EVALUATING MY TEACHING TO A BALLET COMPANY

Concerns dealing in this article

• Contemporary dance in a Ballet Company
• Training towards choreographic interests
• Dealing with big groups

Frame of the work:

8 working days (3,5 hours/day) to introduce the Ultima Vez dance vocabulary to a ballet company as preparation for a future creation of Wim Vandekeybus with members of this company.

Ballet Company:

The ballet company is a group of 27 members composed of dancers aged between 34 and 60. Except for one, everybody is native of the country and few speak any other foreign languages. I can more or less communicate with them without the need of a translator.

Characteristics of Ultima Vez dance vocabulary:

Floor work, partnering and specific imagery driving the dance content.

Teaching schedule:

We start the work with a warm up including:

• Games aiming circulation and crossing of the dancers in the room.
• Series of floor work exercises.
• Conditioning exercises.

I’ve introduced the idea of Out Of Balance (OOB) as leaning the straight body diagonally in the space:

-       Physically proposes an architectural opposition to vertical standing posture and horizontal laying bodies.

-       Dramatically we tune it as an unbalanced, uncontrolled behavior of the persons.

This OOB tool has been used in research dance-partnering process.

Partnering: Exercise to stimulate communication between couples: Instruct clear commands and ‘listening’ to each other. These exercises include improvised and set movement frames.

Group exercises:I’ve also presented an improvisation frame based on Vandekeybus’ scene “Poses” from the piece ‘What the body does not remember’.

UNFOLDING THE PROCESS

My first task has been working around honesty versus fictive:

• In the OOB work the focus is in the ‘center’ of the body while we evolve across the room: Our scenic preparation often focuses on projecting our presence through chest and face. By changing the attention of the projection I also want to change the type of presence of the performer into a more abstract ‘bodies’ moving as forms and lines in the space.

            The response is taking some time to establish a conscious connection with our center.

• In the partnering is where certain ‘mannerism of dancing together’ appeared strongly denoting a lack of communication. We have been working on blind guide, blind contacting exercises providing focus on act-react and clear-simple commands with the aim to re-establish current presence.

Floor work: Due to the age of the participants, I’ve decided to limit the introduction of this aspect of the vocabulary. Instead of insisting in evolutions in-out of the floor, we dealt with the floor for stretching and condition warm up and easy circulation parallel to the floor plane. We also got in contact with some partnering within a choreographic frame of rolling bodies reminding a scene of the Ultima Vez’s  choreography ‘Les Porteuses de Mauvaises Nouvelles’

Partnering:

• We have been working on hurling people across the room. The convention we want to establish between partners refers to interpreting:

                      How clear are the given commands?

                      How much the reactive partner has to add/invent to the input?

• I proposed OOB in couples as the need from each other to dialogue in a shifting equilibrium.

            Struggles in establishing weight and force dialogues; there was a wish to be kind with the partner, which tended to withdraw weight till converting the action in one supporting the other rather than two partners in OOB difficulty.

Group exercises

These exercises have introduced elements of space orientation using symmetry to a central point, group photo poses and form imitation. They contained a net of rules where it was needed to deal simultaneously with aspects related to spacing, cueing and precision. The dramaturgy is ruled by the urgency of achieving a perfect imitation and the group interaction stimulating new photographic situations.

MY PERCEPTION OF THE SITUATION

The members of the company are very matured dancers coming from mainly Ballet education with other kinds of trainings such as modern dance, folk dances, Pilates, Yoga…

Many of them have experiences as choreographers.

We have also received the visit of few student of the school aged around 18 years old.

My opinion is that the working habits in this company are anchored in the tradition of the choreographer/leader who sets that what should be danced and the dancers add their knowledge to interpret the cast. The dance is mostly based on formal language.

As dancers, they are formed in individuality (Many of dance learning processes -in both formation and interpretation- tend to introversion).

I’ve detected a lack of communication flow in partnering and group exercises: It often turns into accompanied-solo-interpretations.

In the research process they feel very quickly pleased with the first thing experienced. Their accomplishments aim at pleasing the choreographer, teacher or leader rather than placing themselves as critic reference. There is an obstruction in the research motors that I adduce to: A lack of investigation tools and the big groups’ dynamic where the people hide behind the mass.

Their dance suffers particularly while moving across the room.

MY INPUT IN THE PROCESS

Perhaps I’m underestimating their criteria: I have to be more precise detailing my points of interest in both intentions and performing and cultivate a common aim about the choreographic interests.

Change the working process by dividing into smaller groups and providing different choreographic tasks. Introduce the use of critic in peers as a way to enhance research and organize rotary rolls of survey within the groups.

I shouldn’t forget to feed their emotional by working also situations based on forms, where they find themselves more identified.

Bring up to frontline the ones with creative commitment in order to overrun the rehearsal.

RESULTS OF THE PROCESS WORK

I’ve been too ambitious trying to match class training with giving phrases, partnering and theatrical situations in only 3,5 hours x 8 days.

I didn’t succeed in working in smaller groups and introduce more research elements.

The ludic proposals missed other inputs besides movement language. I’m judging theatricality through only movement and perhaps we need to spend longer time investigating with other inputs: musicality, associative games, diverse experiences related to their personality, related to other environments, out of the studio…

By the last two days I felt they had started to feel the tools in their hands. This got evident in the partnering in both the use of techniques and sharing their creativity.

Perhaps the term in conflict honesty could be renamed precision.