Dance
- Dance at its best is a fully sensed and felt through physical activity. Our senses and sensibility work as powerful tools to shape and refine movement with ease and mastery. Yet, it requires from a dancer a continuous exchange of information between physical knowledge that is already embodied and a conscious perceptual inquiry. The true challenge lies in maintaining this flow of perception and focusing continuously on the quality of movements. Without an attentive focus on our sensations, this process easily gets blocked.
In a dance training/class my aim is to maintain a focus on the awareness and sensory-motor abilities according to which the body functions - rather than on static forms and images. We shall become aware of different body textures and movement qualities and sharpen our sensations, while we face exposure to movement. Principles of different dance techniques help to achieve that.
The beginning of a class focuses on activating sensory-motor abilities, softening joints of the body and building new inner pathways. The fluid quality of the body shall faciliate multi-directional balancing and help to release our alignment.
Mobilizing exercises to stretch & strenghten are combined with structured improvisation tasks, which encourage each participant to approach movement on an individual level and offer space for individual movement exploration and musicality. A sensations for flow, liquid quality and elasticity in the musculoskeletal structure of the body becomes visible and space in the joints noticed.
- Following the warm-up, I gradually focus on more energetic and technical tasks. The class increases in complexity involving set sequences and short choreographic phrases. We move ongoing through different spatial levels - from the floor up into medium and upright positions and down again.
I draw upon imagination as a source to guide dancers in sensing and directing the subtle information within their bodies. It is an essential tool for a dancer's creativity and mastering to shape the grace of the art. The class cultivates awareness for different textures, dynamics and movement qualities and inviting dancers to embody a reflective practice. We research musicality and artistry through a shifting dance of contrasts - fragility and power, smoothness and sharpness - discovering the balance that animates authentic expression.
Thus creating dance becomes infinite and rich, understanding that form that come along with it is a matter of sensing its sources of action.
The class integrates elements of various different dance techniques, combining principles of different contemporary dance techniques (floor work, release technique), modern dance techniques (Limon, Jooss-Leeder-Technik) as well as contact improvisation, improvisation methods and body work (Feldenkrais).
