mahr'svierteljahrsschriftfürästhetik
9 (2006), Nr.3/September
L’art philosophique
Letter to Ismael Ivo, ImPulsTanz/Wien. 14680 Zeichen.
Wien, August 2006
Dear Mr. Ivo!
I feel the need to a write you a letter because this
is the form, it seems to me, to be the best to gve response. Let
me tell you that I enjoyed this year’s (07/13 through 08/13) ImPulsTanz
Workshops and Research a lot. To begin with I came to enroll a dancing course
for the first time in my life. Being not very remote from what Impulstanz so
friendly calls the Golden Age I was surprised even by myself to consider myself
a dancing student since I have not been doing more than absoloving the
adolescent standard and latin dance course (Tanzleistungsabzeichen in Bronze)
and more lately aerobic training at a fitness club. I do not conceal particular
practical and theoretical interest in dance along rock and techno music.
Let
me first of all give you a short report of my personal experience as a student.
I booked Contemporary Technique/Basics Beginner with Ted Stoffer, one of the
various „Workshops in Contemporary Dance and Body Work for all levels from
beginners to professional dancers“ as the booklet has it. It was a pleasure
throughout. Ted started with taking time in carefully committing us and our
names to his memory. Then, after some stretching exercises not unlike „yoga“ on
the floor and in standing position - by the way good home exercises as well - ,
were following some non-locomotive chaotic movements. Another time span on one
of the five days of the course was devoted to „sending“ the body including
attempts to let fall our bodies. Additionally Ted gave a short introduction
into the four basic dance categories. At at least three lessons we developed
short and even at times ballet-like choreographic sequences that gave rise to
some of us with more advanced skills - to their relief - to apply some
traditional dance vocabulary like the chassé. Also, a case was made by Ted with
doing a move with suspense. Finally the sequences were danced in three groups
allowing for watching, self-reflecting and spending applause by the remaining
two groups standing at the boarder of the dance floor. Ted always kept a high degree
of attention with giving short comments on deficiencies directed sometimes to a
singular person without mentioning her or his name in order to cause the others
ponder the point to themselves. One of the most impressive exercises for me was
lying on the floor, starting with moving a toe of the right foot, including
into the „uncontrolled“ spontaneous movement step by step the other toes of the
foot, the foot, the shank, the thigh and so on with, then, „constructing“ the
left side the same way. One time I shortly watched how the other students did
and thought what an amazing impression all the surprisingly different movements
by the students would make on Ted. Let me not forget to mention the contact
improvisation portion Ted made us do on the basis of movements partners of a
pair consecutively made.
One
thing stroke me as particularly important. For the most time Ted Stoffer did
not use music. This gave the lessons a welcome body awareness touch. And when
there was beautiful and less rhythmical, slow old style jazz songs or some
advanced down beat electronic music - both of them played not loudly - it was
not used with rhythmic purposes. Of course, as known to me as a spectator of
performances contemporary dance has little to do with rhythm. This is something
I would not have believed back in the rock days when I stuck to Frank Zappa’s
definition „dance is what your body does when struck by music“ (dance to his
and his band’s Tell Me You Love Me). Therefore not using music gives way to a
kind of bodily autonomy, say for instance to your body’s own „rhythms“ or, more
generally put, times. But then it becomes obvious that rhythm cannot be the
primary parameter of dance. It may not be a parameter at all. Even music is
only one of not necessary layers of dance performance as much of contemporary
dance shows. Of course, the tranquility of Impulstanz workshops as well as of
the whole camp also needs to be considered from a pragmatic point of view. You
cannot teach when you don’t have attentive students. And you cannot teach when
you don’t go to the elements with for instance exclusively focusing on motional
and even non-motional body awareness.
Hence
the difficulties to define dance today. Germaine
Prudhommeau says that dance is a creation of arbitrary movements with the goal
in itself (danse, in: Étienne Souriau, Vocabulaire d’esthetique, ed. by Anne
Souriau,
This
taken as a sign for the recent state of dance we have already one of the
reasons for today’s increasing need of dance education - dance is not an art
and thereby available not only to those who want to gain and improve the
capabilities to practice dance as an art. So apart from contemporary dance as a
creative art demonstrated with ImPulsTanz Festival dance is an
equally artistic and recreational activity. This circumstance necessitates a
more pervasive analysis of the layers of dance. Given that dance is body
movement as a mastered language we got to do with a complex process
involving choreography or, better, choreutics (to take Rudolf Laban’s term, but
used in the widest sense of the body’s space), contact/connection/communication,
acrobatics, body building, movement therapy, expression, pantomime, and sports.
I
will not give you trouble here with treating dance theoretically at greater
lenghth. Let me just offer to think about two potentials of ImPulsTanz Workshops
and Research. First the possibility
to steer agaist today’s predominant commercialized active and passive sports.
Sports is where sweat is, at least potentially - so it is with dance. Just
remember the Expressions show and the somersault seen there. Sports and dance -
what are the links? Think of the tournament Standard and Latin dances. Think of
(water) callisthenics and ice dancing at Olympic games (dance under restricted
material and technical conditions). Think of those people who had done that and
finally went pro - as one used to say - to circus or ice dance shows. The genre
as an art has now reappeared with enterprises like Circus Roncalli. Please do
not forget that Hip Hop, Body Work, Jazz dance have included in gyms. Here it
not just the fitness and recreational sports aspect, but the aim of fulfilling
choreutic, communicational, body building, movement therapeutic, expressive,
and even pantomime and acrobatic needs of a lot of people who do not only treat
their bodies for pure fitness. This paragraph gives the opportunity to make
ImPulsTanz Workshops and Research a suggestion. When in Vienna fitness studios
Hip Hop and so called Jazz is an unjust minority, so why not counter to the
these studios’ dance incorporation strategies with developing a model of
dancing to today’s variety of aerobics. Much disclaimed aerobics certainly is
dancing method from which the skating step of later techno music should emerge
in the nineties. The advantage: attracting all the dance floor people dancing
to not just techno, but house, drum & bass, booty music as well. So why not
offering a workshop of this kind?
Secondly I cannot
refrain from referring to acrobatics.
Hoping,
as we all do, to once become an acrobate reader and writer ourselves, I noticed
with the somersault mentioned that the Hip Hop dancers also go beyond the
limits of „usual“ dance with for instance breakdancing. The abnormal pose or
movement - with purely visual attraction and astonishment instead of aesthetic
spectation - was, as you know, introduced in classical ballett by Italian
virtuosi effectuating innovations in choreography. Before, acrobatics was used
to train the body in order to gain and demonstrate suppleness. What fascinates
us up to this day is the surpassing of our everyday balance, of the physical
laws of nature in order to get an apparition of the supernatural. This aspect
of dance has been taken away in part by stuntman abilities and special cases of
pantomime like Kung Fu fighting. Finally remember that „going on tiptoe“ - a
kind of dance’s „logo“ for quite some time - is exactly what the ancient Greek ákrobatéoo
means. So what about including into the program a course concerning an
acrobatics of the bodies and of the usage of things like juggling - for
beginners, an for more advanced levels?
Let
me come to one of the basic conditions for the success of ImPulsTanz Workshops
and Research - besides the wonderful curatorial and organisational work you,
Rio Rutzinger, Michael Zellinger and your team achieves. I do not need to draw
your attention to the fact that the success of Impulstanz is to some extent due
- despite some remoteness to the inner city - to the characteristics of
Burgtheater-Probebühne & Art-for-Art-Werkstätten in Arsenal, Objekt 19, at
Ghegastrasse, that very specific site in Vienna’s third district. In and around
the huge halls usually used for producing scenery for the Bundestheater season
- months September through June - there is no noise. Nowadays without
surrounding walls the former urban military camp still has broad meadows and
little car traffic. Therefore silence here has very distinct non-martial and
non-industrial connotations. The non-industrial aspect of the camp imposes
powerfully with all the huge hall machinery stopped or laid down as if a moment
ago and only partially removed behind the curtains (if there are any) and the
apartment wall size mirrors for the more traditional dance forms. The long
corridor linking halls A to E make us walk in appropriate speed, especially
when the wheather is hot as it used to be this year. Then, all the grace and
serenity of the site begin to irradiate. The discontinuation of labor - a
visible moment of post-industrial society as one might say - only gives way to
a kind of leisure that sets in motion work on another re-creational and bodily
spiritual level. The non-martial aspect of the camp is revealed to anybody
involved here especially in times when a new bitter war reminds us of our lucky
peaceful situation. Our times do not speak much of utopia. Yet here I felt that
this dancing community realized by way of learning could be such a utopia, an
apparition of a society to come. Only for this reason I am a bit skeptical
seeing martial arts included to some degree like Martin Gruber entertains it
with the Suzuki method shown quite impressively at Impressions, the opening
teachers’ presentation on the first day. Of course I have no doubts about the
peaceful intentions of Mr. Gruber as well as I am aware of the increasingly
strong technical import to contemporary dance performance nowadays.
What
impressed me a lot - besides the basically peaceful mood - was Ted’s ability of
never criticizing and only offering or inviting us to do something. That made
it all the more convincing, that is, by means of showing steps, movements,
tricks and verbally giving suggestions. He may have done so for us beginners
and may keep it differently with professionals. But at least to me it made
sense with regards to the seemingly infinite possibilities of moving and
expressing the body and communicating it. I felt free, something that will not
come as a surprise since I stepped at least one centimeter beyond my bodily,
technical, expressional and communicational restrictions.
Freedom
is a word written in capital letters at ImPulsTanz as you were right to stress
in hosting the opening Impressions show and the concluding Expressions show.
Freedom also and here means the huge variety of dancing styles and techniques
in the ImPulsTanz Workshops + Research courses. It is amazing indeed that a whole
structure is offered, not just courses - besides what may be noticed as the
main point of ImPulsTanz for the public, i.e. the ImPulsTanz Festival
performance program. I simply render what was offered as methods, techniques,
styles: workshops for body work
(Feldenkrais, Alexander, Pilates, yoga, gyrokinesis, and myoreflex methods),
classical/modern/contemporary technique, ethnical dance & jazz & hip
hop, improvisation & composition (including the „materials“ voice, body
sounds and touch), age and ability diversification (courses for the ages of
3-5, 4-7, 6-8, 7-12, 9-12, 10-13, 12-15, 55-100 and for people with restricted
abilities); research done in
coaching projects, the so called ProSeries and the choreographers’ venture (I
learn this year offered as a co-production with International Festival for the
first time with Mårten Spångberg). Besides these topics I was deeply impressed
by the high standards of teaching and inconsequence learning - not just
learning, but also exercizing, training, the rehearsal, the audition (unlike
sports competition), the dress rehearsal (at the festival), the (improvisation)
jam, the teaching demonstration. I cannot imagine another art with such a
manifold culture of learning.
I
am of course very remote to give qualified judgments on the Workshops +
Research offered, for I made only little use of my right to watch as a silent
visitor (which I regret). All I can say is that I got strong impressions by all
the teachers of the afternoons of the week I participated in my workshop.
Accidental or not, I watched Erin Cornell’s outburst of expression, Niels
Robitzki’s and Vanessa Andrada’s perfection and motivation, Andrew Harwood’s
all over presence and distinctive device, your own musically persistent and
pervasive body lecturing, Joe Alegado’s elementary as well as elegant
movement-complex demonstration, Janet Panetta’s most charming personal and
exemplary authority using educationally the digital camera, Iñaki Azpillaga’s
patient and experienced colleagueship and Kurt Mossetter’s discrete
surgery-like interventions.
If
I am not wrong, I saw Mathilde Monnier - the lady so consciously taking the
microphone out of your hand when being interviewed by yourself at Impressions -
was not too good to participate in the extra contact improvisation jam offered
and announced by Andrew Harwood at the Impressions show. For more than two
hours I watched that dancing. The doors of Studio 2 were wide open, through the
huge back door a beautiful old tree visible. Wothout music advanced dance students
and dancers approached oe another, at the beginning pairs, later on also little
groups, the dynamics of movement speed and intensity changing with the progress
of time, slightly, yet perceivably different moods over the two our long
ongoing encounter. At any point of time a new challenge for me watching, for
one never can see everything at once, got to decide which group or person you
focus on ...
Another
kind of freedom I experienced was that of discourse, of speech, of research: to
be practiced at ImPulsTanz courses, before and after. Our class also was a good
one in that respect, and Ted did not shy at discussing and responding to our
questions. I could not come to the two Tuesday discussion panels that you
offered. As with me there could have been some more opportunities for talks
reflecting experiences on behalf of the students as well as teachers. There is
a lot to tell and it should be communicated that dance is not just a mute body
thing. I take it the same line is that ImPulsTanz Workshops and Research
encourages to watch. This runs into principally turning courses into events
open to the public - of course with running the risk that what may be seen by
silent visitors who finally do not participate is published and re-published in
one way or the other. Also there is obviously some need by students for
expressing response to the performances of the ImPulsTanz festival. This
response could be made public on the pertinent weblog of the magnificent
website of ImPulsTanz. But beyond this somebody fortunately printed the
comments out and hung it up at the beginning of the corridor linking halls A to
E of ImPulsTanz Workshops and Research. This may also be a hint at the
potential that the students who are a significant part of the audiences of the
festival are happy to share their opinions on what happens downtown.
Concedingly
this letter has become a bit long. Yet I cannot close without mentioning that
Ted said that anything is dance from getting up in the morning to going to bed
at night. That means, if I may interpret him, any movement may be dance like
anything may be art as Marcel Duchamp put it or anybody may be an artist as
Joseph Beuys claimed. If any movement may be art then what does follow from
this assumption for ImPulsTanz?
Sincerely
yours,
Peter
Mahr
Peter Mahr ©
2006
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