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- Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
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Holistic pedagogy in practice: The curriculum and ideology of embodied self-discovery in Franziska Boas’s dance classes, 1933–1965
More LessDrawing principally from archival material, published primary source documentation and oral history interviews, this article outlines how Franziska Boas, a dance teacher in the United States whose career spanned 1933 to 1965, implemented holistic ideas about dancer training before somatic philosophies were widely accepted in dance. A student of Bird Larson and Hanya Holm, Boas taught ‘creative dance’, an approach to movement intended to assist each student in developing her or his own kinetic creativity. To achieve this goal, Boas believed that students first needed to understand human anatomy and movement fundamentals. She was committed to the idea that structured improvisations were the best way to teach technique. She valued individuality more than the achievement of technical feats and the emulation of a set movement syllabus. Boas is positioned here as interesting case study who, because of her pedagogical practices, illuminate our understanding of how dance and somatics developed in tandem in a variety of environments within an American liberal arts education system, including at the Boas School of Dance, her privately owned studio in New York; and the formal educational setting she encountered as a professor in the Dance and Physical Education Department at Shorter College in the southern town of Rome, Georgia
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Deconstruct to reconstruct:A proposal for the inclusion of Fitzmaurice Voicework® in the training of dancers
More LessThis article forms part of my Ph.D research around exploring breath as a catalyst for theatre making. My research is positioned within the University of Cape Town’s Drama Department and endeavours to draw from various traditions, methods and theories of breath, such as Yoga, Fitzmaurice Voicework®, Qi Gong, the Sanskrit system of rasa, and the study of breath and its uses in certain Southern African Sangoma (traditional healer) practices. The focus of this article is on the Destructuring aspect of Fitzmaurice Voicework, and argues a case for its inclusion in the training of dancers. Broadly speaking, Fitzmaurice Voicework can be divided into two main components, that of Destructuring and Restructuring. The notion of deconstructing to reconstruct is explored through breath and body in an attempt to enhance the live sensorial presence of the performer in relation to the audience. The breath is explored as an authentic and embodied element that is experienced somatically by the performer and is investigated as the impulse as well as thread that connects body, imagination and language (be it verbal or corporeal). This article serves as a proposal to include the Destructuring aspect of Fitzmaurice Voicework in the training of dancers, in an attempt to develop a holistic, psychophysical and somatic approach that considers the well-being of the performer.
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With Descartes, against dualism
Authors: Marie Bardet and Florencio NocetiAt the crossroads between philosophy and ‘somatics’, we interrogate the problem of dualism as something that still more or less explicitly inhabits our discourse, and forms and deforms our practices. By closely following Descartes’ correspondence with the Princess Elisabeth (1643), we see how Descartes’ concern with distinguishing body from soul never ceases to be problematized by reason of the continual evidence of their union. Considering that in the correspondence the two keys elements that appear when thinking about the union of soul and body are weight and extension, we utilize these two pathways to comprehend the problems and concerns they have identified within the evidence of union. Furthermore, we seek to retrieve these problems and concerns through Bergson’s later philosophy of ‘extensivity’ as it appears in Matter and Memory (1896) under a non-classical dualistic model. We do this, not to proclaim either union or extensivity as solutions, nor even to find the right philosophy for somatic pra tices, but to see how these problems historically found can help us look attentively at somatics’ abilities to invent non-dualistic forms and thoughts, particularly in regard to how they think through movement.
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Kinetic Awareness® for women with breast cancer: Somatic movement as an aid to treatment
By Jill GreenThe purpose of this study was to explore ways that Kinetic Awareness®, a somatic body and dance practice, can help women with breast cancer deal with the symptoms of their treatments. The stories of the women are told through a multifaceted case study process, using postpositivist displays of data such as narrative and split page format. This strategy embodies an approach, which does not attempt to find generalized solutions, or prescriptions; portray the researcher as an authority figure; or attempt to speak for the participants. Rather, it offers a multitude of voices, viewpoints and possibilities. Through this qualitative approach, the study focuses on finding agency within a medicalized system of care.
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Beyond tradition: The practice of sadhana in Odissi dance
More LessBased on fieldwork in sites such as New York and Bhubaneswar, this article examines how a group of dancers work within and beyond the traditions of Odissi dance as a way to expand the existing repertoire or margam (literally, pathway). How are new works produced and what constitutes innovation in a dance form that is frequently identified as a traditional one? This article argues that tradition(s) function as an interlocutor that dancers engage with continuously and dynamically to create innovative work. This innovation is accomplished via the daily practice of sadhana, such that innovation becomes an embodiment of that effort. By exploring Odissi through the embodied knowledge of its practitioners and their sadhana, this article provides an alternate way to understand a dance rooted in a ritual form, now performed on a global stage, in the language of the humanities and social sciences.
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At the threshold: Approaching inter-subjectivity in the creative process with somatic Aikido methodology
More LessThis article traces the author’s research into states of shared subjectivity (‘inter- subjective states’), undertaken using practice as research methodology with four Aikidoists from the London-based Tetsushinkan Dojo. The article therefore both reviews and synthesizes relevant literature, and draws on the experience of fifteen hours of practical in-studio research. The author draws from a wide range of sources, including but not exclusive to western phenomenology, eastern wisdom traditions (Zen Buddhism and Shintoism), somatic and choreographic practices, as well as a first-person study of the Japanese martial art Aikido and contemporary dance. This article was written in association with the Masters program in contemporary dance at the London Contemporary Dance School.
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Somatic sensibilities: Exploring the dialectical body in dance
More LessThis article investigates the dialectical tension inherent in the dancer’s dual role as object and subject within performance. The article begins by noting that the dancer and choreographer’s investment in a somatic understanding of movement privileges the dancer’s subjectivity within the creation of dance, inviting the audience to engage empathetically with the dancer’s work. This proposition is explored through a brief analysis of Steve Paxton’s early presentations of contact improvisation. The question of how a somatically informed choreographic framework might encourage alternative modes of spectatorship is then explored through a more sustained investigation of Joyride – a solo made by the independent dance artist Colin Poole in 2008.
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Beyond Allan Kaprow: An interview with Rosemary Butcher
More LessRosemary Butcher presented her reinvention of Allan Kaprow’s first Happening entitled 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959, Reuben Gallery, New York City) in the Ballroom of the Royal Festival Hall in London, November 2010 as part of the larger exhibition and performance event ‘Move: Choreographing You’. While remaining critical of the actual performance outcome, Butcher maintains that working on the reinvention has changed her choreographic practice. Two interviews following the reinvention took place; the first at a time where Butcher had embarked on the planning of a new live performance involving film projection, and the second after the presentation of Butcher’s work entitled After Kaprow – The Silent Room, as part of The Place’s Dance on Film series at the Bloomberg Gallery, London, in November 2011. The interviews capture the transitory nature of performance-making processes, the choreographer engaging in speculation and in researching the vague concept of ‘activity’ in relation to movement.
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Loop: Corporeal and conceptual reflections on Loop (2011), an unsighted durational performance
More LessLoop (2011) was an unsighted, live durational work that unfolded over six hours. It was presented at Siobhan Davies Studios London as part of ‘What Now’ (2011),curated by Gill Clarke and Fiona Millward, co-directors of Independent Dance.‘What Now’ presented experimental work by artists working with expanded notions of choreographic thinking, addressing time, space, movement and the body in innovative ways.
This article discusses the kinesthetic experience of the unsighted six-hour performance. Additionally, it aims to contextualize this experience by weaving theoretical, critical and conceptual concerns from within the field of dance, with personal and affective reflections. It does so by highlighting the sub-headings; Gesture, Time, Anatomy, Seeing, Hearing and Embodiment, whose function is to act as readerly and writerly landmarks within the landscape of a six-hour process and within the context of my practice more broadly.
The document is illustrated by a selection of images from the performance and a visual score.
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