Introduction

My research seminar paper concerns on an improvisation course that I taught to a group of 12 first year BA contemporary dance students at The Theatre Academy, Helsinki (TEAK) in Autumn 2008. My background in dance can best be described as alternative, more accurately as post-modern. My interest and education was focused on somatic exploration and improvisation. The TEAK BA contemporary dance education has been characterised as more mainstream, as has the background of the students. So my arrival to teach this group had a little of the character of two worlds colliding.

At my first meeting with the students, I asked how many of them had studied improvisation before and they all responded affirmatively. However, it quickly became clear that we were referring to very different things. After the first couple of awkward classes, in which both we struggled with each other, a fruitful and creative exchange developed during which I had many insights into improvisation and teaching improvisation, and, from the dialogue in the classes, I believe the students did too.

The course consisted of three two-hour 15 minute classes every week for six weeks I also had the possibility to invite a musician to accompany the class once a week. Since the school offers the opportunity for Friday lunchtime performances, I suggested that the students might perform a demonstration performance for an audience at the end of the course. Not only did this give us something to work towards, but also created another very distinct learning opportunity.

I have been teaching improvisation for the last 13 years but have never documented the process. A self-taught teacher, I never make written class plans, only rough mental plans. One reason is that since what I teach revolves around physicality and the body, I carry the body of knowledge upon which I draw, and that I developed as the result of my studies and research, with me everywhere I go. Literally. It never seemed necessary. Another is that I prefer to improvise my way through a class or a course, which renders planning redundant.

I am in the habit of tracking the students’ interests and following my own, adapting to the mood and energy level of individuals, the group as a whole, and myself, as they shift from moment to moment. To give one banal but concrete example, it’s a very different experience to teach, and for the students to learn, this work that ad- dresses their whole being at nine o’clock on cold dark mid-Winter Monday morning than on Thursday afternoon on a bright warm day in May.

Of course, I have built up a repertoire of exercises, but my focus is not so much on teaching them as continuing to explore them. I don’t feel like the material that I teach is external to me, I feel rather that the knowledge is simply there within me. In the act of teaching, it organises itself in response to the situation, often in new and surprising ways. There is always a difference between classes, sometimes more and sometimes less. 

[click on the link below to download the rest of the seminar paper as a PDF]