right you won’t, and you will’. It’s a sort of evolving question. So some people I went to college carried on for a few years and then stopped. While some people are still doing it, and it wouldn’t necessarily be obvious during the time I don’t think. It’s to do with all other kinds of circumstantial choices.

Audience -I trained in Design, and one of the people who I graduated with is one of the most successful designers, and actually he went to university to do Economics, and not Design at all, and changed his mind after a term realising he did the wrong thing. And at 18 no one would have predicted that that’s what he was going to do because it wasn’t even what he thought he was going to do himself. So yes I don’t think making a decision at 18 can have any way an effect.

Audience -I just think that institutions probably don’t aim to make artists or dance artists. I think it’s more to facilitate who can become an artist as I don’t think you can really teach someone to become an artist. And I know from like Visual Art, that they’re aware that very few are then becoming artists because it’s got to do with your personality and the way you want to live your life.

J- I was thinking about the numbers thing, because I remember coming out of dance college and people maybe setting up companies. But what was really sad was that perhaps because it wasn’t supported, it seemed to get competitive quite quickly because in some ways of the sheer numbers. I’m not saying everywhere, but maybe in some ways the smaller communities can be tight-knit in working together. And maybe with the larger numbers coming out there is more competition already and immediately. And I think it’s also about a sense of agency. Some people have that sense that they CAN make something happen, and will make something happen, and it will work out. And that’s interesting and I think some artists have that and that’s what keeps them going.

- The discussion then moved briefly on to the funding of improvisational work and the issue of improvisational work being less likely to be funded. Some thoughts on the reasons for this were:

1. Process based, collective, work is inevitably going to be a challenge for a funding model that developed around meeting the needs of more hierarchic companies delivering clearly defined products.
2. Issues of authorship and the desire for ‘society’ to have a clearly defined single ‘author’ of a piece rather than a group collaboration.
3. Difficulties for artists who do improvise in groups to be able to agree contracts or describe effectively before the event.

This is Part 1 of 3 transcriptions of the open Winlab 2006 discussion centred around improvisation with Eva Karczag, Jane Carr and Kate Brown.

The documents can be downloaded from our Winlab page on the main website.

We hope you enjoy reading them, and if you have any thoughts or comments, please use the forum to share them.

Part 1 – Eva Karczag - Improvisational beginnings and Somatic Practice

Jane and Eva and I have talked about some questions that we thought might provoke interesting discussion.
The reason for this event is that Gill and Fiona thought it would be nice to reflect and have the chance to share thoughts about improvisation.

Question:
Asking Eva – why do you feel drawn to improvisation – how did you come to improvisation?

Eva -Well, the first improvised performance I saw – I was very lucky to see Steve Paxton pretty much blew my mind, because it was so immediate, there was such a present-ness in it. You know how it is when you see something you really love and you think that’s what I want to do. And that’s really when my interest started.

I come from a very straight background. Jane and I were talking yesterday about having to improvise in RAD ballet exams. I remember my teacher saying ‘well, if you can’t think of anything else to do then waltz or run.’

And what I saw Paxton do was completely different, it was so human, he was so there. One could feel a present-ness that I hadn’t quite felt in set work before. And then not long after that I saw my first bit of Contact Improv, which again was extraordinary because of its human-ness, and because of its immediacy, and its organic-ness. But I think its human-ness was what really struck me most, how these people were in such close physical contact with each other, being themselves. And that’s how my interest began.

And then it continued, as I got more and more involved with release-work, because there’s a lot of improvisation inherent in every release class, as you begin to explore images, and start
to play with them…. I can remember that horrible moment when you don’t know what to do, because everything you want to do is something that someone else has put into your body, rather than something that’s really coming out of you.

It took time, patience and discipline for me to undo those patterns, just being with my body, myself, …before other things started happening.

Questions:
-Just to elaborate about that kind of present-ness that you mentioned.

Eva -Well it’s not that you’re not present with set work, because you are, you need to be. When I really get involved watching choreographed work that’s set ……. it’s as if people are doing it at that moment There is present-ness. But with improvisation there’s something else going on.

In the workshop we’ve been talking quite a bit about play, and somehow that intensity of children playing, getting completely drawn in to what it is that they’re doing, the world they are creating. Something ordinary, but also extra-ordinary in its ordinary-ness is happening.

Kate – I was wondering also about being available. So that you don’t know, you need to be available for something that you’re not expecting. It feels like a different mind set?

Eva -Yes it’s a different mind set, and it’s also a different body set because if your muscles are too bound and your body ‘knows’ and is fixed in too many patterns then it’s very difficult to step out of those patterns. Not that we don’t all have patterns, we all play out of our own patterns all the time, but yeah, one needs to cultivate availability. I guess perhaps one other thing that fed into my constantly growing interest in improvisation was doing the Alexander Technique. Becoming more and more familiar with that state where I felt so poised and so balanced that I could move in any direction began to really excite me. That so many
possibilities existed within that moment.

Kate – How does the bodywork, Alexander or Experiential Anatomy, how you find that relates to making performance? What the relationship is or the use of it in performance. Its value, as well as teaching, carrying on with those practices ….but also for making work.

Eva – For me, the value of it is to get to know my instrument, and the way I use it when I make work is to forget it. Which is something I’ve been talking about in the workshop, that it’s at the moment of forgetting it, when it all falls together and makes sense in your body. That’s what we’re looking for. So its not that I make work out of the bodywork, but I make work out of it because the information it gives me is there in my body and it’s my body that goes into my creative work or whatever I’m performing. But in terms of thinking about the length of my
spine, or what my organs are doing, I don’t when I’m making work or performing, its not what my work comes out of. For me, the body work is a set up, well I think any technique is there to
allow you to do what you want to do.

Audience - It’s funny what you said earlier about your search finding movement in every cell. When you said that I thought that best describes what I saw in performance on Saturday – in terms of that link between body practice and performance. I think that’s
very clear.

Eva – yes, I use bodywork as my training because I want to be the most articulate I can be. So …… it’s not an overt aim, it’s a covert aim. I want to be able to, hopefully, put form to the thoughts or feelings that drive me to make my work, or to step out into the space to improvise with someone or alone.

Kate – Does anyone else have thoughts on that?

Audience -It’s interesting, you refer to it as a technique, like any technique preparing you for performance.

Eva – Because I came to this work so early on, 30-something years ago now, which is incredible. At that time Release and improvisational forms were not considered ‘techniques’. We fought for acknowledgement because these forms are techniques. Perhaps what made recognition harder was that we were teaching different varieties of it, and teaching it in different ways. It’s not like ballet which has a particular defined and fairly limited vocabulary…

Kate – It’s taught in lots of different ways though

Eva -… Yes, ballet is taught in many different ways, but is defined within tighter boundaries. I feel that there’s more variation possible in bodywork and improvisation. In fact, my first long exposure to Release work was through Mary O’Donnell (Fulkerson) when Strider, the group I was dancing with at the time, spent a summer in Dartington with Mary’s group, Tropical Fruit Company. There were, I think, 6 Tropical Fruit Company members and every day one of them gave class to us, the members of Strider, and the other members of Tropical Fruit Company. So my first introduction to Release work was through the sensibility of many different people, and they each presented it differently. Some people really absorbed Mary’s way of teaching
and taught classes similar to the way Mary would teach. Someone else was influenced by his T’ai Chi practice so he brought T’ai Chi principles into his classes. Someone else had worked with Joan Skinner so she brought a Skinner viewpoint into her classes. One of the beautiful things to me, teaching at EDDC, was that many teachers came and taught their own very
particular strand of whatever their creative interest was at that time.

The students took in lots of different kinds of work, and I assume that each student has made their own mix of it all and
when they teach, they won’t teach what I taught them, they won’t teach what Gill taught them, they will teach the things they have absorbed and integrated, and make sense to them. Which I think, yes you’re right, ballet is taught in many different ways, Cunningham is taught differently by each different Cunningham teacher, but they’re teaching ballet, or Cunningham technique. Where I think in this kind of work, there are so many influences that are still forming it, it’s developing and changing, responsive and alive, which is where I wanted to get to – that in the naming/ saying that it’s a technique, you’re giving it stature, but you’re also perhaps rigidifying it. So my question is, how can you continue to have a technique and keep it open to change and to all the different influences that are hopefully transforming it?

Kate – And that is a big difference – just thinking about Joan Skinner, who actually teaches people to teach her technique. That’s quite a big philosophical difference, not conceptual
difference.

Audience -Just today you’ve been making lots of references to different practices, you (Eva) mentioned BMC, which in itself is a mix of many different influences. You mentioned Shiatsu, Chinese medicine, so reflecting through these different ways of
understanding the body or understanding movement and anatomy, energy.

Audience -Alexander?
Audience -Contact…

Eva – Certainly not all of us teach that way, but many of us have come in contact with, and have researched, lots of different methods and systems, so we’re moulding our teaching out of the influences that have formed us.

Audience -So when you say you’ve fought for some recognition of the body of work, was calling it a technique a part of that?

Eva – In a way, no, but in a way, yes because it legitimises it…

Audience -Yes, within a situation where technique is what is recognised…

What’s age got to do with it? was an open discussion held on 12th october at the Royal Festival Hall as part of Dance Umbrella 2007 and co-produced with Dance UK.

Gill Clarke chaired a panel consisting of Fergus Early, Paul Andre Fortier, Scott Smith, ChitraSundaram.

Dance Umbrella Brochure introduction:

Still a relatively young art from, contemporary dance in the UK is only now beginning to produce a substantial generation of mature danc eartists, both dance-makers and performers. What are the issues - philosophical, aesthetic and practical - that affect an artist’s ability to sustain his or her art/ How do their priorities change over time? What do we need to learn as a sector if we are to retain their experience?

Hi there,

This post and the following ongoing comments are dedicated to sharing information and staying in touch with other recent graduates or independent dance artists. Due to the many demands of working within this sector it can often be difficult to stay connected to fellow artists, and so please feel free to use this resource as a way to combat that isolation.

Please note that as a result of feedback from our Graduate Fortnight programme this year, we now offer an extended concession rate for our workshops and events. This means that if you hold a student card for 06/07 - a concession rate is valid on our events until 30 June 2008 or if you will become a graduate in 07/08 your concession rate is valid until 30 June 2009.

We hope you find this resource useful and welcome to the ID forum.

Gill and Fiona

Following on from the recently published Dance UK article, here you have the opportunity to contribute to the DANCE SALONS discussion around the current state of the dance sector:

• What is the most important issue that dance faces at the present time?
• What is the best way to improve the connection between the dance artform and the wider world?
• Has dance been made stronger by unifying all dance forms and activities under the single banner of ‘dance’ or would it be better to emphasise the differences in our diversity - and if so how?
• Do we need high profile spokespeople for dance - or is there another way we can make our presence felt with decision makers /in the media?

This article was commissioned by the Foundation for Community Dance for their spring 2007 issue of Animated.

Dance Artist Gill Clarke reflects on the mindfulness of the dancing body.

‘Minds emerge from process and interaction, not substance. In a sense we inhabit the spaces between things…’ P Broks…

It is often difficult to put into words, and even harder to justify to politicians, the ways in which dance works its magic - the basis of its transformative powers. We tend as a culture to value only what is tangible and measurable whereas dance is all about the ephemeral, the allusive, the in-between.

Yet I am increasingly excited by the contribution dancers do and could make within our various communities, not only as performers, but as harbourers of an embodied knowledge, traders in mindful motion - facilitating experiences rather than delivering consumable goods.

As we have evolved as humans our ever more sophisticated, analytical brains have been taking over control. Instead of turning our developed intelligence inward to better understand how we live through our bodies, or outwards to understand our symbiotic relationship with the natural world, our intelligence seems paradoxically to be directing us towards an existence beyond the body, with need only of a brain in order to operate and design technology. A rational and technological arrogance has gradually led us away from ‘relationship’, and towards an ecological tipping point - in terms of the sustainability of our external environment and our bodily health.

Read the rest of this entry »