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WATCHING MILTON MYERS' HORTON TECHNIQUE CLASS
By Lieve De Pourcq
On Thursday, the 7th of August, I enter studio 2 in the Arsenal. I'm a little tentative, but also quite curious about observing Milton's class. I am a dancer and I studied at a dance school for four years, but I have never ever taken a Horton class. In all honesty I have never even seen one. I have no idea what the style is like, no clue about the approach towards the body. So let's see!
The room is, as usual, full of women and only a few men. Most of them wear tight clothes and have their hair pulled back. The "fashion" seems to be a little ballet-like. The class starts and suddenly everybody is standing in the same position and, without the teacher saying anything at all, they all start with the same exercise without hesitation.
I'm a little surprised and confused by this common action. The classes I normally take start off a little lazy and slowly rise up to an energetic level.
But not this one!
The dancers (this is also what Milton Myers continuously calls them) go directly into some flat backs, deep plies and hinges. They finish the first exercise and again they know exactly what to do next! I suppose that the class always has a similar development, just like in ballet, so that after three days they know the approach. (Again, I'm new to this style!) The class is accompanied by a piano player, who gives the rhythm and seems to help the students by giving accents to the music whenever the dancers are also supposed to accentuate the movement.
During the warm up, the body seems to be divided into two parts, into upper body and lower body, into bending at the knees and bending at the hips.
The feet remain in a parallel position for the first part of the exercise and then they repeat in first position, after that they open the feet into second position.
The shapes created by the body form 90-degree angles, there are very little diagonal directions and every movement has a very clear beginning and end.
The arms are very often held in the same position, spread open in the air, parallel to the floor.
The dancers' bodies look very trained and muscley. The movements also seem very muscular and there are no breaks in-between exercises. From the warm-up they proceed straight to crossing over the floor and jumping.
It looks like a very strong work-out and the dancers seem to have no trouble with it and continue without losing any energy.
After watching this class, I started thinking about styles, esthetics and approaches to the dancing body. The Horton Technique was invented in the 30's and 40's. That is a while ago, and since then a lot of things have happened in the dance world. Although I have never done Horton, I can see how certain aspects can be useful to me.
Choreographers and dancers try to create a way to dance, express and move with a quality that appeals to them, at the same time they want to do it in a way that respects their bodies (most of the time). Each generation finds/invents another esthetics, another hopefully respectful way of moving through space. There is ballet, Horton, Graham, Release and so on ...
They all have space to exist and we, as dancers or as an audience, can choose what we like and what we don't. What seems totally logical and respectful to the body to one person may seem like an attack on the body to another. I benefited from watching this class, although I still don't really feel like taking it. I am happy that there are options to choose from and that we, as dancers, are not all educated with the same information. The encounter of forms, through dancers cooperating, through watching different performances, through checking out various dance styles, continues to enrich and develop the scene.
(August 16, 2008)
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