A pedagogical investigation of Wilfride Piollet's Flexible Barres

A pedagogical investigation of Wilfride Piollet's Flexible Barres, a training method for nowadays' dancer.

Camille Desmarest Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of MA Creative Practice

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance September 2016

Abstract The research “A pedagogical investigation of Wilfride Piollet's Flexible Barres, a training method for nowadays' dancer� comes from the encounter between the author, Camille Desmarest, and the principal dancer from the Paris Opera and choreographer Wilfride Piollet (1943-2015), and the exploration of her innovative training method, called Flexible Barres.

Because of its innovative aspects, this method was perceived as controversial within the world of dance pedagogy in France. The author will address the issue of its position nowadays, especially in regards to somatic practices, and will try to show how a method which has been mostly used in a classical ballet context can have contemporary developments and potentially become a relevant practice for everyone.

To do so, an historical approach has to be undertaken for a better understanding of the implications that such an innovative technique had throughout its development. Indeed, the whole research process around Flexible Barres challenged the establishment, putting into question a whole organization, from the classical training of the dancer to the very hierarchy.

Though the opposition to Flexible Barres was strong, an important legacy around this method remains nowadays, which will be explored.

Then the author will show how such a method was put into application, by studying in details Wilfride Piollet's lessons and pedagogical vision. If this technique is based on a somatic approach to movement, it has also a whole philosophy and a theory of its own, which can lead to contemporary developments.

These contemporary developments will be studied under the light of the author's experience, through the analysis of different classes she has given.

This will show that, beyond any classifications or level of practice, the moving body can benefit from the Flexible Barres. No single training method can be devised though for a training in a contemporary field. It is up to the teacher to develop for himself and from his different experiences a personal contemporary pedagogy, suited to the specificity of the participants, through which the Flexible Barres will carry on to be spread.

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Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge first Wilfride Piollet, who will never read these lines, but with whom I discussed a lot about their preceding research. I would like to symbolically thank her for opening up for me new ways of considering movements and for all the subsequent discoveries and encounters I made. I would like to thank her for supporting my curiosity, being always a force of encouragement in taking risks in the unknown.

I am grateful for her intimate openness and the trust I could feel.

Our relationship has forever transformed my journey and I carry on nourishing the resonances of our exchanges.

I would like also to thank Jean-François Riaux, my high school philosophy professor, who was one of the first person to believe in my dance, and without whom I would never have met Wilfride Piollet.

This dissertation is a closing chapter to a six years journey at Laban, which would not have been possible without the initial invitation and regular advice of Claire Trachet, nor the determinant encounter, which became a friendship with Alessandra Ruggieri, nor either the continuous support of my parents in all possible ways.

I have a thought for everyone who at a time or another made this londonian time a unique experience: Rob Marr for being a friend of all adventures, Carly Butler for her ever benevolent attention, Ndenko Asong and GĂźzen Tuna, unflinching Olympic friends, whose support crosses borders. My thoughts go as well to Samara Dubois, Gianfranco Biasol and Garry Scott James, who I won't forget.

I would like to mention the Independant Dance team who was a decisive motivation in coming back to London for an MA, and who warmly as ever hosted and homed the course.

Special thanks to Marina Collard who tutored me on this research and has been very insightful and supportive thorough the whole process.

I also have some thoughts for Jean Guizerix, who in the course of the past two years saw a lot of things turned upside down and with whom I shared many moments in the transition just after Wilfride's departure. I am thankful for him being worse than me in some areas, and in that it's reminding me where work needs to be done. I am thanking him for the blind support at times, and the subtle complicity in working.

Finally I want to dearly thank Mathieu Simard, whose presence on my sides roughly coincides with the time line of this master and who, sometimes laboriously, witnessed and bore at the forefront almost every rebounds. I am immensely grateful for him being an extraordinary ideas debate partner, as horrendous and unsteady as I can be at times. Thank you for having given me space to pursue this MA and having followed me on the path we are now engaged together.

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Table of contents - Preamble …………………………………………………………………………p.5 - Introduction ………………………………………………………………………p.8 •

Genesis and development of Flexible Barres: from an unusual training to a theorised method ………………………………………..p.10 1. Origins of a new training method…………………………………….p.10 2. Controversy…………………………………………………………….p.15 3. Legacy…………………………………………………………………..p.19

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Wilfride Piollet's Flexibles Barres classes and pedagogical vision 1. A technique based on a somatic approach to movement………….p.22 2. Pedagogical insights and theory of the technique………………….p.28 3. On the term “contemporary” and aesthetic considerations………..p.40

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Practical research on teaching through the Flexible Barres principles……………………………………………….p.46 1. Pedagogical resources to develop a teaching of my own...……….p.47 2. Methodology of the research………………………………………….p.49 3. Practical experiments………………………………………………….p.56

- Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………..p.63 - References………………………………………………………………………..p.65 - Bibliography……………………………………………………………..………..p.68

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PREAMBLE To start with, the research which is about to unfold here can be briefly contextualised in its historical perspective. For the purpose of the preamble and the third part, the first person will be used because the nature of the work is personally experiential. This research which has expanded, is very connected to personal encounters. I would like to provide an overview of how I came to work on, with and for potential developments of the Flexible Barres technique.

The starting point of this thesis could be acknowledged as my first meeting with Wilfride Piollet and Jean Guizerix in February 2008. They were principal dancers at the Paris Opera, choreographers and pedagogues who were teaching a workshop in Flexible Barres in their dance studio “l'Aire�, located in Poissy.

At that time, it was my last year in high school and I was very interested by academics, especially literature & philosophy. In terms of dance, I had started Ballet very young and had always been involved in it as a recreational activity. I was starting to present self-made performances but I had never thought about dance as a potential profession for me. My philosophy teacher who had seen some performances I had created knew Wilfride Piollet and Jean Guizerix, and he suggested I discuss with them dance careers opportunities.

After a brief telephone conversation with Wilfride Piollet, I was invited to attend the workshop as she was not satisfied with speaking on the phone and from this very first workshop I became very interested in the training method known as Flexible Barres.

Since then, this practice has always been with me, although I couldn't dedicate myself fully to it because I was involved in courses in conservatories both in France and then in the UK doing the BA at Trinity Laban as I wanted a contemporary dance training. Meanwhile, I continued to attend classes and workshops with W. Piollet and J. Guizerix as often as possible.

Straight from the beginning I was aware of a particular and very unusual approach to training and way of thinking dance in the classes taught by Piollet and Guizerix. Most significantly, there seemed to be no gap between practice and theory. Today, and especially in the context of the MA Creative Practice at 5/69

Trinity Laban, such a connection and integration seem obvious, but at that time and in the contexts of conservatories, this approach was, and still is, not necessarily part of the pedagogic culture.

It was very important for me to find a way to combine my theoretical and intellectual interests with a physical practice. Such a combination led me to come to Laban in 2010 to undertake the BA (Hons) Contemporary Dance.

I took an interest in the bridges I could perceive between the practices taught at 'Trinity Laban' (especially experiential anatomy, and choreological studies) and the Flexible Barres. I would also mention the work devised by Merce Cunningham, which I discovered more in depth during my time in the BA and which is quite significant in the development of Piollet's work. Not only did these people dance, but they also choreographed, analysed, questioned, researched, experimented and theorized movement and training. I became fascinated by those dance practitioners, who approached the dance field from different perspectives, really questioning and pushing its boundaries.

Graduating from the BA in July 2013 and out of an educational system for the first time, I moved back to Paris in order to search deeper into the practice and knowledge of the “Flexible Barres�. At that time Wilfride Piollet had been diagnosed with cancer, so it appeared clear to me that it was a crucial time to learn as much as possible. I took weekly classes, repertory workshops dedicated to one choreographer or one piece Wilfride and Jean had danced, and pedagogical workshops for professionals willing to pass on Flexible Barres (three per year). I have also taken part and shared the lead of a weekly common training between Flexible Barres enthusiasts. During the course of this key year I became closer to Wilfride - who was working on her last books - in assisting her on different occasions, like on the project she was undertaking with blind people, or taking in charge the organisation of their archives.

I became committed to placing myself as a practitioner who could help taking Flexible Barres as a progressive practice for dancers forward. It seemed obvious to me that this area of study and advancement needed to be situated within a contemporary and somatic context. Not only this, but in recognising that if the practice was translated and existed in the English language, it could potentially reach a wider audience, which, for reasons that will be examined

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later, was hard to imagine thriving in the dance scene in France. It became clearer and clearer that the MA Creative Practice taught both across Independent Dance and Laban was an ideal framework to pursue my research in Flexible Barres.

When I started my MA in September 2014, Wilfride’s health was continuing to deteriorate and she passed away at the age of 72 on 20th January 2015, which led me to defer the rest of my MA modules to January 2016. The course of 2015/2016 has obviously been tainted by interrogations about the future of Flexible Barres after the passing away of Wilfride Piollet. Such interrogations involved the re-organisation of the dance association built around the Flexible Barres work, mainly run then by close pupils and Jean Guizerix. In this context, amongst other tasks, I curated new public events around the sharing and accessibility of Wilfride and Jean's archives, called the “Fond de l'Aire”. I comanaged with Jean the artistic direction of an evening of performances in tribute to Wilfride Piollet in the Poissy Theatre on the 29 th November 2015. It was an interdisciplinary show performed by fifty artists, all closely related to Piollet, who were coming from the fields of music, circus, dance, theatre, puppetry. I also started teaching and coaching one to one sessions with several professional dancers. Furthermore I also discussed a lot with Céline Torrent, a doctoral student at the Sorbonne University who was doing a Ph.D. on poetry and dance. We did several interviews on the poetic dimension of Piollet's work and its further implications in the dance field and I corrected the part dedicated to the Flexible Barres technique in Torrent's work.

This preamble was meant to provide an overview of the background in which my research is located and the variety of ways through which I encountered the overall work of Wilfride Piollet. As it is probably perceptible in the previous paragraphs, I have been quite close to Wilfride, and still am to Jean. This is the main bias of this paper, since a personal connection might taint a research. It has nevertheless been a huge luck in terms of being able to access to the depths of their work, and exchange with them on the questions which were rising for me. Independently of this personal influence, I will try to be careful throughout the research to opt for an academic lens, as objective as possible.

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INTRODUCTION As the preamble tried to show, my interest in the work of Wilfride Piollet has been manifested in different ways and is the result of some years (2008-2016) of practice of the Flexible Barres technique. Before delving into the Flexible Barres in themselves, it seems appropriate to draw a brief portrait of the two dance artists at the origins of this technique.

Both principal dancers from the Paris Opera, Wilfride Piollet (1943-2015) and Jean Guizerix (born in 1945) performed the soloist roles of a repertory going from the classical ballet to Béjart, Cunningham, Taylor, Nikolaïs, Childs, Dunn, Bagouet, via Baroque and neoclassical works, as well as choreographing both for them and others. Drawing from her experience as a performer and from her pedagogical research, Wilfride Piollet created the Flexible Barres, a training method for dancers which has been taught at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris (CNSMDP, standing for National Superior Music and Dance Conservatory of Paris) and various places. Although the Flexible Barres technique is under Wilfride's name, I will occasionally alternate between 'she' and 'they', as the couple went through a life journey together and have been supporting, exchanging and influencing each others.

The importance of a duet figure is also significant in the context of bringing changes and standing behind what is perceived by others as radical choices.

Here is an excerpt of an interview with Jean in 2003 by K.Kanter: “I met Wilfride in 1967, and since then, we have worked together intensely.

That has been our strength, and it has also kept us out of the system; at the Paris Opera, power relies on one’s being alone and vulnerable, and thus ready to be roped into the « family institution ».

Jean Guizerix developed a writing practice and saw several of his short-stories and poetry books, often related to dance and its worlds published.

Rooted in their artistic vision and life philosophy, “Flexible Barres” is not related to a specific aesthetic and can be applied from a posture to the most complex physical combination. Being a way of reading the moving body, a physical training aiming at the dancer's autonomy, it focuses around the expressiveness of the movement.

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For several reasons which will be discussed later, the location of Flexible Barres within the world of dance pedagogy is a bone of contention. I am interested in questioning its positions and study how it can lead to contemporary developments and potentially be a relevant practice for everyone.

There are several possible contexts in which Flexible Barres can be applied, and in looking at different practices (contemporary teachings, somatic techniques and Flexible Barres teachings,) I have been looking throughout this research to find my own pedagogical voice, in revealing what I believe is a useful method for today’s' dancer (and the many implications it suggests).

It is worth mentioning the rather small amount of literature published in English on the Flexible Barres topic. This is probably due to the relative newness of this work, to the fact that it has mainly been developed in a French context. The discourse produced about Flexible Barres is mainly coming from the books written by its founder and the written works published on the technique in the context of interviews or academic research. Even though Wilfride Piollet has often given international conferences in several universities, institutions or schools, not many people outside of France have undertaken studies on the technique. Not many people in France neither have undertaken the adventure of pursuing this research in English and taking it beyond the borders of its mother country. The most consistent research to this date is the Ph.D. completed by Nadège Tardieu in 2006 which was entitled: Savoirs en construction dans la danse classique de Wilfride Piollet: anthropologie de la transmission (“Skills in progress in the classical dance of Wilfride Piollet: anthropology of transmission”). Although it represents a really valuable analysis of the mechanisms and characteristics of the technique, the work is conducted through the prism of Ballet only. As far as I have searched, no studies led through a contemporary lens can be found. So my hope is that this thesis can contribute to the available sum of information on the Flexible Barres in English.

With this ambition in mind, I offer to look first at the genesis and development of Flexible Barres, from an unusual training to a theorised method.

We will then examine a lesson content according to Wilfride Piollet and her pedagogical vision. Then I will focus on the practical research I conducted to develop a teaching of my own through the Flexible Barres principles.

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I - Genesis and development of Flexible Barres; from an unusual training to a theorised method 1. Origins of a new training method As a way of starting to pull the thread of the genesis and development of the Flexible Barres, we can consider the name and its origin. Coined by the French poet René Char (1907-1988), whom Wilfride Piollet and Jean Guizerix were close to, the expression “Flexible Barres” was drawn from a poem he had dedicated to them in 1986.

The poet was aware of the fact that we were practising without holding the barre, that gravity was our reference, and that we wanted to find a way to warm the body up not without the impulse of poetic imaginary.

Playing with a distorted meaning of the object which is traditionally used for Ballet exercises, putting the word “barre” in the plural form and giving it a quality which is specific to dance -flexibility-, the poet dared to sweep aside the unmentionable blandness in which this rigid wooden piece is arrayed. (in W.Piollet, Adventures of the Flexible Barres, p.19)1 “Flexible Barres” are also a reference to the reeds, which in the poet’s imaginary stand for a metaphor for the dancers, with their feet deeply rooted in the soil, and the upper body swaying in the air.

Illustrations below: Left Copy of the poem to Piollet / Guizerix published inRendez-vous sur tes barrres flexibles

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Right retrieved from http://www.gardenfish.co.uk/pond-plants.htm [last consulted on 14/08/2016]

Le poète n’ignorait pas que nous nous entraînions sans nous tenir à la barre… que la gravité était notre référence et que nous désirions trouver les moyens de ne pas mettre le corps en branle sans l’impulsion d’une imagination poétique. En s’amusant à détourner le sens de l’objet qui accompagne traditionnellement les exercices de la danse classique, en mettant le mot barre au pluriel ainsi qu’en lui attribuant une des qualités spécifiques de la danse, la flexibilité, le poète osait balayer la banalité taboue dont est paré cet objet de bois rigide.

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Translation: “Give me your hand, your advancing bulrush hand.

Let’s meet on your flexible barres, In front of the source which tore us apart.

Oh, Wilfride, here come the hosts Here is the spread-winged mirror.”

Rene Char, Oct. 27th, 1986.

Before it became a training method for dancers, this expression referred to the poet’s way of seeing the specific manner that the Piollet/Guizerix couple had to practice and to dance.

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Wilfride Piollet and Jean Guizerix in Plis Unanimes (creation) (choreography and interpretation Piollet/Guizerix) (personal collection of Camille Desmarest – picture taken at the Stéphane Mallarmé museum in Vulaines-sur-Seine on 19 th September 2009 on the occasion of “Danses à l'éventail” (Fan dances) during the Heritage Days.

When Wilfride Piollet and Jean Guizerix decided to stop taking the daily morning barre class with the ballet group, it was not calmly accepted at the Opera. Without challenging the choreographic tradition, training methods were nevertheless deeply questioned by the giving up of the barre, of the mirror, and of the hierarchical structure generated by these tools.

Here is a short explanation about the origins of this decision-making, which also stood as a founding act of the Flexible Barres: “When Merce Cunningham came to the Opera to stage his ballet Un Jour ou deux in 1973, Wilfride Piollet –who was training with the choreographer for the creation of his ballet, which meant a two hours class of his technique before a five hours rehearsal – also had to perform Swan Lake outside the Opera, so she had to practice for this ballet between the class and Merce’s rehearsal. She noticed then that she could very easily run the variations after a Cunningham class, and that it was even easier than after a traditional warm-up, and this without making other Ballet exercises. From then, she decided – without any transition – to stop holding the barre for her training, since she felt how much a body “in autonomy” could perform the steps more quickly and more easily than a body used to training at the barre. For her, Merce Cunningham is the one who allowed her to shed a new light on the warm-up she was used to practising in a classical context. About this she wrote: “I realized that after a class with Merce Cunningham, I had more strength and I was more coordinated than after a traditional training” 2 Retrieved from http://www.clefdesole.fr/pdf/fiche.artiste.pdf by N.Tardieu 2. Mais, le bouleversement ne se fera qu’un an après, quand Merce Cunningham viendra à l’Opéra pour monter son ballet Un jour ou deux. En 1973, Wilfride Piollet qui s’entraîne à l’Opéra avec le chorégraphe pour la création de son ballet (deux heures d’une classe de sa technique précédant les cinq heures de répétition) doit par ailleurs danser, à l’extérieur de l’Opéra, Le lac des cygnes. Il lui faut donc répéter ce ballet entre le cours et la répétition de Merce. Elle remarque alors qu’elle est très à l’aise pour enchaîner les variations après une leçon « cunninghamienne », bien plus à l’aise même, qu’après un échauffement traditionnel, et cela, sans faire d’autres exercices« classiques ». A partir de ce moment-là, elle décide, sans transition, de ne jamais plus se tenir à la barre pour son entraînement, sentant à quel point, le corps « en autonomie » exécute plus rapidement et sûrement les pas qu’un corps entraîné par des exercices à la barre. Merce Cunningham est, pour elle, celui qui lui a permis de se poser autrement la question de l’échauffement tel qu’elle le pratiquait alors en danse classique. Elle écrit à ce sujet : « Je me suis aperçue qu’après un cours avec Merce Cunningham, j’avais plus de force et étais plus coordonnée qu’après un entraînement traditionnel » . W. Piollet, Barres flexibles, op.cit., p.9

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That time at the Paris Opera was a turbulent period as it was still resonating from the May 68 Parisian events, which didn't spare the opera house. An interview of Jean Guizerix in the book Danser en Mai 68 (Dancing in May 68) gives some insights on this particular time. There were strong tensions at stake between the progressists and the traditionalists, alongside with the challenging presences of Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Carlson.

“We were discovering new worlds outside of an institution such as the Opéra. Everything was possible. We were taking classes here and there, at the Sorbonne University, at the Conservatory. We met people from the Jazz culture, from Spanish dancing, traditional folk dances, contemporary dance...We made really wonderful encounters, feeling free to exchange”. 3 “There was a desire to stand up for a place we loved, for which we would have fought, and where could also emerge another way of seeing dance. At least, we were dreaming of it. Unfortunately, such possibilities quickly vanished at the Opéra. Reactionary stances were activated again, leading to the departure of Michel Descombey, director of dance at that time, who had hired me. […] I think generally talking a terrible backlash took place after 1968.”4 Another source on the development of contemporary dance in France can be found in Europe Dancing: Perspectives on Theatre Dance and Cultural Identity, which examines the evolution of dance across nine European countries after the Second World War. In discussing the influences which have shaped the art form in France, Georgina Gore and Laurence Louppe present what was happening at the Paris Opera in the article called “Effervescence and tradition in French dance”: “But it is perhaps within the Ballet de l’Opéra itself that young dancers emerging in the 1970s and 1980s have wrought more profound, and for us more significant, transformations by introducing a less spectacular but more radical artistic current. The influence of Carolyn Carlson, the advent of guest choreographers such as Merce Cunningham in 1973, and, later, Douglas 3. Nous découvrions des mondes en dehors d'une institution comme celle de l'Opéra. Tout était ouvert. Nous allions prendre des cours à droite et à gauche, à la Sorbonne, au Conservatoire.

Nous avons rencontré des gens du Jazz, de la danse espagnole, du folklore, de la danse contemporaraine, etc. Nous avons vraiment fait de belles rencontres dans la liberté de l'échange.

4. Il y avait l'envie de défendre un lieu que l'on aimait, pour lequel on se serait battu et dans lequel pouvait s'inscrire aussi une autre façon de voir la danse. Nous le rêvions du moins.

Malheureusement, tout s'est très vite refermé à l'Opéra. Les postures réactionnaires se sont réactivées provoquant par exemple le départ de Michel Descombey, alors directeur de la danse, qui m'avait engagé. […] je pense qu'il y a eu d'une façon générale d'ailleurs, après 1968 un terrible retour de manivelle.

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Dunn, Lucinda Childs, Karole Armitage, Andy Degroat, and, from closer to home, Dominique Bagouet, Maguy Marin and Odile Duboc among others, precipitated a form of self-questioning amongst this post-1968 generation, an interrogation concerning their work and the meaning of their lives in dance”. p.43 If the names above are mainly associated with what was going to be called contemporary dance, only a few members from the ballet company itself were inquiring in their daily work.

“Others, like the enchanting couple, Wilfride Piollet and Jean Guizerix (maître de ballet at the Opéra from autumn 1998, succeeding Nureyev’s appointee, Eugène Poliakoff), remained within the classical tradition in order to effect a revolution from inside, not only by working with contemporary choreographers such as Merce Cunningham and Andy Degroat, but by developing their own approach to the classical language. Through historical research and the analysis of movement, with Odile Rouquet as partner (1985 and 1991), they have questioned the foundations of their ‘bodily trajectories’.[ibid.] *

Maître Yves Brieux was a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMDP) from the 1960s to the early 1990s and also taught privately. His Opéra pupils included the innovators Jacques Garnier, Brigitte Lefèvre and étoiles Jean Guizerix and Wilfride Piollet.

To the giving up of the daily collective training, the troop spirit of the « corps de ballet » generated negative reactions. For Wilfride Piollet and Jean Guizerix, the first step was to leave the barre and finding themselves in the centre, having to get ready and warmed up on their own. At this stage, it was very experimental in their physical research. Wilfride started simply with replacing the support on the barre by suggesting to place their hands on themselves in different places and experimenting with the leg work of a traditional ballet class.

This was the starting point of what would be called later the Flexible Barres.

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2. Controversy The story of the development of Flexible Barres is far from being safe and linear, whether regarding contemporary reactions, or the lack of institutional support, which were some of many obstacles to the development and the recognition of the Flexible Barres. A quick but meaningful glimpse of this can be caught in reading the part entitled “Cours historique des Barres Flexibles au CNSMDP” in Aventure des Barres Flexibles p.167, part of which is as follow: “Quite rapidly appeared a small internal conflict between teachers and rehearsal directors, for or against the “barre”. After their lesson with her, Wilfride's students have to do a barre again to “keep on being used to it”, which is quite ridiculous after a three hours class (warm-up + lesson + variations)! Out of this came a petition, which showed that all the students, except one, did not wish to do barres again and preferred Wilfride's warm-up anyway.

After several episodes of this small little war combined with multiform harassment, Wilfride resigned publicly at the end of graduation in 1995.” 5 Different incidents took place there between her conditional return at the beginning of the 1995 academic year and her final departure in 2008. It may also be recalled that her books series Les Gestes de Lilou had to be selfpublished after the support/funding refusal of several institutions, and that her theoretical works were not published by the publishing houses specialized in dance.

Because of the decision to leave the barre and the fact that they were working with contemporary choreographers, Wilfride, more than Jean who entered the corps de ballet at 19 years old through an audition process without having trained at the Paris Opera School, was not categorized as a classical ballerina anymore, accused of betraying tradition and wasting her abilities in this discipline. She relates in her book Adventure of the Flexible Barres the “vox populi” hawkings and non understanding of their artistic choices:

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Assez rapidement, et jusqu’en 1995, apparaît une petite guerre interne de quelques professeurs et répétiteurs, pour ou contre la « barre ». Après leur cours avec elle, les élèves de W doivent refaire une barre « pour ne pas en perdre l’habitude » ce qui est tout à fait ridicule, après trois heures de cours (échauffement + cours + variations) ! Il s’ensuit une pétition à ce sujet qui montre que les élèves, sauf une, ne souhaitent pas refaire des barres et, de toutes façons, préfèrent l’échauffement de W. Après différents épisodes de « guéguerre » et de harcèlement multiforme W démissionne publiquement à l’issue du Diplôme, en 1995.

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For dancers, who like my husband and I, were committed to a path of adventure with a strong desire for new ways of expressing ourselves, we had to endure wry comment like “what did you do with you beautiful Ballet?” or “Piollet and Guizerix like only boring things (thinking about Merce Cunningham) or: “Ha! But you still know how to dance Etudes !” as well as “I thought you had recycled yourself in contemporary!”. Some dancers, if they were distributed in a Béjart piece for example, would dance only this ballet and were asking to be removed from the classical ones. Us, who wished to dance several styles simultaneously, were thought to be fools who were giving up the purity of the classical style...The true difference is that we were training everyday in order to, namely, be able to adapt ourselves to these styles changes which were and still are very hard and exhausting for the body. p.48 6 What is noteworthy beyond personal stories, is that the gossiping aspect is revealing of the general thinking of a given place and time. It is interesting to highlight that a certain form of censorship could even be noticed by an outside eye, coming from a more neutral and objective point of view than the French dance world. Here is excerpt of an article by the English dance critic John Percival in Dance and dancers in 1974 about the third act of La Bayadère recreated by Rudolf Noureev at the Paris Opera. A cutting file is integrated in the book Adventure of the Flexible Barres.

“Nureyev himself was in tremendous form, and Piollet made a very good Nikiya, playing the part with a gentle submissiveness which was dramatically and stylistically most apt. She made far more eye contact with her partner than usually happens in this role, and as always this brought a lively responsiveness in the partnership. Several of the French ballerinas alternated in the role, but I was happy to see Piollet who (although curiously neglected by the management when casting the classics) seems to me quite the best of her French contemporaries.”

Wilfride Piollet's career has been undermined, from being a classical ballerina it was hard to be accepted while performing contemporary works. Although resolutely contemporary and training without doing barres, Piollet did not give up on the classical repertory. She struggled to gain recognition that her work 6. Pour des danseurs qui, comme mon mari et moi, s’engageaient dans une voie d’aventure avec grande soif de nouvelles façons de nous exprimer, nous devions endurer des remarques acerbes du genre « qu’avez-vous fait de votre beau classique » ou bien « Piollet et Guizerix n’aiment que les choses « rasoir » (en pensant à Merce Cunningham) ou encore : « Ha ! mais tu sais encore danser Etudes ! » ainsi que « je croyais que tu t’étais recyclée en contemporain ! ». Certains, s’ils étaient distribués dans un ballet de Béjart, par exemple, ne dansaient que ce ballet et se faisaient retirer des autres ballets « classiques ». Nous qui désirions danser de front plusieurs styles, passions pour des fous qui renonçaient à la pureté du style classique… La vraie différence était que nous nous entraînions tous les jours pour, justement, pouvoir nous adapter à ces changements de style qui étaient et restent très difficiles, très éprouvants pour le corps.

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was also for ballet training, since she had been disparaged as a ballerina. Then the Flexible Barres have been controversial in that they often escape or outmode any form of labelling and categorisation. No satisfying attempt to fix an identity was achieved. And many individuals as well as French institutions were reluctant to question themselves. The controversy on Piollet/Guizerix separate training and the identity they had as performers has been transferred onto the Flexible Barres pedagogy, when it became Piollet's main work. It was too contemporary for the ballet dancers, and too classical because of its verticality for the coming generations of contemporary dancers. The Flexible Barres were mainly developed in Ballet because of Piollet's strong interest and value she was finding in what would be called the “French School”, which is not really what was seen, taught nor promoted by the Paris Opera Ballet, contrary to what could be expected. The main sources of repertory material used for the basis of training were the works inherited from Auguste Bournonville (1805-1879), Henry Justament (1815-1890), Michel and Arthur Saint-Léon (1821-1870), as well as Marguerite Guillaumin (1893-1967).

One of their [Piollet-Guizerix] projects is the reappraisal and restitution of the values of the French school, with its tradition of sensitivity and delicacy, inherited from étoile Carlotta Zambelli’s era as ballet-mistress from the 1930s to the mid-1950s, and particularly represented during the 1960s by the teaching of Maître Yves Brieux *, considered today as having been a veritable guru. This reassertion of the French heritage challenges, even today, the ostentatious and arrogant aesthetic developed by certain leanings among those at the helm of the Ballet de l’Opéra since the 1980s.”p.43 in Europe Dancing: Perspectives on Theatre, Dance, and Cultural Identity.

In the context of contemporary studies, the recurrence of classical references might seem curious to the reader. Nevertheless, Piollet was definitely convinced that the future of her work and its potential developments were going to sprout from this ground rather than the hesitant ballet world, to which she tried many times to present her research. Many said contemporary dancers were interested in and using this technique, whether for personal training in a company setting, teaching or devising choreographies.

Although Flexible Barres work has a certain tendency to verticality, it is not a dogmatic method applicable to one field only. Piollet focused mainly on the ballet repertory applications because she was witnessing the disappearance of 17/69

a certain classical ballet heritage, and as a contemporary research field it was completely deserted at that time. This is not to say that the Flexible Barres can be reduced to a Ballet technique. The discussion between aesthetics which rises from the above considerations will be addressed later.

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3. Legacy It turned out that Flexible Barres developed, earned its spurs, and finally met some aspects of the XIXth century training, which was almost exclusively done without the barre at that time. It is quite fascinating to realize that going through Cunningham’s training was a way to go back to the romantic era training, which proves that across time, the concern of the dance makers is definitely the indepth work of the body and its possibilities of poetic expression. The word “poetic” is to be understood here in its etymological meaning “doing, performing, making” deriving from ποιέω, - poiein. (in Liddell & Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1940) Flexible Barres could be modelled nowadays like a trinket box – composed of many compartments, which are the fruits of different works and developments carried out by Wilfride Piollet and by some of her close students who worked in collaboration with her. This process spreads over fifty years of research, questionings, encounters, and experiments, which shaped this technique.

Diagram by Camille Desmarest in January 2015

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In relation to the current economy of the dance field, most artists keeping the Flexible Barres alive are evolving on different territories, from company management,

choreographing,

performing,

teaching,

researching…The

examples below are not an exhaustive, nor an exclusive summary of the scope of activities. It is rather a partial selection of some aspects of their works.

Actual developments are centred on the teaching of Flexible Barres, and on how it could be integrated into the training in classical, baroque and contemporary environments. Nathalie Adam and Bérénice Montagné, both teaching in Parisian municipal conservatories, are offering Ballet classes based on Flexible Barres.

Several choreographic works were and still are also created under the influence of this technique. Satchie Noro, Piollet's first individual student, who after her training in the classical repertory trained in circus and went on to creating her own works internationally which crossed or integrated various physical disciplines (aerial, dance, performance, theatre etc.).

Other pupils joined ballet or contemporary companies, in France and abroad, like Mélanie Lomoff who is starting choreographing now, after having spent years working with Alain Platel, José Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu, amongst others. Fabien Monrose, a dancer who trained as a Benesh notator for example is using Piollet's principles applied in post-modern repertory, like in the works of Lucinda Childs, Andy Degroat or Trisha Brown. We can also mention the choreographic works by Laure Daugé, who trained with Piollet during the CNSMDP curriculum and has been pursuing the developments of her work since then.

In the baroque context, Robert le Nuz and Guillaume Jablonka are working in companies such as Divertimenty, l'Eventail (Marie-Geneviève Massé) or Fêtes Galantes (Béatrice Massin) and are applying Flexible Barres in the realisation of Baroque steps. There was also public funding towards a new training course in Baroque style through Flexible Barres, set up by Guillaume Jablonka.

With the arrival of Jean-Christophe Paré at the direction of the dance department at the CNSMDP in 2014, there was a noticeable regain of interest for the choreographic pieces devised by Piollet and Guizerix.

A project of reconstruction of the duet Grange (1977) has taken place in the last semester of December 2015 with 6 students for whom the duet had been 20/69

recreated. A second one will start this autumn 2016 around the piece Justament Pas choreographed by Jean Guizerix, who will rework for new students.

Publications in relation with dance notation projects are undergo or already published, like the work Pas en variations, Henri Justamant, entrée dans une écriture by Linièle Chane-Yue-Chiang (2015) which is the result of her collaboration with Wilfride Piollet in deciphering Justamant's steps and writing them down in Labanotation.

There is also a biopic film in preparation directed by Daniel Madoff, former Cunnigham soloist who met Piollet and Guizerix when the company was touring. I helped him out with language translation when he came in Poissy at Piollet and Guizerix's place during the summer 2014 - six months before Wilfride Piollet passed away – at a time when she was finishing her books while battling with cancer treatments. Here is an in progress trailer of the yet unfinished movie: https://vimeo.com/101218454 [last consulted 18/09/2016] In spite of the quality and faithfulness of the images regarding the environment of life and work in Poissy where Piollet-Guizerix had settled in since 1972, we might fear that the film maker's intentions might stress a sensationalist media aspect more than a truly authentic window on their everyday life. (Here is another strand of discussion; the story and history of people and the people later on who make history.)

It must also be mentioned that the whole organisation of different projects related to, or in collaboration with W.Piollet have been turned upside down because of her departure in January 2015. The small Clef de Sole association, which is the structure promoting the activities linked to Piollet/Guizerix, had to re-organise itself and consider the future of the developments of a technique orphan of its creator. The main challenge is that everyone is torn between a common desire to carry on the work already initiated and the different projects and activities everyone is individually embarked on. Independently of a collective cohesion within the Clef de Sole association, the work of Piollet, who has been planting and disseminating seeds all around, is also germinating and sprouting in different places depending on where and what one is interested in developing. To give some examples, we can mention the Aesthesique Method created by Christophe Duveau Villéger, the film Chemins croisés de danse by 21/69

Micheline Lelièvre and Marie-Elise Beyne, several short-movies filmed by Frédérique Liébaut, or the work of Shim Kyung-eu on the pirouette figure “From a pirouette in classical Korean dance to a pirouette in French classical ballet.” (“D'une pirouette de la danse classique coréenne à une pirouette de la danse classqiue française”).

A last note, on what is meant by 'technique' when referring to Flexible Barres before moving onto the investigation of the work itself. The term “Flexible Barres technique” is both an encompassing of an attitude and approach to the body and movement, as well as an established library of exercises offered by Piollet.

It must be stressed though that she was not precious with the arrangement of the steps. She has been organising them in a coherent way as a whole, in relation to each other, not as a dogmatic structure which has to be followed in this order. The exercises are very much thought about as lego cubes, with which any construction is possible, de-constructible and reconstructible. The difficulty for the legacy left lies in the porosity between a Flexible Barres philosophy and the exercises which not everyone knows. They also have different versions across time, as Piollet carried on working on them, complexing and refining them. She was very much saying that she was bringing material, which was there to be worked with. There is therefore no absolute rigidity in how things should be, which at times can make the technique difficult to grasp for new comers. It is also nevertheless what guaranties the freedom and future of this technique, and the creativity for individuals to make it their own.

After a prime overview of the context in which the Flexible Barres have emerged, let's focus now on the technique itself and its characteristics.

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II - Wilfride Piollet's Flexibles Barres classes and pedagogical vision 1. A technique based on a somatic approach to movement In the perspective of drawing a picture of the Flexible Barres technique, we will first concentrate on its somatic characteristics, explaining why it can be included in the range of somatic practices. In this attempt, we will refer to the specific literature on somatics and dance.

The article “From Shusterman’s Somaesthetics to a Radical Epistemology of Somatics” written by Isabelle Ginot has been very helpful to define the range and characteristics of the somatic practices; and therefore allowed me to locate the

Flexible

Barres

technique

in

relation

to

them.

The somatic aspects of the Flexible Barres can be expressed through four notions drawn from Ginot's article: the Body/mind unity, the acceptance of both objective and subjective standards of knowledge in the interpretation of the experience, the connection to the grand scheme of evolution of species (“Evolution thus provides the ultimate legitimation: it gives a universal, even cosmic and a-historic, dimension to somatics, implying that all humans operate according to the same patterns”.p.15) and the “attention focused on the self or awareness, which is the substratum of all somatic methods” p.20. Flexible Barres addresses indeed the “non-conscious or automatic aspects of ongoing movement to change their organisation”.

Under the light of the characteristics of the somatic field shed by Isabelle Ginot, we can say that the Flexible Barres are initially more of an educational than a therapeutic method, even though some of the inquiries originate from Piollet's problems with her loose then operated shoulders, as well as different health issues, which made clear the necessity to take care of the body and training mindfully. Flexible Barres have therefore prophylactic values such as preventing injuries, providing functional rehabilitation, improving virtuosity and providing a more embodied awareness of movement.

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It aims at improving coordination, by de-constructing and reorganising gestural habits through a variety of combinations. Looking at how gestures are initiated, Flexible Barres generates a refinement in the bodily organisation in relation to gravity, working across several layers such as skeleton, ligaments, muscles and organs.

Wilfride Piollet spent time experiencing physical practices which were not specifically related to dance at that time. Working with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, learning how to walk on a tight rope and the collaboration with Odile Rouquet (founder of the Analysis of the Body in Dance Movement alongside with Hubert Godard) led to key discoveries in the development of Piollet's work.

“Piollet realised that she had to accept gravity and falling in order to move forward on the rope: that is, falling in order to rise up.” (N.Tardieu in Fields in Motion p.309). In an interview by Jessica Piris, W.Piollet talks about the experience of tight roping: “What changes, is that when I am standing both feet on the ground, I am trying to be still, whereas when I am on a tight rope, I am constantly recovering, constantly, constantly, constantly, in fact adjusting myself. […] and therefore I started to train much less drastically, without trying to not move and to do much more stuff which was obliging me to shift.” 7 Then later on about one experience with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: “I just had a shoulder operation and found myself [...] invalid from there [...].

And she made me do the exercise of falling forward from kneeling and to only visualize during that time, the angle behind the knees getting bigger.

She told me “let go of your arms, don't think about them at all, let the gravity do the work”. So I just visualised that and my arms together did what was right, without any noise. […] It was one of the determinant shocks I experienced.”8 Jessica Piris recalls that “these significant shocks, as Wilfride calls them, taught her to accept a 'giving up on taking power on things' (Louppe, 2004, p. 65) in 7. “Ce qui change, c’est que quand je suis les deux pieds par terre je cherche à être immobile, alors que quand je suis sur le fil je ne fais que me rattraper sans arrêt, sans arrêt, sans arrêt, m’ajuster en fait. […] et du coup, j’ai commencé à m’entraîner beaucoup moins drastiquement, sans chercher à ne pas bouger, et à faire beaucoup plus de choses qui m’obligeaient à bouger.”

8. “Je venais de me faire opérer de l’épaule et je m’étais retrouvée […] infirme. […] Et elle m’avait fait faire l’exercice de tomber à genoux et de visualiser pendant ce temps-là, juste l’angle du genou qui s’allongeait. Elle me dit ʺlaissez faire vos bras, vous ne vous en occupez pas du tout, laissez faire la gravitéʺ, donc moi j’ai visualisé juste ça, et mes bras, ils ont fait ensemble ce qu’il fallait sans aucun bruit. […] Ça fait partie des grands chocs qu’il y a eu.”

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order to let the sensitive emerge.” 9 According to the “scope of practice” established by the ISMETA (International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association), the Flexible Barres can be finally defined as a holistic education, including a postural and movement evaluation. It is communicated and guided through touch and words and triggers, experiential anatomy and imagery. The continued practice suggested at home or at work reminds us that it can be applied to everyday and specialised activities for people at any stage of health and development. When particularly considering the dancer, Flexible Barres can deepen creative skills and allow an expressive physical performer to develop rather than a good technical executor. As Laurence Louppe writes, “Being a dancer, is to choose the body and the movement of the body as a field of relation with the world, like a tool for knowledge, thinking and expression”. 10 Until now we have been referring to Flexible Barres, as the technique in general, but we will now examine the perceptive task of “doing a flexible barre”, which is the most prominent somatic aspect of the Flexible Barres technique, hence its name. “Doing a flexible barre” consists of visualising a relation between two specific points in the body, and letting the gravity force take effect in the middle. There are about thirty five different flexible barres which can be practised and are the idiosyncratic characteristic of this technique. The flexible barres rely on anatomical, physiological and spatial visualisations, which develop a sharp inner awareness and physical consciousness, as described in an article by Céline Torrent, a Doctor in French Literature at the Sorbonne University Paris III: For the dancer, it is a question of replacing the external and material support of the classical barre with imaginary supports from inside his own body. The dancer has to visualise a flexible barre between two different points of his body, for instance between the navel and the femur, or between the manubrium […] and the scapula, etc…

9. “Ces grands chocs, comme Wilfride les appelle, lui ont appris à accepter un « abandon de la prise de pouvoir sur les choses » (Louppe, 2004, p. 65) afin de laisser advenir le sensible.”

10. « Etre danseur, c’est choisir le corps et le mouvement du corps comme champ de relation avec le monde, comme instrument de savoir, de pensée et d’expression. » (Louppe, 2004, p.61)

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Drawings by Wilfride Piollet, in Barres Flexibles, exercices, Sens&Tonka, 2008, p. 20 These mental images will allow the body to trigger the postural muscles which are necessary for the movement, and that could not be reached through a rational way of thinking. In fact, it is less about getting the muscles into action than bringing the body to a state in which it is able to impulse the movement, and turn a poetic state into a physical state with the use of symbols. (“Bodies in between, Corporeality and Visuality from Historical Avantgarde to Social Media”, p.4.) . 11 The aim in doing flexible barres is to create a relationship, a dialogue with oneself, an internal dynamic, based on sensory perceptions. Only a postural modification, based on the receptiveness to gravity in ourselves, allows to modify a position from the inside and therefore to feel it. When there is a deep modification (not the position itself but what underlies it), it means we can be centred and know where the ground and the sky are.

The second specificity of Wilfride Piollet teaching lies in its main aim, which is to drive the dancer to become autonomous and in charge of their own training.

This is the most fundamental issue which is tackled by Piollet when she encounters a new student. What is important is to awaken the dancer’s interest for himself, and to turn his attention towards himself, as a process of self evaluation, scrutiny and knowledge. As Martha Eddy reminds it from Green, there is a huge “empowerment through self authority” ('A brief history of somatic 11. « Le danseur doit visualiser une « barre flexible » entre deux points différents de son corps, par exemple, entre le nombril et le fémur, entre le manubrium (étymologiquement « poignée » osseuse reliant les clavicules) et l’omoplate etc. : (DRAWING). Ces images, mentales, vont permettre au corps d’aller mobiliser des muscles, nécessaires au mouvement, qu’une pensée rationnelle ne pourrait atteindre. Il ne s’agit d’ailleurs pas tant d’actionner à proprement parler des muscles que de mettre le corps dans un état apte à impulser le mouvement, transformer par le symbole un « état d’esprit » en état de corps.

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practices and dance' p.23). It resonates with the philosophic vision of Spinoza which Piollet used to mention often: “freedom as an understood necessity”.

(The little book of philosophy p.67). According to Piollet, people are not interested enough in themselves. They look for external inputs as ways of changing, rather than working on themselves in order to access inner changes which can expand a depth of understanding and development. Instead of trying to reproduce shapes, it is a matter of being interested in oneself as to be able to develop from there. As Ginot, quoting S.Fortin, says about somatic practices: “Physical sensations are more important than the mirroring and reproduction of forms”. (Fortin 1996, 2005; Fortin, Long, and Lord 2002) in Dance Research Journal 42 / 1 summer 2010.” p12.

Now that we have a clearer picture of the Flexible Barres purposes, we shall examine more in details how this technique is structured and thought, and the theoretical apparatus which has been developed by Wilfride Piollet over her years of research.

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2. Pedagogical insights and theory of the technique First we will examine the body vision developed by Piollet, the theories she devised on the organisation of movement and some pedagogical choices in her teaching. We will then see how this inform a particular class structure and the content of the Flexible Barres technique.

Piollet developed with her work a visualisation of the body represented with cubes. The three levels of the body are symbolically related to time, past, present and future, as well as the corresponding qualities of matter, presence and desire. On the drawing above they are written in the boxes on each sides of the little man. The left column corresponds to time, and the right one to the qualities. Thus pelvis is associated with the past and matter, the rib cage/heart area with the present and presence and the head with the future and desire.

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On the question of why cubes are used to represent the body rather than spheres, Piollet, in J.Piris' interview justifies: “To those who question the choice of cubes as a referential shape for the torso, I would suggest to look at the Bunraku puppets: it is a cube, empty, which acts as a thoracic cage. I would also say that, although we are dealing with the pelvis or the head, or limbs, their representation as a square (or a rectangle) reveals much more easily their orientation in space than any other round shape.12 The representation of this little man diagram is the ground for a whole network of Flexible Barres to take place in the body, creating “dynamic of directional forces” (dynamique de forces directionnelles) and “visualisation in action” (visualisation en acte) (Tardieu, N. 2009 p.40) For a Flexible Barres open presentation given at Laban on 5 th November 2014, I had prepared some summarising slides presenting the theory developed by Wilfride Piollet. These were based on pedagogical material I had received from her.

The theory was conceived as a means of thinking about movement as encompassing three models: the “body measurements”, the “body actions”, and the “body symbols” inspired by the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Below are some illustration of these means of thinking about movement.

BODY MEASUREMENTS (personal space: self with self) – High / middle / low levels

12Cette représentation en forme de cubes et non pas de sphères, que certains lui ont reproché m’avait-elle confié, a beaucoup de sens pour elle, et elle tient à s’en justifier : « A ceux qui s’interrogent sur ce choix du cube comme forme référentielle de visualisation de la poitrine, je dirais d’aller voir les marionnettes de Bunraku: c’est bien un cube, vide, qui leur tient lieu de cage thoracique. Je leur dirai aussi que, même s’il s’agit du bassin, de la tête ou des membres, leur représentation sous la forme d’un carré (ou d’un rectangle) révèle bien plus aisément leur orientation dans l’espace que n’importe quelle forme ronde. » (Piollet, 2014, p. 89) in Jessica Piris' article p7.

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BODY ACTIONS (the body in space: self with outside) - represented with a ball to perceive the different qualities

BODY SYMBOLS (body representations: self in itself) – Symbols associated to the 3 levels (head/cage/pelvis)

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The slides above form a synthesised ground of the technique. It would be too ambitious to develop here how W.Piollet came to devise these drawings and associations as they are the results of years of research, but they give a good indication of the kinds of ways in which she was thinking about the body. It is also important to recall that they constitute a theoretical apparatus for physical exercises and practical applications.

We will now look at some pedagogical principles applied in class situation and unpicked really skilfully by Nadège Tardieu in her article “Corps mis en branle”.

In particular, I would like to highlight one specific idea of a “body seen and seeing” which takes place in the context of a class by W.Piollet. N.Tardieu analyses the circle configuration of the student group very dear to Piollet in the experimentation of Flexible Barres. The teacher is amongst the students in the circle, not in the middle. In this position he can see everyone, as well as being seen by everyone, which is also the case of every student. In this circle, movements are temporarily limited in space which enables the construction of verticality on the spot. Tardieu talks about the “sharing of a corporal reality amongst the group”. (“partage d'une réalité corporelle au sein du groupe” p.40).

In this setting, every student can “see” the body as it is described by the teacher giving explanations on someone doing a movement. As the teacher is saying what to look at, the student is doing the exercise. If he/she is not practising he is listening and watching someone else, in order to experiment for himself in a second time. In doing so, looking triggers moving, there is a coexistence of the act of seeing and the act of doing. This is not so often the case in more traditional classes which are often based on a “watch then do” structure. The coexistence of seeing and doing allows to embrace everyone in a lasting present moment, which can last as long as it seems appropriate. This concept is particularly resonating with Merleau Ponty's theories as we will see now.

All the studies around perception, corporeity and language in the Flexible Barres are easily resonating with phenomenological studies and the work of Merleau-Ponty for instance. Here is an example of connection studied by Nadège Tardieu:

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« In organising the bodies so that they are seen a circular space, the teacher leads the student to experience his body in a “reversibility”. The gaze is directed toward what should be seen and felt of the corporal reality. In experimenting, this corporal reality becomes visible in oneself and accessible to the student: a body-chiasmus, to use the terminology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It is indeed in The Visible and the Invisible that Merleau-Ponty elucidates the way one experiences his body as an objective body and a phenomenological body: a body-chiasmus in the sense in which it is both seeing, feeling, touching and seen, felt, and touched. This modality of self-knowledge in the relation to others defines the “intercoporel being” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964: 188) in which « perceiving a body part, it also to perceive it as visible, meaning for others.” (ibid.: 298). But this knowledge is also acquired in a singularity, a subjectivity specific to the “intracorporel being” (ibid.: 315): “If I cannot touch my movement, this movement is entirely woven of contacts with myself. We must understand the “touching myself” and “touching” as reverses of each others.” (ibid.: 308). If the corporal reality is experienced in a reversibility, it is also constructed in an intertwining of sense: touching, hearing and feeling.” 13 From this theoretical notes, we will now study how they are applied in the purpose and delivery of a class by Wilfride Piollet.

A huge part of W.Piollet's work is dedicated to the content of the warm-up and to the purpose of the technical class. Piollet's idea was that a class must include not only, a physical warm-up, and an awareness of perceptions, but also the mental alert awakening which allows the dancer to be ready for any choreographic demands. One of the main principles is to develop thinking speed during complex exercises.

13. “En organisant les corps afin qu’ils soient vus dans un espace circulaire, le maître amène l’élève à expérimenter son corps dans « une réversibilité ». Le regard est dirigé vers ce qui doit être vu et senti de la réalité corporelle et dans l’expérimentation, cette réalité corporelle devient visible en soi et accessible à l’élève: un corps-chiasme pour reprendre la terminologie de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. En effet, dans Le Visible et l’Invisible, Merleau-Ponty explicite la façon dont l’être fait l’expérience de son corps en tant que corps objectif et corps phénoménal : un corps-chiasme dans le sens où le corps est à la fois voyant, sentant, touchant et vu, senti, touché. Cette modalité de connaissance de soi dans la relation à autrui définit « l’être intercorporel » (Merleau-Ponty, 1964 : 188) où « percevoir une partie de mon corps, c’est aussi la percevoir comme visible, c’est-à-dire pour autrui » (ibid. : 298). Mais cette connaissance s’acquiert aussi dans une singularité, une subjectivité propre à « l’être intracorporel » (ibid. : 315) : « Si je ne puis toucher mon mouvement, ce mouvement est entièrement tissé de contacts avec moi. Il faut comprendre le se toucher et le toucher comme envers l’un de l’autre » (ibid. : 308). Si la réalité corporelle est expérimentée dans une réversibilité, elle se construit également dans un entrelacs de sens : le toucher, l’audition et la sensation. » in 'Corps mis en branle dans la danse classique de Wilfride Piollet: un pouvoir imaginaire du corps'

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The first part of the class consists of inwardly “feeling” and “finding the sensations” of flexible barres. This part is focusing on proprioception, and sharpening inner perceptions in relation to gravity. Physically understanding how it is possible to let the force of gravity take its course in a flexible barre immediately allows for all the postural adjustments to be done naturally, instead of being determined and forced from the outside. This part of the lesson has no specific rhythm, since it is about “feeling”: That way the dancer becomes the poet of his own body through the use of his own imagination. And just like the poet who has the ability to put into words and inner image or a metaphor, the dancer has the possibility to put it into bodily movements. […] Through this process, the dancer reaches what Wilfride Piollet calls a “physical poetic state”. So the role of the words and of the imaginary that they spread into the body is at the core of Flexible Barres technique. (Céline Torrent, p.5, 6.) 14 The second part of the class is about applying the flexible barres explored in the previous part into a choreographic language. A sequence of movement should be approached through three aspects: the learning (memory of the steps), the dancing (rhythm and dynamics) and the feeling (inner perceptions – flexible barres – ). No matter the order in which they are tackled, as long as they are covered.

After these approaches to thinking about one’s movement, here is briefly an overview of the content of the technique itself in terms of exercises to take action, as presented in Synthèse des Barres Flexibles. The exercises have been devised to create strong and stable tools to rely on and to use for an everyday training.

14. Ainsi le danseur se fait-il le poète de son propre corps via la mobilisation de son imaginaire.

Et de la même façon que le poète, à proprement parler, a ce pouvoir de mettre en écriture une image intérieure, une métaphore, le danseur la met en corps. […] Par ce processus, le danseur se met dans ce que Wilfride Piollet nomme un « état poétique physique ». Ainsi le rôle des mots, et de l’imaginaire qu’ils déploient directement dans le corps, est au cœur de la technique des « barres flexibles ».

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- 25 Flexible Barres (which we have mentioned earlier)

- 30 supports on oneself or pressure points: One

hand

on

the

body

(or

two

in

two

different

ways):

Baby - Clamp – High Folk – Drop - Hamac – Thinker – Ring – Hook Double supports : one or two hands can be placed identically on the body.

Knee support – Low Folk - Sun – little finger/heart – Thumb/heart - Iris – Bison – Dragonfly – Low clamp crown – High clamp crown - Front clamp crown – Supported crown – Laid crown – Back crown – Drop crown – Feather crown – Tears –Visor - 5

senses Mask

Closed in opposition : Hooks (with ball) Near 1975, in performing the traditional footwork from ballet barre with some simple “supports on herself” (instead of holding her arms in the air all the time), Wilfride Piollet quickly realised that it allowed her to relax the shoulders more easily and then she started to create new 'supports on oneself' and test them with Odile Rouquet later on. More than anything she understood that these points of contact with herself allowed her to be inevitably in relation with the

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ground (loop patterns, also present in some Buddhist meditation hand positions). These loop patterns also had an influence on the neural pathways, on which numerous scientific studies and research now exist. Her concept has nevertheless not being invented as a result of these scientific and medical studies but rather as an outcome of a lived experiential research.

Fundamentally, it came first from the need to rest the arms somewhere when working at the centre. We will not describe each type of exercises but for the purpose of exhaustiveness, the rest of the series follows: - support in the space X11 - Exercises with ball - Starters X7 - Express Warm-up X5 - Start-ups X11 - Stretching exercises X13 - Basics X16

Piollet believed that the content of the training should be something constant, on which one could rely on instead of modifying it or changing it everyday. As a warm-up, Piollet suggested to choose among already existing exercises, the structure of which is well known and used as a reference, but with which one can be creative. For instance, in the performance of an exercise from the Basics series, we can choose to practice different flexible barres while performing it.

Or certain choices can be made with the intention to work on something specific: changing the space, or the rhythm, using a fragment to develop a series...

Indeed if a technique is sophisticated and complex, progress can be made through practice, and it takes a certain amount of time to make it your own and to master it, yet there is room left for inventiveness if one plays with the fundamentals of this technique. For example I devised myself some exercises based on Flexible Barres principles, but which movements had never been arranged in such way. Though there are some exercises called the “Basics� series, which are a fundamental part of the Flexible Barres technique, Wilfride's classes were never twice the same. Depending on the participants and their level, she suggested different developments and variations around the elements composing the Basics series whose structure is sophisticated.

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On a final note, it is important to mention that the construction of a body is also the construction of a being, and therefore the search of oneself is not far. On this topic, W.Piollet said during an interview: (the French transcription of the dialogue kept very oral forms) “There is never a time for research, for a gravity research, but also for research in other areas. […] There is never time for that. We are in the training. […] At the time, the advanced classes were like that, it was three or four hours classes, because I think, there was time to reflect, time to investigate. […] When Blasis says, (and I quote him in my book by the way) although there is not much interesting stuff in what he writes, but there are still things which mark a period of time: “what matters is your originality, it is to find your original personality, to look for what is particular to yourself”. You can see here a real search of oneself. What was interesting in this matter of gravity, I mean of “personality” as Blasis prescribes, it is that it obliged the dancer to be researching, that is what is means. But this, we are never allowed to do it. In an institution you don't have the right to do it. You are seen like this, you are seen like that.

And you have to conform to it.15 The words above by Piollet corroborate the idea that the whole pedagogy elaborated with the Flexible Barres goes beyond walls of the dance studio, and are addressing anyone as human beings, as moving beings, beyond the specific technique for a dance vocabulary. The following words by Eva Karczag in her article “The Role of somatics” could very well describe the dance philosophy behind the Flexible Barres: “Classes are not just about refining the body but are structured to generate multi-directional availability in each student by sharpening their curiosity, igniting their imagination, and engaging them in the immediacy and challenge of continually examining movement and compositional choices. Students are taught to take responsibility for themselves and, through connecting with their own sources and resources, they are schooled to become inquiring and innovative artists in their own right. […]

As Deborah Hay so fittingly puts it, the dancer can redefine his or her role 'as a site for inquiry'.”

15. « Il n’y a jamais de temps de recherche, de recherche de gravité, mais aussi de recherche sur d’autres plans. […] Il n’y a jamais de temps pour ça. On est dans le training […] A l'époque les grands cours étaient comme ça, c'était des cours de trois ou quatre heures, parce que je pense qu'il y avait le temps pour réfléchir, le temps pour chercher […] quand Blasis dit, et je le cite dans mon livre d'ailleurs, il n’y a rien de très intéressant dans ce qu'il raconte, mais il y a quand même des choses qui marquent l'époque, ʺce qui compte, c'est votre originalité, c’est de trouver votre personnalité originale, cherchez ce qui vous est particulierʺ, tu vois une vraie recherche de soi. Il se trouve que ce qui était intéressant dans cette histoire de gravité, enfin de personnalité que préconise Blasis, c’est que cela obligeait le danseur à être en recherche, voilà, c’est ce que cela signifie. Mais cela, nous n’en avons jamais le droit. Dans une institution, tu n’as pas le droit. On te voit comme ceci, on te voit comme cela. Il faut que tu te conformes à cela. » (article Jessica Piris p3)

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W.Piollet also liked to remind us that – according to the Littré dictionary – a dancer is “someone who enjoys dancing, someone who dances”. This is one of the reasons why the participants attending Wilfride Piollet's classes at Poissy's studio l'Aire was not exclusively composed of dancers, and included some people coming from different backgrounds, guided by their interests for the movement and the body.

The value and benefits of working on body awareness is not limited to the dance disciplines but goes beyond this and can be applied in everyday life as well as support other specific demands imposed on the body when playing a musical instrument for instance. The awareness of body volumes and their implication in supporting physical activity whether in movement or in placed posture - which is never a state of tension or tightening - is certainly not limited to professional dancers.

Flexible Barres can be considered as a craft, in the sense that they give a poetic vision of a body-instrument (musical), of a sensitive body, as opposed to a gymnastic and mechanical vision.

The body and movement poetry comes from the harmony and the dialogue between the three floors of the body (head, cage, pelvis), as it is evoked by Wilfride Piollet.

“I finally observed that it was the conjunction between the mind – and its clever use – , the total physical engagement (body) and the soul reverie which allows one's poetry to move you through his gesture.” (Aventure des Barres Flexibles.p51)16 In the same work, Wilfride Piollet explained what makes for her a moving dance: “Without this deep animation (enjoying dance above all), dance can become a ground for studies, for experiments, for construction, for performance...but will never become dance. Yet, it is this very aspect which is left aside when you study the few writings dealing with (so called) Ballet. It is even left aside too often. These writings deal with technique, exercises, physical abilities, proportions, nice instep, width of legs rises, back flexibility, pelvis opening...but do they deal with inner

16 J’ai fini par observer que c’était la conjugaison entre l’esprit (l’intelligence de ce que l’on fait), l’engagement total physique (corps) et la rêverie de l’âme… qui permettait à la poésie d’une personne de vous interpeller au travers de son geste.

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flame?”17 p.96-97 “If it is commonly accepted that dancers are passionate about their art, nothing in the way they work is here to develop the inner lighten that dance should give. On the contrary, the legend of “positive suffering” often gets more and more credits”18. P97 “If it is true that 'hard' methods can have physical results, these methods never produce neither true creativity, nor originality, nor poetry. Only amazing things. Dancers have, by instinct, a very deep relation to their body, can produce great efforts, and have most of the time a great amount of courage. There is no need to “force” this inclination to selftranscendence. This is already present in themselves, and they can leave this quest for the outstanding to gymnasts” 19. p.97-98 With some practice, we can notice that this work goes beyond an unconventional dance training. Working with the Flexible Barres is working on the body, and working on movement, which means working on life itself, since life is entirely movement, both literally and figuratively: there is no life in what is motionless (meaning here what is inert, not immobile).

Through physical practice, the work addresses the whole human being and the manner in which it relates to self, to others and its context. Becoming more conscious of one's own sensitivity helps to develop the sensitivity to others and to the world. Personal growth unavoidably has an influence on the way one stands in the world. Even though it is neither the main aim nor the angle of approach, these consequences are inseparable from the Flexible Barres.

17 « Sans cette animation profonde qui se décuple en s’étendant aux autres, la danse peut être sujet d’études, d’expériences, de construction, de performance… mais ne sera jamais de la danse. C’est pourtant cet aspect qui est oublié quand on analyse le peu de textes qui traitent de la danse dite classique. Trop souvent oubliés, même. Il y est question de technique, d’exercices, de facilités physiques, de proportions, de joli cou de pied, d’ampleur de dégagement des jambes et de souplesse du dos, d’ouverture du bassin… mais de flamme intérieure en est-‐il question ? » 18 « Mais si il est admis que les danseurs sont passionnés par leur art, rien dans leur façon de travailler ne développe le sentiment de légèreté intérieure que devrait donner la danse. Il est courant, au contraire, que s’accrédite cette légende d’une « souffrance positive ». » 19 « S’il est vrai que les méthodes « dures » peuvent donner des résultats au niveau physique, ces moyens n’engendrent jamais ni véritable créativité ni originalité, ni poésie. Seulement des choses étonnantes. Les danseurs ont, par instinct, une très bonne relation à leur corps, sont capables de très grands efforts et ont, la plupart du temps, beaucoup de courage. Il n’est nul besoin de « forcer » cette inclination au dépassement. Ils l’ont déjà en eux et peuvent laisser la recherche de sensationnel aux gymnastes. »

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A whole life philosophy comes out of it. At any level, the universal and irreducible way of being to the world lies in the fact of being incarnated. Being in a body is common to all human beings, and working on being instead of having enables us to reach what is essential and to be connected to our fundamental dimension of living creatures.

Because they work on the body, Flexible Barres have a transforming impact, like many other somatic practices. If a dancer gives himself over to it at a certain level, with their traditional training, it is likely to change his views on body and movement, as well as his perception of the world and society.

The invitation to the autonomy of the dancer is the result of a strong belief in movement and individuals, and their capacity to transform themselves. Flexible Barres do not build a certain kind of dancer, but free and independent individuals. It provides the dancer with tools and means to develop his artistic singularity, become themselves, and not the product of an external norm.

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3. On the term “contemporary” and aesthetic considerations

Although labelling a practice is a sensitive matter, it is nevertheless a necessity for the practice to have an identity and reference for itself which can be recognised and known. This label can be useful as part of a class description within the practical everyday dance context. There is a need to be able to name and identify a practice from another, even though language can be limiting at times, as words encompass layers and layers of meanings. As an illustration, the word “contemporary” can bear many meanings which refer to different things. Words can potentially be confusing as layers of content add up onto them. That is what we will investigate around the term of 'contemporary' and the aesthetic issues in relation to Flexible Barres, somatics and their relation to already existing choreographic repertory.

From the experiences I encountered, it seems that the point where the Flexible Barres collide with other somatic practices is in their relation to choreographic repertoires. Somatics seem more improvisation based and do not appear directly connected to repertoire, whereas it has been the point of departure of W.Piollet's pedagogical research. As developed earlier, she was first looking for a training for herself which would allow her to perform repertoires from different periods (such as Balanchine's works and Baroque ones for example). A specificity of the Flexible Barres is to bring a somatic approach to fixed forms by focusing on the underlying dynamics.

That is not to say that she was not interested in improvisation, which she worked on a lot, especially with Andy De Groat who created a lot of improvisation based choreographic scores, or Pedro Pauwels with whom she practiced a lot of contact-improvisation, to name only two. We can also recall the several choreographic works based on Flexible Barres which were mentioned in the first part. This is to say it works also as tools to develop material from or devise improvisation settings.

Piollet focused her work on finding ways to re-work and investigate the repertoire (mainly classical, baroque and contemporary) because she would have access to it, working in an opera house. She developed a 'contemporary' way to perform movement, from whichever era.

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The context in which a method is devised is obviously determinant. Somatic practices are mainly developed outside of institutions or choreographic structures based on repertory works, which might be a reason as to why it has not been much explored. There was also from the seventies a rise of disinterest for “academic” movement and a desire to explore pedestrian movement.

Initiated with the post-modern and the Judson Church Theater for whom the virtuosity in technique was almost rejected, leading to more and more minimalism and the 'non-dance' movement.

Historical shifts and developments in the field of dance make thus the meaning of “contemporary” quite blurry, spanning from Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham to Pina Bausch, Dominique Bagouet, and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker or Meredith Monk and Jan Fabre...

In her thesis based on the Flexible Barres, Céline Torrent suggests a new term to describe dance: “contempoïein”. Deriving from the greek word ποιέω, (poiein – meaning “make, do, create” Liddell & Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1940) she suggests a redefinition in connection to the poetry of the doing in the moment of performance, whatever is performed.

'From all our analysis about dance as a 'poïegraphic writing', we offer now an alternative to define what is for us « contemporary dance », or rather the contemporaneity that is inherent to dance. It seems to us that it is precisely the 'poïein' notion, as a creative impulse, as a “poetic instinct”, which defines the deep involvement of the dancer in the present moment, and this beyond any dance aesthetic. It is this very involvement, of oneself into the movement, in any form of movement, which defines for us the contemporaneity of dance. It is for this reason that we suggest to talk from now on about 'contempoïein dance' rather than 'contemporary dance'.20 In another extract, C.Torrent talks about the links between poetic aspects and temporality:

20. A partir de toutes nos réflexions concernant la danse comme écriture poïegraphique, nous proposons à présent une alternative pour définir ce qu’est pour nous la danse « contemporaine » ou plutôt la contemporanéité inhérente à la danse. Il nous semble que c’est bien précisément la notion de poïein, comme impulsion créative, comme « poétique instinct », qui définit l’engagement profond du danseur dans le temps présent, et ce par-delà toute forme esthétique de danse. Et c’est cet engagement-là, de soi dans le mouvement, dans toute forme de mouvement, qui pour nous définit la contemporanéité de la danse. C’est pour cette raison que nous proposons de parler désormais, plutôt que de « danse contemporaine », de « danse – contempoïein » p.291

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“[The dancer] is essentially 'modern' – in the Baudelairian sense of the term – in that he is always re-creating himself in the present in a new way, and it is here his great freedom. It is in this sense that the contemporaneity in dance is, to use Baudelaire's words when he talks about “modernity”, an extraction of the poetic outside of the historical.”(p.291)21 This thesis was elaborated from the study of the work of W.Piollet, which was interested in developing a training, independently of choreographic aesthetic: “Stop separating the techniques (Ballet, jazz, contemporary, baroque) is the question which at last came to the mind of people in charge of different training institutions nowadays. What has seemed obvious (switch from a style to another) for a while on stage, has not, for a long time, been a matter of concern for people who are responsible of teaching. Yet more and more dancers, those who work within big institutions, as well as those who are independent, have to deal with this obligation of adaptation. It is not possible anymore to be only “classical” or to be only “contemporary” but these ones are not asked to be “classical”! - so they have to be involved body and soul into movements with various motivations, by gathering in themselves the different means of expression of the XXIth century. Their bodies must be able to concentrate sometimes opposed information, and to use them as creatively and lively as possible. (Piollet, Adventures of the Flexible Barres, p.7)22

Remembering that dance will always be the art of the moment, according to Wilfride Piollet, the warm-up must be 'contemporary', because the body is necessarily of its time. Being always contemporary, the body has to perform steps from another era, and also be ready to invent new ones. The training is about the body adventure which has to be as much as possible attuned to its 21. [Le danseur] est essentiellement « moderne » - au sens baudelairien du terme - dans le sens où il se recrée lui-même au présent de façon toujours nouvelle, et là est sa grande liberté.

C’est en cela qu’il nous semble que la contemporanéité en danse est, pour reprendre les termes que Baudelaire utilise pour parler de la modernité, une extraction du poétique hors de l’historique.

22. “Ne plus séparer les techniques, classique, jazz, contemporaine, baroque… est la question que se posent enfin, ces temps-ci, les responsables de divers lieux de formation. Mais ce qui est une évidence (passer d’un style à l’autre) depuis un bon moment sur les scènes qui proposent des spectacles de danse, n’a longtemps pas inquiété les responsables de l’enseignement. Pourtant de plus en plus de danseurs, ceux des grandes institutions tout autant que les danseurs indépendants, sont confrontés à cette obligation d’adaptation. Il n’est plus possible, maintenant, de n’être « que » classique » (ni que « contemporain » d’ailleurs, à ces derniers on ne demande pas d’être « classiques » !), il leur faut, en concentrant en eux les divers moyens d’expression du XXIème siècle, savoir s’engager corps et âme dans des mouvements aux motivations multiples. Leur corps doit être capable de focaliser des informations parfois opposées et d’en disposer de la plus créative et vivante façon.”

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time, knowing its roots and also daring new things. This is why the class should be one of the most creative and exciting moments of a dancer's day.

If the dancers warm-up without consciousness in their classes, they really work in rehearsal. In my opinion, it should be the opposite : it is in the class that the body possibilities should be worked on, whether we use them or not in rehearsal. For that, one must be aware of the benefit which represents the fact of knowing how the body operates. The warmup should integrate the diversity and originality of the modernity currents while preserving the experiences of true classical tradition (the search of elevation which is, in reality a work around gravity and the knowledge of oneself). (Piollet, Adventure of the Flexible Barres, p.38 23 Thus the training is considered in two strands. Taking the example of grammar and literature in language studies, the work on the body itself is different from the study of the repertoire and choreography. These two elements should be an integral part of the everyday work. Although there appears to be a shift, it is specific to the dance domain not to learn through repeating the work from the repertoire everyday, in the way that classical musicians work on pieces of music. Although different traces of different kinds exist, the instability and the preservation of a dance work has certainly to be taken into account. It is a reality that the majority of choreographic works are not as easily accessible to a dancer in the way that a musician can access a Bach score. With the development of choreographic notation (Laban and Benesh mainly), Wilfride Piollet supported a training based on real works in collaboration with notators as much as possible. The authenticity and the origins of the steps often appear to unsung. « What I like myself with tradition, I hate this word because we don't know what it refers to, but well...When we discover old steps, it is the body understanding which is behind this process; to push the body to be in movement, here it is; this is what I find absolutely astonishing”24

23. Si les danseurs s’échauffent sans conscience à leurs leçons, ils travaillent réellement dans la salle de répétition. A mon avis, les choses sont à inverser : c’est dans la salle de cours qu’il faut travailler les possibilités du corps, qu’on ait l’occasion de les utiliser ou non, ensuite, à une répétition. Pour cela il faut être réveillé sur l’intérêt que représente le fonctionnement du corps.

L’échauffement devrait intégrer la diversité et l’originalité des courants de la modernité tout en préservant les acquis de la vraie tradition classique (cette recherche d’élévation qui est, en fait, un travail autour de la gravité et de la connaissance de soi).

24. “Ce que j’aime moi dans la tradition, enfin la tradition, je déteste ce mot parce qu’on ne sait pas ce que cela veut dire mais bon… Quand on retrouve des pas anciens, c’est l’intelligence du corps qu’il y a derrière ; l’obliger à être en mouvement, voilà, c’est ce que je trouve absolument renversant. » (Jessica Piris' article p.4)

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“a real synthesis or a real “school step” teaches you yourself. Or a real choreography...it teaches you yourself. You discover yourself in a genuine language”.25

The tension between tradition and modernity is sometimes pulled between two extremes. Verbatim re-creations might seem out-dated and disconnected from contemporary issues, which possibly enter into conflict with the disregard and indifference towards the choreographic heritage. Yet knowledge from the past can be useful to go further. James Joyces' Ulysses can indeed be an example of how a classical work can be used to produce an avant-garde creation. Is it possible to think that the most innovative creators would be the ones who are the more aware of the past?

Choreographic creation does not come out of nowhere, but is more or less consciously rooted in a background made of different influences. Although this seems obvious, yet quarrels between classical and contemporary schools are still very present, and can be found as well between Cunningham, Graham and Release techniques for instance. Flexible Barres bring ways to consider these different practices as complementing each others, instead of being separated.

Dance can be considered as a matter of communication. It conveys a message, in the sense that something is communicated, even if it is not necessarily understood by the viewer. It can be compared to someone hearing a language that he does not understand. Although the meaning of the words are unreachable, the person can still acknowledge that something is expressed. In terms of dance it is independent from whether it is translatable in words, and whether the spectator can read it or not. To push the comparison to the field of language studies, it would seem absurd to consider impossible to speak Turkish and Japanese at the same time. One can learn both languages, and speak them alternatively, without having to choose one forever. We can think in the same way in terms of choreographic repertoires.

25. « Une véritable synthèse ou un véritable pas d'école t'apprend, toi. Ou une véritable chorégraphie… ça t'apprend toi. Tu te découvres dans un véritable langage. » (J.Piris' article p.4)

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We saw that, as a technique based on a somatic approach, the innovative nature of the Flexible Barres goes beyond styles divisions. To realise the implications of such a technique, it would have to be investigated beyond existing tensions and disagreements in a contemporary context, in which it has been barely explored, in order to prove that it can be a relevant practice for everyone.

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III - Practical research on teaching through the Flexible Barres principles After studying the characteristics of the Flexible Barres technique itself, it was time in my research to examine how somatics were integrated into contemporary dance training. It has been informing on how I could integrate Flexible Barres practices into contemporary applications. At the early stages of my research process I indeed realised that there was a necessity for me to find my own approach to teaching, drawing upon the variety of teaching approaches I had experienced.

“Even two people who studied with the same teacher adapted the base information into a personal point of view that would then serve the repertory or one’s own research.”

(Lance Gries about teaching Trisha Brown's work in — 'Release and alignment oriented techniques' in Ingo Diehl, Friederike Lampert (Eds.) Dance Techniques 2010 Tanzplan Germany p.269) During the 'Embodied practice' module in January, a triggering thought for this pedagogical research was Eva Karczag’s mention “it doesn’t have to be taught the way it has been taught”, and with this in mind, I was looking for my own way of delivering the Flexible Barres. Over and above finding a personal approach to the teaching of Flexible Barres, there was another strand to develop, which was its application into a “contemporary” vocabulary. As far as I know I have only found a few individuals who had undertaken this work and were integrating it into their classes: Noël Cadagiani who is dispensing a contemporary teaching based on Flexible Barres, or Fabien Monrose for example. In the course of the Autumn 2014, we had started an informal group work with Mélanie Lomoff, (http://www.melanie-lomoff.com/) http://www.origami-noro-ohl.com/)

Satchie

Noro

(latest

project

and Elise Ladoué (http://www.ladoue.me/).

All three of them were former students from Piollet at the CNMSDP. Developing their own path as independent artists, they lost touch with the developments of the Flexible Barres and got in contact with Wilfride Piollet about how to come back to the work. W.Piollet suggested to gather all four of us, as I had been following the recent evolutions of the Flexible Barres. We gathered several times, with a common desire and interest in developing Flexible Barres as a

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contemporary practice. The experience of our several gatherings in a studio to work on Flexible Barres gave me confidence in the body of knowledge I had gathered, and that I could actually trust my teaching.

1. Pedagogical resources to develop a teaching of my own

From the discovery of experiential anatomy in 2010, to delving into somatics during the embodied practice module of this MA, many connections appeared between Flexible Barres and somatic practices. I was inspired by the literature in this field to investigate a pedagogy of my own, influenced by these two approaches. Two articles from the Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices have been key to my research. The first one is in the volume 7, number 1, the research conducted by Laura Glaser in 2015 under the title: “Reflections on somatic learning processes in higher education: student experiences and teacher interpretations of Experiential Anatomy into Contemporary Dance”. The second one is “Integrating semi-structured somatic practices and contemporary dance technique training” by Rebecca Weber, published in the volume 1 number 2, in 2009. I also drawn from “Three Voices: researching how somatic education informs contemporary dance technique classes” written collectively

by Sylvie Fortin, Warwick Long & Madeleine Lord, published in Research in Dance Education, Vol. 3, No. 2, in 2002.

In terms of edited books, I should mention Body and mind in motion: dance and neuroscience in conversation by Glenna Batson and Margaret Wilson, Teaching the teachers: documentation of a methodological seminar for dance-teachers and dancers Gill Clarke, Eva Karczag, Susanne Martin, Peter Pleyer and Dorothe Rust, and finally Attending to movement: somatic perspectives on living in this world co-edited by Sarah Whatley, Natalie Garrett Brown and Kirsty Alexander.

As I have never undertaken a teacher training course, studying more general books about teaching dance was useful in setting a framework to create a lesson plan for myself. In this field I have been informed by Dance teaching and learning: shaping practice edited by Lorna Sanders in which different 47/69

learning theories (behavioural – Pavlov, Skinner / cognitive – Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner / social – Bandura and experiential – Kolb, Fleming, Gardner, Maslow), the several teaching styles (based on by Hayden-Davies and Whitehead and Gough) and teaching strategies are detailed. In terms of teaching styles I also read Teaching physical education in its fifth edition by Muska Mosston and Sara Ashworth, where I could access to an expanded analysis of the eleven identified teaching styles, from command style to self-teaching style. The spectrum of styles by Elisabeth Gibbons was a great complement in approaching teaching dance in another different way. The panorama and overview offered by the consultation of this variety of methods allowed me to navigate myself through a range of approaches to teach Flexible Barres based sessions.

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2. Methodology of the research Having looked into the spectrum of teaching styles, I was interested in drawing from the different aspects of the Flexible Barres illustrated in the previous part to address people's different ways of learning.

For instance I always brought different tools to the class (anatomic drawings or diagrams like the ones present in the previous part, wooden man, ball, imagery drawings...), so that hopefully it could help everybody’s way of learning, as well as developing the not so natural learning styles.

Drawings from Wilfride Piollet and Raphael Cottin

Pictures of the wooden man I found, which seems like the 3D materialisation of Piollet's little men.

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I will focus on three main teaching experiments I conducted this year. I organised an open workshop for a non-dancer audience as part of the AntiUniversity Festival on Saturday 11th June 2016. The second experiment was a workshop at TL working on 1-1 with a BA1 student in two sessions of 1,5 hours, then finally the practical session assessed for this project took place with three dancers from Trinity Laban.

In the Antiuniversity festival six participants took part in the session which was taking place at The Field in New Cross. I was very interested in setting up a Flexible Barres intervention in such a context, out of the traditional dance field.

Culminating with a festival in June for the second edition, it was also an ongoing programme of free and inclusive radical education events. Their ethos formulated on the homepage of their website was very much resonating with my reading of The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five lessons upon intellectual emancipation by Jacques Rancière: “Antiuniversity now challenges academic and class hierarchy through an open invitation to teach and learn any subject, in any form, anywhere.” (http://www.antiuniversity.org/) It was indeed advocating the equality of intelligences along the lines developed

by Joseph Jacotot reported by Rancière. Jacotot's credo of intellectual emancipation is “I believe that God created the human soul capable of teaching itself by itself and without a master” p139 in the chapter “The emancipator and his monkey”. To summarize briefly, he states that the only relationship necessary in a teaching situation is desire, on both sides, to be in a learning situation. Whereas in more traditional settings a master would direct the student's desire to focus on a particular topic. In Jacotot's view, intelligence is nothing but the result of attention and research, before being a combination of ideas. The student is considered as an on-going researcher. The teacher is above all a man talking to another one, and who brings the authority of knowledge to the poetic - as poiein (in the greek sense of creating) – conditions of speech delivery. In other words, knowledge is not due to a superior intelligence but to an ability to phrase it and an intensive practice of study.

Like all conscientious professors, he knew that teaching was not in the slightest about cramming students with knowledge and having them repeat it like parrots, but he knew equally well that students had to avoid the chance detours where minds still incapable of distinguishing the essential from the accessory, the principle from the consequence, get lost. In short, 50/69

the essential act of the master was to explicate: to disengage the simple elements of learning, and to reconcile their simplicity in principle with the factual simplicity that characterizes young and ignorant minds. To teach was to transmit learning and form minds simultaneously, by leading those minds, according to an ordered progression, from the most simple to the most complex. p3 It was a very determinant text which has impacted on the development of my own pedagogy, although some views expressed in this text might be controversial.

(http://mesmilleetunenuitsalire.over-blog.com/article-le-maitre-

ignorant-de-jacques-ranciere-je-suis-pas-convaincu-94681483.html)

Screen-shot from the Antiuniversity website advertising the workshop retrieved from: http://www.antiuniversity.org/Discovering-a-Movement-Practice-TheFlexible-Barres

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Advertisement for workshops at TL

Both times, each participant was new to the Flexible Barres. (Apart from the last workshop where the BA1 student took part following her initial 1-1 session.) It was quite new for me to teach complete new-comers to this work, which I had to introduce from scratch. This has allowed me to realise the incredible amount of synthesis which it required. Each individual exercise in the series devised by Piollet are quite detailed and elaborated. It is therefore impossible to teach them as such to beginners. I had to work from a multi-layered combination to an extracted essence of its principles. It would be possible to envision the complete teaching of one 'basic exercise' over a period of time with regular classes, like in a higher education curriculum for example.

Since I felt responsible to have the participants leave the class with something they could use, I had been looking for ways of making the Flexible Barres work accessible. Therefore in the context of introductory classes, I had to strip apart all the exercises. I indeed had to go from multi-layered and complex material to a simplified version, where there was almost only the extracted main essence of it.

All participants across the session were aware that they were participating in a research study. I set up several data sources and collection methods which were video and audio recording of the session, written notes of group discussions and feedback formulated by the participants. It must be stressed 52/69

that my understanding of the information gathered was influenced by the fact that I was both in a research and teaching position. For example my observation of the participants was affected when I was demonstrating. In the three sessions, we worked in a space which was intentionally without barres or mirrors, and often in silence. This configuration highlighted the focus on the body itself and on movement only, independently from outside reflection or support. Although it might seem a dry setting, I find that it helps to concentrate inwardly at first and connect with oneself. The participants had no other option than tuning into themselves, there was nothing else in the room part from other people doing the same activity. As Glenna Baston mentions in ‘Dancing Fully, Safely, and Expressively: The Role of the Body Therapies in Dance Training’: “sensing (and paying attention to our sensing) is not merely one component that precedes motor output but is, in fact, essential to organizing our nervous system, our thinking, and thus our movement outcome”.p28.

The lesson plan which follows has been designed especially for the assessed class, according to the investigation I had chosen for this project. I had led the previous sessions with similar purposes. I had decided to focus the session on the idea of isolation (the perception and dialogue between body parts). With this focus, my aim for the participants was for them to acquire a technique which would sharpen their body perception, and allow a deeper understanding of their bodies. The realisation of this aim would be reached by practising isolation exercises with body awareness. It would challenge the coordination and facilitate the discovery of under practised / under accessed neural pathways.

Challenging neural pathways helps to maintain the liveness both of the body and the mind, which is what is needed to develop as a moving body. As we maintain both of them in an open state, they feed each other and help to develop each other, as supposed to familiar habits which don't get identified otherwise, if not challenged. The nature of this work is a refinement of the communication between mind and body, as they are kept in an open responsive state. By working in a way which is not already known, the body cannot hide, and we can notice our habitual patterns and those less familiar. It also allows to reset and potentially reprogram the nervous system.

The outline below was my preparation the hour and half long class, organised as the assessed session in presence of the examiners for twenty minutes of it. I 53/69

kept the original jargon employed, so it can reflect the nature of the material covered in the class which can be accessed in the footage of the class. I found it interesting to include the outline here, not as an explanatory development, but as an original working document in order to be able to reflect on the necessary adaptation of the material in response to the reality of what was happening in the studio.

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_______________________________________ LESSON PLAN •

Introduction What we are here for, few words about the Flexible Barres Practising rather than mastering

•

Circle Warm-up, getting into the body Shaking dust off / shower / energy drink

•

Dance Skills 3 preparatory exercises on the spot integrating whole body in movement 1. Falling on place / catching the ball 2. In & Out rotations (Oiling joints) 3. Falling / suspension in

•

Stretching (leg in the air) / break moment

•

3 Floors theory (drawn from analysis of previous exercises)

Head Soul intelligible signs

Heart Spirit unspeakable water state: water state: liquid gaseous

Pelvis (body weight) Matter invincible Water state: solid

•

Focus on middle floor = Supination and Pronation Wings on each floors - winged beings. focus on middle floor

•

inside/outside worlds - meanings / developmental babies pattern ➢ Hands on in pairs (Tracing scapulae / Find range of motion, Floating plates - not attached to rib cage, go underneath) ➢ Measurements on oneself

• • •

Froggy exercise (in 8 counts) Travelling sequence Exploration in space of the 3 floors linked to 3 water states

• Closing circle - points of support on oneself one after another • Conclusion How did you feel / feedbacks Rephrasing their sharing Questions /References _______________________________________________ We shall examine the unfolding of this session and the analysis we can draw from it.

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3. Practical experiments

The three sessions were challenging in different ways. It was a bit difficult to get people involved in workshops at TL (cancellations, last minute withdrawals…).

For the assessed class, right until the day I could not have an exact idea of the number of participants. The challenge of not knowing how many people would come put me in a situation similar to leading open classes. I could realise in practice the incredible liveness of teaching.

There was also an element of people fearing to be doing a ballet technique, as Wilfride Piollet used to be principal ballerina, although I emphasized in the advertisement email I wrote that it was a practice open to anyone. The name of the technique could also be potentially misleading because of the word “barres”.

In the setting of the assessed class, there was a real authenticity in what was offered, in the sense that what was to be seen, was what we were doing, like a window opened on a practice. The situation is therefore very real and close to an open class context. Teaching to a group of people has allowed me to experience the gap between a planned class, and the reality of delivering it.

There is a constant adaptation required, as well as the ability to adjust quickly to what is going on in the room, whether it being in terms of timing, understanding, abilities…

In the sessions I led, three strands were at stake in the room: the content of Flexible Barres concepts, my pedagogical approach in the moment, and the act of teaching people.

To expand on the lesson plan and with these lenses, I will discuss how the class unfolded.

Once we arrived in the studio, I suggested to gather in a circle and gave a brief introductory presentation of the technique itself and of the implications of the day. I warned everyone that the whole focus was on the process not on the produced outcome. I was aware that some exercises would be challenging, and that it could potentially be frustrating for the participants not to master them straight away. I therefore paid attention in allowing for a gradual build up and repetition of the type of exercises and to adapt the difficulty, in order to not loose the students with only very complicated combinations. Wilfride Piollet quoting

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her teacher Marguerite Guillaumin used to say: “Giving a try is already a progress”.

Standing in a circle, eyes closed, I was giving verbal instructions. It was a moment for people to gather themselves through simple tasks which support them to pay attention to themselves and awaken their inner awareness, which is often easier with the sight off.

“Thus classes always began with a restful, meditative sensing period of selfcare – to balance the levels of rest and activity, to awaken kinaesthetic, proprioceptive and interoceptive awareness, and to tune into sensing as a method of restructuring movement outcomes.” (Rebecca Weber p.242-243) I am particularly attentive to this opening circle of the class, because it establishes a ground for the whole class to evolve afterwards. It is a moment of setting up a space and an atmosphere where things will be able to emerge for everyone, and hopefully the participants can feel confident and safe to explore.

Then I asked the group how they would describe the organisation of body-parts, how could the body be broken down. From their input, to more and more precision, we arrived at the visualisation of the body in three floors as seen previously in Piollet's work. Here the actual printed drawings were presented, as well as a 3D little wooden man. After some experience for themselves of the theoretical ideas, I offered to put them into practice through specific exercises which would both integrate the whole body in movement as well as practice the isolation of specific body part at a specific time. These exercises train perception in a rhythmical way, as supposed to the previous exploration which has a different temporal demand. In this part we focus on the mobilisation of the join, both in rotation and in flexion/extension. The “body actions” concepts (seen in part 2) of W.Piollet were very useful to visit different types of movement and therefore warming-up in a quite complete way. This part was quite challenging in terms of memory coordination for the brain, which is yet another muscle to awaken.

At this stage I skipped the stretching moment, which felt too early in the development of what was at stake. After presenting the 3 floors theory, which was a step further from the previous exploration, I moved to some partner work in pairs. This was a hands-on task dealing with the middle floor focusing on the 57/69

scapula. After demonstrating with one of them, I worked with each pair, making sure everyone was getting the right perception of the supination and pronation concept, which Piollet applies to the scapula. There is a dialogue going on between both participants as perceivers and receivers.

“In teaching and learning dance our visual sense has traditionally been the predominant avenue for learning. One learning problem for both teacher and student is how can a student translate what they see into kinaesthetic sensation. Goldfarb (1990) argues ‘the most direct way to describe a movement goal is to describe it in terms of kinaesthetic experience, in terms of what the mover must feel for in order to perform the task” (p. 138). p170 Warwick Long Students were then invited to feel the difference in walking through the space.

At this stage I left out the exploration which could have followed on the inside and outside worlds, in relation to the development patterns. We moved to an exercise in counts which I devised from Flexible Barres principles and called it the “froggy exercise”, in a reference to the “froggy knee” image used in Flexible Barres. It consists in visualising that the back of the knee extend in a similar dynamic that the one a frog does when it croaks and fills up its vocal sacks. For this exercise the balls were introduced as well as music, which It pushes the dynamics and pace to be in rhythm while there is an extra difficulty with the handling of the ball.

To finish with, I invited an open ended exploration revisiting the concepts and physical qualities we had encountered, with a possibility of emphasis on the 3 floors, linked to the 3 water states.

In the closing circle, which is reminiscent from the beginning in terms of configuration, as well as just standing and noticing, we can measure the ground covered between these two landmarks.

I then encouraged the participants to take some notes for themselves, about sensations, discoveries, curiosities or mysteries, in order to track their embodiment journey. The practice of writing in a journal and in class note-taking was very present in W.Piollet pedagogy and strongly encouraged in several somatic practices. From their reflections, we opened a quick sharing of experiences, which was a very good way for me to get an insight in their understanding of themselves from their point of view.

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Feedback sharing at The Field - New Cross (Antiuniversity workshop)

I obviously realised I had planned too much for one session in terms of content, which was more suited to a 2 hour session. It is a shame we did not get to explore the sequence I had prepared, because it is a key experience to incorporate some Flexible Barres in a flow of movement. In the moment I preferred to spend a bit more time on the scapula exploration, because I felt they were on a journey which I did not want to interrupt at this stage for the sake of meeting a plan. To be able to access the value of the exploration needs time, and it is important not to be superficial. It would also have been interesting to explore with them the very particular deep stretches arranged by W.Piollet.

Again we were not at a stage where they were appropriate.

Working with non-dancers at Antiuniversity, I could feel some moments without music were challenging. The women were more used to attending classes which heavily relied on the use of music as a support to the activity. They were also less influenced by the conventions or formality of what a technique class can be, unlike the TL students. I could notice an overall curiosity once they had understood it was a different proposition. I have gone myself through the experience of being lost in a new pedagogy, without the grounding of references. Any change in a system of value is disconcerting, so I tried to be very present and reassuring accompanying their journey.

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Demonstrating the water state in the head

Still in the case of the Antiuniversity workshop, another challenge was the presence of the camera. It affected some participants and came up through verbal feedbacks. They were much less used to being filmed than the Trinity Laban dancers, and to some extent the video recording inhibited their freedom of experience. It was also not helpful that on this occasion I had asked a male friend of mine to assist me in the videoing of the session. The space was not a usual dance studio, and I thought it would be best to have someone behind the camera rather than leaving it still in a corner. He was therefore the only masculine presence in the room, which in some way, I felt was disturbing for the participants. We thus agreed collectively on not filming continuously, and only taking pictures at times.

From the various group discussions at the end of the sessions, I wrote some phrases the participants were saying, and here is a very short selection: - “I can feel my arms much longer, almost like I can touch my knees” - “I can already feel my trapeziums released. It's incredible how much we can let go of.”

- “I really liked that we can use the visualisation of [the] wings to reclaim the freedom in our bodies. Not easy for me, but a very good exercise”.

To extend the gathering of feedback and testimonies from student voices, here is a collection of responses gathered by Christophe Duveau-Villéger who teaches Flexible Barres in different contexts. There is a module as part of the 60/69

teacher training in the Rosella Hightower School in Cannes (4hrs per week from October to May), then weekly classes at the Ecole Nationale de Marseille as part of the dance training curriculum and also 36 hours spread over two semesters in the second year of the BA in dance at the Nice Sophia Antipolis university.

- “we feel stronger on our legs, freer in the higher body, less struggling with balance, more on one's axis.”

- “steps seem easier to perform” - “we are less stressed with our own body” - “we feel more pleasure when we dance, since we are less struggling with technical difficulties”.

- “we feel more confident with our own body. That is great.”

- “at the end of the day, this work has given me more strength, and I can feel it even in contemporary classes” - “Coordination patterns in the basic series exercises are so difficult that classic steps seem easy afterwards, so it's funny, since it becomes really easier.”

- “It feels as if I were warming up both my mind and my body, it is very different from the barre which I often do without thinking of anything, with the basics exercises it's impossible, it awakens the spirit” - “I feel present to myself – even with the work with the barre in the middle, I am always struggling with my body. Here it's on my side”.

- “it moves me more – honestly, in the beginning, I would have cried from emotion in the middle of a lesson performing classical ballet after the basics series. That's great !”

- “this work here makes me joyful”.26

26 « on se sent plus solide sur ses jambes, plus libre dans le haut du corps, moins en lutte avec l’équilibre, plus sur son axe » - on tourne mieux qu’avec la barre » - « les pas semblent plus faciles à exécuter » - « on est moins en stress avec son propre corps » - « on a plus de plaisir à danser, car on lutte moins avec les difficultés techniques » - « c’est plus excitant dans le corps de se préparer avec les basiques, car à la barre, souvent on s’ennuie » - « on est plus en confiance avec son corps, ça c’est chouette ! » - « les basiques et les pas classiques après, ça me donne plus de plaisir qu’avec la barre » - « je me sens vraiment bien après ce travail, je ne me prends pas la tête comme après un cours de classique normal », - « au bout du compte, ce travail me donne plus de force, et je le sens même dans les cours de contemporain », - « les coordinations des basiques sont tellement dures, qu’après les pas classiques ça semble facile et du coup c’est amusant, car ça devient vraiment plus facile ! », - « j’ai l’impression d’échauffer mon corps et mon esprit, c’est très différent de la barre que je fais parfois sans penser à rien, avec les basiques impossible, ça éveille l’esprit ! », - « je me sens présent à moi-même avec ce travail, avec la barre au milieu, je lutte toujours avec mon corps, là je fais alliance avec », - « ça me touche plus, au début franchement j’en aurais pleuré en plein cours tellement j’avais de l’émotion en dansant le classique après les basiques, c’est génial ! » - « ça me procure de la joie ce travail » in Aventure des Barres Flexibles, P117

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One of the most rewarding moments in teaching are the student epiphanies, in which they discover something for themselves. These thrilling glimpses give a reason as to why we are doing what we are doing.

Working on 1-1 was very insightful in this way. I felt I was really accompanying and following the journey of the participant, deciding on the next step depending on the previous one. At each stage, I had to anticipate where to go next.

Looking back to the recording, I felt it was looking too long for me to decide what would be best option. I assume more experience will help the speed of these decisions.

This project has overall allowed me to start elaborating and experimenting with the development of teaching that I can own, influenced by the several streams of teaching that I experienced, both from the Flexible Barres world and the somatic field. This process has allowed to find my own teaching voice, and develop a personal approach to work with “contempoĂŻenâ€? movement.

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CONCLUSION Through the contextualising of the Flexible Barres in its historical perspective of devising, we saw how it developed from an unusual training in the corridors to a consequent theorised technique.

In a second time we provided an overview of the pedagogical vision and practical applications by Wilfride Piollet. In this perspective we acknowledged the somatic characteristics of the Flexible Barres, the theoretical content of the technique as well as its consequences for contemporary practices.

The third part has been dedicated to the presentation of the practical research I conducted with the intention to develop a contemporary pedagogy of my own based on the Flexible Barres. The methodology, class material description and unfolding are presented, as well as the retrospective analysis which could be drawn from it.

We can overall conclude that independently from the level of dance training, and from the familiarity with a choreographic repertoire, working physically through a Flexible Barres approach has been beneficial for the participants of the classes organised.

I came to the realisation that there is not a single training method which can be devised for a training in a contemporary field, as a systematic pedagogy.

It is up to the teacher to develop for himself and from his different experiences a personal contemporary pedagogy, suited to the specificity of the participants, through which the Flexible Barres will carry on to be spread.

In terms of further perspectives, this research invited me to prompt a rethinking of pedagogy as a whole and leaves open in front of me a field to investigate through the practice of teaching. As I relocated in Paris for artistic reasons, I am starting to organise weekly workshops to explore with new comers to the Flexible Barres, the fresh findings of this two-years research.

It also triggered my appetite for the knowledge related to dance notation, and

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the ability to record and transmit choreographic repertoire, whether old or current creations. I am therefore starting this September a Laban notation course at the CNSMDP in Paris, which will eventually allow me to write any movement and decipher, amongst other written works,

the choreographic

scores of the Flexible Barres.

The questions around pedagogy are current as a debate in the dance field, in terms of what training for what dancer. I hope that this dissertation will contribute to the study of Flexible Barres in relation to international somatic practices and contemporary developments.

I would be very interested in establishing, in collaboration with other Flexible Barres practitioners, a kind of 'identity card' of the Flexible Barres in relation to other practices, very much like the Tanzplan Germany does for several pedagogies.

Another task to be completed would be the translation into English of the books written by Wilfride Piollet herself, to give a direct access to her work and the unfolding of her pedagogy and movement vision. With the help of Melanie Lomoff we made some contacts with the French Institute last year, to help rising funds towards the cost of such an undertaking. It has not yet fit a work time frame, which realistically made it possible but it certainly not be left aside.

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