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A SHORT EXCURSION INTO THE SEMANTICS OF "CONTEMPORARY TECHNIQUE" (LISA RACE, PETER JASKO)
By Heidi Wilm
“The sensitivity to dance possessed by each and every one of us comes from the fact that dance answers, after its own fashion, Spinoza's question: What is a body capable of? It is capable of art, that is, it can be exhibited as native thought. How can we name this emotion that seizes us at this point? ... I will name this emotion ... an exact vertigo.” (from Alain Badiou's “The Handbook of Inaesthetics”)
"Upsight Down / Rightside Up" is the title of the workshop of Lisa Race I am visiting today; "defying gravity" being one of the themes of the class, an exploration of the "thrill of the momentum" and "full-bodied, risky dancing". A promising description, and my expectations to get to see some spectacular acrobatic highlights in an "exciting atmosphere" are high. When I enter the class, these expectations appear to be somewhat "female": only girls attend the workshop, all quite young, probably all of them at the beginning or middle of their four-year education at a so-called "contemporary dance school". Right from the start, I'm feeling kind of reminded of something ...
The warm up session starts: Easy loosening of the shoulders, rolling up, rolling down, some plies, and so on. Then some "normal" stretching, a "normal" foot exercise with the "typical" in-and-out swinging leg, modern arms-over-head turns in the middle of the exercise (the "smoothie arm", as some people say), then everything on the other side ... – a class of "normal contemporary technique".
I am waiting for the "real" class to start, waiting for the "risk" to come in, and I decide to leave the room for about half an hour. Then back in again: still no thrill. They are exercising the whole package of "contemporary technique", including everything that seems to belong there: short choreographies with a lot of swings, a slide to the left, a slide to the right, rolling on the floor, the little Capoeira-like handstand-hop on one leg up, a turn with the upper body in arch, etc.
I start to ask myself whether I'm in the right class and walk out to check the sign on the door to see if it's really the class announced in the program. It is. But where's all the thrill and the defying gravity talked about? Maybe I just don't feel it, because I know all these movements so well. Every single one of them I know and have known since the beginning of my own "contemporary dance school" education more than ten years ago.
But this is where questions start to appear. What did I expect? Something different? Something new? And why do I have the feeling that my expectations won't be fulfilled? - The question seems to come down to the question as to what I find so "normal" about this class. And in the first place: What do I understand by a normal "contemporary technique"? What actually is a "contemporary technique"? Or: What do we mean when we use this expression? - These questions become worth examining.
It is often pointed out that there actually is no technique in "contemporary dance" which would be a technique per se, a vocabulary in itself, like in ballet, a certain movement material which could be described as the contemporary technique or the technique of contemporary dance. There rather seems to be a wide-spread range of different techniques, mainly based on the modern dance techniques developed in the early 20th century in combination with different types of "body work" (such as Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, Yoga etc.), to be taught not as a vocabulary but as a tool for dancers to achieve a higher flexibility in working in different ranges of the body in order to use this flexibility in a creative, choreographic and performing process.
But if you look at it, this is not fully true. Speaking of "contemporary technique", some kind of idea of a vocabulary immediately pops up in one's mind. There is some kind of convention about what people expect when a "contemporary technique" is taught and this convention seems to be institutionalized quite strongly within the teaching practices of most of the currently existing dance schools (at least in Europe). It is this institutionalized convention that made me perceive the exercises of the class I was watching as "normal".
Also, there seems to be a certain paradox concerning the expression "contemporary technique". Since even if "contemporary" might be one of the vaguest expressions currently in use (it seems to be possible to use it in order to refer to just about anything in existence right now), there still is this feeling that it points to something new, modern, or currently developing. It is somehow connected to a generic understanding of whatever it is referring to. In this sense, a high expectation is indeed connected to this word, since it has this connotation of processuality or of something that contains a risk in itself: the risk of uncertainty within the process of development, rather than having something set, fixed or already fully developed.
But of course, and this seems to be the paradox: A technique is a technique is a technique. It always contains conventions, and conventions naturally refer to the past. So if there is a "contemporary technique", the "contemporary" in it is always in danger of becoming a historical expression, just like the "modern" in "modern technique".
Seen in this paradoxical way, the whole question becomes a matter of timing: does the fact that certain types of movement have been taught under the label of "contemporary technique" for more than at least ten years mean that they cannot be called "contemporary" (in a not historical sense) anymore? How long can a movement repeatedly be taught without losing its claim to being "contemporary"?
We tend to think that things have to change quickly, information has to be transmitted fast and there has to be something "new" and "innovative" in every single move made. Isn't that a feature of our "contemporary times"? So maybe, after all, my expectations of what should be taught in a contemporary dance class are all too contemporary!
But this doesn't seem to be hitting the point. In any case, there is no "now" without a past, and what is wrong about referring to the knowledge and movement material of our history in contemporary dance practice in order to find out where we are and where we want to go from here? In a way it is out of the question that reference to the past is necessary and it seems that there has never been a greater reflexion on this than today, in our contemporary, post-postmodern times. The question shifts more to the point of how to deal with all these techniques and movements we have gathered over the years. And the question of why and how to teach them becomes more important than ever.
But let's get down to earth again and take a closer look at another class. "Contemporary Technique - Advanced", led by Peter Jasko. And indeed, this class really is advanced. Jasko, an artist with a strong physical background and a visible P.A.R.T.S. education, gives a challenging class for highly trained dancers. The material is highly complex, extremely fast, with a lot of running, sliding, running backwards (he has worked with David Zambrano for many years), rolling, jumping, twisting down to the floor, up again, jeté jumps, released arm movements, and there it is again: the Capoeira-like handstand-hop on one leg up! (This one really seems to have made it into the score of contemporary dance classes!)
Again, just as in Race's class, we seem to share an expectation and a desire for risk-taking and thrill. Something contemporary? Maybe! And Jasko embraces it by taking his students to the edge of their physical capacities. To work on "fearlessness" and "to develop trust within the group and build safe conclusions to difficult actions" is one of the main points of his workshop, he explains in the workshop description. Risk-taking and fearlessness, a seemingly good match in these contemporary times...
„We're gonna go a little bit more fresh now ..." – the teacher instructs the large group of young athletic dancers (in this class there are also a lot of male dancers) – "... each round more fresh!" Different types of high-volume pop songs with a strong beat spread throughout the room. One of them I recognize as from Noir Désir, then some loud Speed-Ska and after that a Metal-like mix of guitar and electronic music. Floor and air are vibrating with bass.
The task for the dancers is an extremely challenging choreography starting with running "in" as fast as possible, ending with running "out" as fast as possible and, in between, executing a highly complex ("contemporary") movement vocabulary in reflex-near velocity. They repeat again and again, in two alternating groups, giving everything they have to keep the pace. It doesn't seem to be so much about getting it "right" in the movement anymore, but about surviving the choreography, going through the material at a level of speed set by the music and keeping up with the group. (Also a convention that has survived in the flow of the contemporary: the need to be "in unison".)
In order to handle this difficult material these dancing bodies already have to "know" a lot: They have to have a strong ballet technique in their leg work to keep their centre, release training to be flexible in their upper bodies and loose enough to shift through space in such a dynamic way, an athletic and acrobatic background for the floor work (the hop!), breakdance-like back-slides, the coolness of Hip Hop and Streetdance to stay "fresh" each time they go ... These bodies seem to carry a whole history of dance techniques within them!
And once again, the question of how to handle all this knowledge remains. What to do with all these possibilities we have given ourselves? It just seems to be a question of choice. As long as we stay fearless!
(August 16, 2008)
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