Modern Theatre Dance magazine

MTD LEGACY

CELEBRATING 33 YEARS OF DANCE EDUCATION IN THE NETHERLANDS

EDITORIAL

MTD LEGACY

HJS SALUTES THE GREAT CONTRIBUTION OF MTD to the worldwide dance scene, and thanks all of the dancers and teachers whom we have collaborated with over the years!

hjs.amsterdam International Training Center for Dance Professionals

Summer Intensive 11-30 July 2022

2022 marks the end of two Amsterdam dance departments of the Academy of Theatre and Dance (ATD): Jazz Musical/Urban Contemporary (JMD/UC) and Modern Theatre Dance (MTD).

This publication, an initiative of eight MTD teachers, focuses on the perspectives of the MTD department and its contribution to the national and international dance field. Since the start of MTD in 1989, there have been two major artistic leaders, Martinette Janmaat (Pietje) from 19892000, and Angela Linssen from 2000-2022.

We celebrate and memorialise this department with a final event which showcases just a few of our alumni with workshops, discussions, performances, films as well as the launching of this magazine with reflections, interviews and articles by ten teachers of the department, with a prologue by Laura Cull, director of DAS graduate school. The articles reflect their own research as an answer to the dance and performance world, necessitated by new perspectives on pedagogy and philosophy.

Also included is an interview of the current director of MTD, Angela Linssen, about the development of the school, as well as a reflection

by Bojana Bauer, the director of the new department, Expanded Contemporary Dance (ECD) which began in 2019, with her views about this legacy and how it is now included in the program of ECD. We have a look at the evolution of both the curriculum and philosophy of the department, with a look to the past, and an eye on the future. How the future carries on traditions, while developing and creating new ideas, reflecting the changing landscape of inclusivity and diversity within the dance field.

In the more than 30 years, there have been many interesting life stories and pathways the students have taken both within the dance profession as well as beyond. Connections have been made through the school and have been sustained over time. Some of the students have gone on to be major contributors to the international dance field, as choreographers, performing artists, directors of schools and dance companies.

Others have made their mark on society in other ways, as sociologists, psychologists, somatic practitioners, medical professionals.

We have a sense of fulfilment when we hear of their successful careers. We feel honoured to have contributed to their lives, careers, and the work field in this way. We salute them all, they are the legacy of MTD, and we look now to the future generations and the further development of ECD, with pride, excitement, and hope. Ñ

CONTENTS

04 Angela Linssen / Interview 10 Foreword / Laura Cull 14 Sensing is the Key to Learning

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by Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito Cultivating Open Minded Dancers by Zeynep Gündüz Understanding Perception and Emphaty

by Gideon Poirier Unfolding the Intelligence of the Body

by María Inés Villasmil-Prieto Embrace Risk and Joy!

by Jodi Gilbert

34 Research, Inclusion

46 50 52 56 57

and Equity by John Taylor Lightness and Freedom in Movement by Helga Langen The Journey Into Performativity

by Liat Waysbort Words, Words, Words…

by Grainne Delaney A Call for Curiosity

by Roos Van Berkel Not-Knowing Together

by Bojana Bauer Choreographers Teachers

On the cover: The Flock (Roser López Espinosa, 2016). Dancer: Anamaria Klajnšček.

In the photo above: Human (Blenard Azizaj, 2018). Dancer: Annabel Reid Therer.

Photos by NELLIE DE BOER

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ANGELA LINSSEN

“THE GOAL WAS TO EDUCATE CO-CREATIVE, COLLABORATIVE DANCERS”

Angela Linssen,

director of the Modern Theatre Dance Department (MTD) from 2000-2022.

UNDER THE DIRECTION OF ANGELA LINSSEN (2000-2022), THE CURRICULUM OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MODERN THEATRE DANCE (MTD) DEVELOPED TO REFLECT THE NEEDS OF THE CHANGING DANCE FIELD WITH THE GOAL TO EDUCATE CO-CREATIVE, COLLABORATE DANCERS.

Angela Linssen graduated from the Rotterdam Dance Academy in 1976 and has worked as a professional dancer and choreographer. In 2000, she was appointed as the artistic director of the Modern Theatre Dance (MTD) where she developed the program towards a contemporary dance education. The department aimed to embrace a wider spectrum of styles in relation to the most updated developments in the field.

In 2016, she finished the Master of Education in Arts at the Amsterdamse School voor de Kunsten (AHK) with the project: HBO Dance Teacher as Artist, which further informed her work as the director of the MTD department.

In this conversation, she shares with us her reflections as she looks back at the past twenty-two years and the development

of a program that strives to train cocollaborative creative dancers.

HOW DID YOU INITIATE THE PROCESS OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN THE MTD? When I became artistic director in 2000, replacing Martinette Janmaat (Pietje), the curriculum was organised differently.

Emphasis was on modern formal techniques, (Graham, Limón, Cunningham) classes given in the morning. Secondary subjects, such as Drama and Improvisation, were only scheduled once a week in the afternoon, resulting in the perception that these classes had less relevance. I wanted to integrate the secondary courses Pietje brought into the current program with the technical classes, so I added supportive practices: Laban

PHOTO_SJOERD DERINE

TEXT_JODI GILBERT

movement analysis, contact improvisation, partner work, contemporary repertory and dance dialogues. Over time the modern techniques changed into contemporary dance where the emphasis was given to working with movement principles, instead of a specific fixed aesthetic vocabulary. In all the courses, the idea was to broaden and change the perspective in dance, and bid farewell to older, pre-conceived concepts of size, weight, and gender.

HOW WERE THE CHANGES IN THE WORK FIELD REFLECTED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CURRICULUM? The process of developing a relevant and inclusive curriculum with the team was ongoing. Questions were continually asked: What are we looking for? How is the field changing? We were unravelling

conversations about principles and connecting different dance practices. The team was working on the premise that a dancer should create movement material, formulated and embodied on a given task, or concept. As the orientation of the dance field was becoming more project-based, the education required more intensity in shorter periods. I introduced a scheme of block periods, that focused on the compact creative process, mirroring the professional

world. This practice allowed information to be more deeply embodied and taken further into the performative aspect of the work.

HOW DID THE SELECTION OF DANCERS MIRROR THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORK FIELD? The changing dance field also influenced the selection process of students entering MTD. We looked at a whole being, the

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PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

HOW DID THE INTRODUCTION OF SOMATICS AFFECT THE CURRICULUM?

Isaiah Selleslaghs in a workshop by Saadia Souyah during the 2019 Artist in Residence with MTD, ECD and UC/JMD. total person. The new students auditioning were not ‘just a body’, and we consciously stayed away from evaluating them on their physique. Remarkably this was also changing in the dance field, and is a healthy shift in perspective. We searched for potential students who had more capacity to communicate and collaborate, who were involved, asked questions, and sought clarity.

We looked at the qualities they brought in: coordination, musicality, spatial awareness, connection to others, presence, and creativity.

The goal was to educate co-creative, collaborative dancers who had a desire to work in the creative domain. To this end, we continued to embrace the discussion about the individual. Students were pushed to take more responsibility for their own development and process. They were encouraged to use their reflective tools and have more influence on their evaluations and needs. The reputation of the contemporary school spread. The changes in the curriculum, the focus on the co-creative and collaborative

dancer, the approach to students, the invitations to international teachers and choreographers to work at MTD, attracted more diverse and international applicants.

WHAT WAS THE CRITERIA FOR CHOOSING CHOREOGRAPHERS WHO WORKED WITH THE STUDENTS? The choice of choreographers also evolved.

I engaged professionals who combined teaching with creating and whose work was based more on research and exploration.

With time, we changed our approach to give students more agency in this choice, which engaged them even more. From the first year through to the third, tasks and assignments grew in complexity as students progressed. For example, the 3forMTD, a collaborative project with the School for New Dance Development (SNDO), the choreography department of the the Academy of Theatre and Dance

(ATD), demanded active investment in the creative process. Our education principles stand on giving all students the possibility to develop and learn through different processes, whatever their background or academic ability. Some have a stronger pre-education, some are less experienced and must be given the opportunity to learn. They have to develop a work ethic and be available in every project. For this reason, the choreographers did not hold any auditions. We no longer had a hierarchy between technique classes and the creative, performative subjects. In class, sometimes the focus is technical, sometimes it is on performativity, creativity, or a particular theory. However there is always a constant connection between elements. Where the emphasis is technical, the dancer is also performing, being present, creative, and accessing different information, for instance, movement analysis, music, anatomy, somatics, or history. I believe that this all feeds a performer. This perspective

Pietje introduced the somatic practice of the Alexander Technique, and Helga Langen, one of the team teachers, developed this further in the contemporary classes. Through the Alexander technique, the verbal language in the classes changed. Helga used words to describe and elicit a desired dynamic, or quality. When Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito brought ATM -Awareness Through Movement-, another dimension was added to thinking about movement through somatics. As a team, we intensely explored the teaching vocabulary and connection to one another. It was no longer related to formoriented vocabulary, but initiated in action, the relation to space-time and alignment, and a constant directing of the body in motion in space. The choice of somatics in the education supported the process of giving content, awareness, and physical knowledge.

We witnessed this in the students’ presence and performance. This was also seen in compliments we received when others saw MTD performances: “It is so nice to see your dancers. They stand with ease on their feet” (Bianca van Dillen).

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO PERFORM AGAIN? DID THAT EXPERIENCE CHANGE YOUR OWN APPROACH TO THE STUDENTS? My interest has always been the essence of performativity and researching the activity of being present on stage. How can we stay available for the audience, in the body, in time, in space? After a 17 year break from performing, in 2007 I went back to the stage.

The program ‘Trisoli’ was a solo triple bill created by three different choreographers of widely varying views on performance.

In 2009 I worked with Deborah Hay on the solo At Once. Her work, and working with Jan Ritsema (Trisoli), had a significant impact on my professional research. Their work demands an extreme awareness of one’s presence while performing. This still resonates in my teaching. I guide the students

into practicing visualisation: using the “inner eye” while moving, singing rhythmic patterns, or speaking while dancing. This layered activity supported staying present in the here and now, leaving less room for judgment and creating a more positive space and work ethic.

WHY DID YOU STUDY AGAIN? As part of my development, I felt the need to study further and enrolled at the Masters in Arts Education (AHK) (2014-2016). I wanted to be inspired and experience again how it is to be a student. The Masters gave me a broader view on dancers as individuals with their own unique artistic interests next to dance, like photography, music, writing, or painting. Building on the insights I gained during the Masters, the MTD curriculum developed further allowing students to gain skills in other fields: programming, production, light and sound technique, administration, scheduling, finances and filming. These valuable skills gave them the possibility to expand and create their work on an artistic level and as entrepreneurs.

HOW AND WHY DID YOU DEVELOP THE IDEA OF A KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER BETWEEN TEACHERS? WHAT WERE THE RESULTS OF THIS TRANSFER? The junior/senior mentoring project was initiated to help teachers share insights and practices, developing another layer of knowledge transfer amongst the community.

This research exchange continues between myself and Bojana Bauer, the Artistic Director of the Expanded Contemporary Dance Department (ECD) and serves to consolidate content and strengthen communication throughout the whole department. The knowledge transfer touches all aspects of direct dance education: How offering a coherent and thoughtful curriculum, reflected in a well-built schedule, gives the students time to process, absorb and practice, facilitating movement through challenges and issues they meet in the moment. This also brings benefits to the staff. This consistent contact with students brings teachers and choreographers to a deeper understanding of the individual in front of them, building their teaching experiences, shaping curriculum

and practices together, and sharpening their methods and skills.

The day-to-day experience of the student is central to curriculum development. How much information can a student incorporate, and at what moment should it be offered?

What sort of challenge has a positive impact? What are the more useful criteria they will be assessed on? And what, or where, exactly is the gap between ability and potential that needs to be filled? Besides these pedagogical challenges we discuss the ‘hard’ tasks of Directorship like creating a well-balanced budget with the year planning and schedules, having contingency plans for dealing with problems as they arise, and ensuring an efficient evaluation process in open dialogue with teachers. A good curriculum aims to create a solid learning community that shares responsibility for the students and the education.

For my final Master’s project, HBO Dance Teachers as Artists, the designed sessions gave information on methods of education and learning principles. How can we create a learning community where practices can be shared and reflected upon while still maintaining a focus on the development of an artist? Within the MTD curriculum I also empowered the teachers to experiment within their disciplines, by inviting them to extend their specific expertise in collaboration.

New workshops were created, like the Alexander Technique - individual and group practice, movement research, and voice and movement-. This concept of collaborative workshops gave a deeper perspective to the dancers on the qualities of the co-creative and performative toolbox.

After finishing the Masters, I collaborated with John Taylor in a piece of designresearch on teaching dance in the 21st century. We are now involved in developing a Post-HBO, looking at the whole pillar of education towards the dance profession and how to connect with the work field.

Throughout my years as Director of MTD I have experienced being part of a learning community. Together, we created the opportunity and space to develop and implement new ideas and new disciplines, that would reflect, respond to, and perhaps even reshape the changing professional world. Ñ

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TEN MODERN THEATRE DANCE DEPARTMENT (MTD) TEACHERS REFLECT ON THEIR PERSONAL EVOLUTION AS INNOVATION AND CHANGING PERSPECTIVES WITHIN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEMPORARY DANCE ASKED FOR DANCERS TO BE SEEN MORE THAN JUST A BODY ON STAGE. THEIR TESTIMONIES ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE LEGACY OF MTD. THEY ARE VIVIANNE RODRIGUES DE BRITO, ZEYNEP GÜNDÜZ, GIDEON POIRIER, MARÍA INÉS VILLASMIL-PRIETO, JODI GILBERT, JOHN TAYLOR, HELGA LANGEN, LIAT WAYSBORT, GRAINNE DELANEY AND ROOS VAN BERKEL. THESE JOURNEYS ARE INTRODUCED BY A FORWARD BY LAURA CULL, HEAD OF DAS GRADUATE SCHOOL.

Itamar Serussi studied at Israelian Dance Academy, and danced with Batsheva Dance Company. He was the house choreographer for Danshuis Station Zuid 2010-12. In 2014 he was appointed Choreographer-in-Residence for Scapino Ballet Rotterdam. He has worked with many European companies. Ñ Dancers: Lena Schattenberg, Charlotte Petersen, Thais Brinch-Hvid, Annemieke Bruens, Dominik Feistmantl.

FALSE ALARM. Itamar Serussi / Israel (2014).

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

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FOREWORD

NOT JUST A BODY… TEXT_LAURA CULL Ó MAOILEARCA

It is a great honour to introduce this publication that aims to contribute to understanding and celebrating the multiple legacies of the MTD program at the Academy of Theatre and Dance (ATD) in Amsterdam. Whilst the texts that comprise it document and visibly manifest the collaborative, teamwork through which the program was run, this publication is also an important chance to mark and celebrate the innovations and achievements of Angela Linssen’s twentytwo years of work as MTD’s artistic leader.

Having only joined the ATD in the summer of 2020, I am a latecomer to this ‘party’, this rite of passage. However, even for those of us arriving at this publication with less direct personal knowledge of the program than others, many of its guiding principles, driving concerns and urgent questions speak for themselves in ways that are both moving and inspiring to all involved in arts education.

The determination to change the perspective of the dancer from being seen as “just a body” – and a voiceless body evaluated according to exclusionary norms, at that – towards their perception

as a ‘whole self’ and a creative agent in their own right remains a critical gesture.

The egalitarian and pluralist approach to knowledge and learning – where hierarchies between ways of knowing are actively undone and students’ own differing thinking skills and bodily intelligences are equally valued – continues to be such an important agenda to ensure the inclusivity and richness of both our teaching and research. Deep and ongoing enquiry into the nature of performative presence – not as a simple truth or being here, but as a complex and embodied practice of attentiveness, availability, openness (beyond judgment) – shows how much the MTD has offered to investigation of one of the fundamental questions of dance as a field of practice.

What these texts also document is the commitment to a genuine culture of learning – not only for students but for teachers – with a careful attention to all the vulnerabilities that such a culture entails: a culture that values risk and knows the importance for creativity of cultivating a space in which it is safe to fail (which is the definition of true experiment); a culture that affirms how important it is – for the vitality of pedagogy - that teachers are supported

to be (lifelong) learners alongside their students, to be researchers in and through their practice in studios and classrooms, and to learn from one another as a teaching team not as isolated individuals.

Of course, the question of legacy and archive has long been a matter of concern for performance in general, and perhaps, for dance in particular. For many, performance remains fundamentally anarchic – defined by ephemerality in ways that place it in an inevitably antagonistic relationship to the archive and other practices of documentation and preservation. Peggy Phelan’s famous insistence on the constitutive nature of performance’s disappearance remains a dominant perspective: “Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented.

Performance… becomes itself through disappearance” (Phelan 1993: 146).

And yet, Rebecca Schneider’s (2011) important work asks us to re-consider if this perspective closes us off to the ways in which notions of the archive might be transformed by a new attention to how performance remains, to how dance remains, albeit not in ways that conform to conventional logics of the archivable.

There is no claim or expectation that the myriad, multiple embodied knowledges developed in the context of the many years of MTD are somehow captured in writing there, but nor is it that they are lost or somehow only mysteriously held in the bodies of those who were there, then. Rather, this text points to the ways in which these knowledges and this legacy are creatively re-enacted and performatively produced anew, in the practices of the students and teachers who learnt together in MTD and will continue to learn together in ECD. Ñ

LAURA CULL Ó MAOILEARCA (IRE).

Originally trained as a visual artist before studying philosophy and performance, Prof. Dr. Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca is Lector and Head of DAS Graduate School at Academy of Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts in the Netherlands. She co-edits the Performance Philosophy journal and book series. Her books include: ‘Theatres of Immanence: Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance’ and her current research includes the project ‘Performance Philosophy & Animals: Towards a Radical Equality’ which explores how the arts can contribute to more ethical ways of knowing and relating to nonhuman animals.

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Graduated from MTD in 2005, Roser López Espinosa was invited to create a piece for the second years students. Her work The Flock provided the students with an approach to her aesthetics and physical practice. It is a group journey searching for strong physicality and the delicacy and beauty of birds murmurations. Ñ

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

Dancers: Second year students MTD 2016.

THE FLOCK. Roser López Espinosa / Spain (2016).

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FLOOR WORK / CONTACT IMPROVISATION / FELDENKRAIS

SENSING IS THE KEY TO LEARNING TEXT_VIVIANNE RODRIGUES DE BRITO

ACKNOWLEDGING THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE BODY WHILE FINDING A STATE OF ALERTNESS AND PRESENCE. SENSING, THINKING, AND ACTING BECOME INTEGRAL WHILE STUDENTS ENGAGE IN SELF-DISCOVERY AND AUTHENTICITY. My teaching was originally informed by the unconventional dance training I had in Brazil. We ran through forests, climbed waterfalls and hills, did acrobatics, and trained coordination and reflexes by hitting tennis balls with sticks. At School for New Dance Development (SNDO) I encountered David Zambrano’s Flying Low technique, and Contact Improvisation taught by Nancy Stark Smith. These techniques explored self-awareness, risk-taking, sensory stimulation, and the celebration of the body, principles that permeate my teaching and mirror my own values. Since then, my research has been to find a playful space to learn in a holistic, non-hierarchical way, where values are aligned with artistry, and movement comes from a place of truth.

I started teaching Floor Work at MTD in 2000. Initially my classes were not about “thinking”, but about “doing”. Students

were asked to get in touch with their animal side, engaging in a highly physical experience dominated by their bodies and acknowledging its intelligence when faced with the kinetic challenges of my classes.

I became intrigued by students who could not find that animal quality. How could I help these students find that state of presence and alertness in themselves? This led to a larger inquiry: what is the essence of floor work and why is it important that students learn it, and how?

With support from Angela Linssen, I followed a one-year course on Pedagogy and Didactics in Art. I examined my teaching to understand my content, aims, and didactic strategy. A focus on “what to do” shifted to the question of “how to do it”. I began to work with a technical concept in each class: students focused their attention on one principle and investigated how it influenced function and expression. They used metaphors and images to foster creativity and achieve different qualities, to tap into emotions, dynamics, musicality, and phrasing, and develop a vocabulary to articulate their experiences and give feedback to one another in an analytical way. I used improvisational structures and asked them to create their own exercises and

movement phrases, becoming more engaged and invested in their learning process.

Reading Bartenieff Fundamentals, which focuses on movement integration and connection, I realised that I was already applying many of her theories in my teaching, which validated my work. I used Bartenieff’s terminology to further develop my own Floor Work material. Guiding students from lying to sitting, crawling to standing, walking to running, running to jumping, I was intuitively asking them to revisit early developmental movement patterns and refine inner body connections.

Observing and participating in other teachers’ classes I saw how teaching strategies differed and complimented one another, clarifying my own contribution to the curriculum. Being in the student role, with no hierarchy, learning from one another with a sense of camaraderie, had a positive impact on my relationship with the students. I could more effectively help students make links amongst classes and tap into their learning process.

Students often cognitively understand verbal corrections and cues but are locked into movement patterns that limit their

progress. They lack the internal sense of what the body is experiencing and fall back into habitual movement patterns.

After studying the Feldenkrais Method (FM), I saw how effectively students can “listen” to the experience of their movement and move towards intention.

Next to my Floor Work classes, I began to teach Awareness Through Movement (ATM), a somatic practice derived from the Feldenkrais Method. The lessons are built around a given theme aiming to improve and understand a certain function for instance, folding in the hip joints. By attending to the components involved in that action: functionality, breathing, initiation, coordination, timing, sequencing, and muscular effort, students learn to unlock habitual patterns and develop new alternatives to move more efficiently with greater body awareness.

Through FM my approach to teaching Floor Work became more holistic; sensing, thinking, and acting became an integral part of learning. I stopped using mirrors, played with different spatial patterns, and used deep touch to stimulate proprioception sense. Instead of trying to change a student’s way of moving, I embraced their movement signatures and preferences, inviting them to add

different ways to approach the work and the use of their bodies. Students engaged in self-discovery which allowed for more autonomy and authenticity.

“When you learn how to learn, you will realise that there are no teachers, that there are only people learning and people learning how to facilitate learning” MOISHE FELDENKRAIS To connect with the new Expanded Contemporary Dance (ECD) department’s vision and mission where diversity and inclusivity play an important role, I concluded a training to become a professional life coach. Students’ values and belief systems have a direct influence on how they learn and express themselves.

They are a product of their upbringing, culture, and relationships. In the future I will develop a coaching program and continue to focus on integrating somatics into the education.

The importance of these somatic practices and the coaching carried over into the curriculum of ECD is that they promote the development of the whole person through embodied understanding of physical potential; individuality is embraced, not just one model to conform to. This fits with the idea of diversity and inclusion that is so necessary and prevalent in education and society. Cultural, gender, age and different physical and learning abilities are reflected in our inclusive teaching and learning practices. Ñ

VIVIANNE RODRIGUES DE BRITO (BR/NL) began her dance career in Brazil in 1980. She graduated from the School of New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam and subsequently worked for Sasha Waltz, Iztok Kovac and Angelika Oei. She trained at the Feldenkrais International Training Center in England and has been on the faculty of the MTD since 2002.

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In Hosts created for second years students of MTD, Thiago Granato contaminated the performers with images of human and nonhuman animals. Unknown internal forces emerged from their bodies, hijacking their physical functions. Thiago Granato, Brazilian choreographer, dancer, and teacher based in Berlin, has presented many works internationally and has worked with a diverse array of artists, Jefta van Dinther, among others.

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

Dancers: Sarah Abicht, Pilvi Kuronen, Ella van Duijnhoven, Christian Hujster.

HOSTS. Thiago Granato / Brazil (2017).

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DANCE HISTORY / THEORY

CULTIVATING OPEN MINDED DANCERS TEXT_ZEYNEP GÜNDÜZ

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CURRICULUM WHERE THE DANCING BODY REMAINS CENTRAL AND THEORY AND PRACTICE ARE LINKED, USING CONTENT TO CULTIVATE OPEN-MINDED DANCERS WHO ARE SELF-REFLECTIVE AND CRITICAL. I began teaching at MTD in 2013 as the successor of dance historian Nancy de Wilde. With my background in dance practice, academic studies in the University of Amsterdam, and an expertise in dance and technology, I proposed to reshape the curriculum to what I thought would be relevant for a dance student in parallel to changes in the work field. Agreeing that the dancing body should remain the centre point, director Angela Linssen showed me great trust and readiness to embrace changes when she gave me a carte blanche to develop a new two-year curriculum.

In the curriculum, I kept dance history in the first year but updated its contents paying most attention to the postmodern dance era. Coming from a ballet background, I have always been fascinated by breaking boundaries and

find it important to search for novel modes of practicing, presenting, and watching dance. Year two consisted of a dance and media course, a theory course, and a writing and research course.

Theoretical models were implemented such as semiotics, gender, postmodernism and postdramatic theatre. The writing and research course included research methods, academic sources, and referencing, among others.

In designing the new curriculum, one of the priorities is to encourage students to ‘own’ content by relating course materials to their personal experiences and curiosities. For the latter, I researched a variety of didactic models and modes of evaluation.

For example, role-play essays that encouraged students to go back and forth in history commenting on the dance of a particular era from the perspective of another historical moment. This helped students understand how the perception of dance is always shaped by a (dominant) framework that determines what is acceptable (and what not). I also designed assignments where students were asked to re-enact or re-interpret a dance from a particular era and reflect on it from their personal context.

Another priority was to link theory and practice and this effort to combine them led to several outcomes. In 2015, I initiated the dance and camera workshop in collaboration with the Amsterdam Dance on Screen festival, Cinedans.

The workshop, where students created dance-films in small groups, entailed theory and practice of dance-film and it allowed students to experience dance and the dancing body via the medium of film. Understanding the importance of mediatised dance, Angela also approved a dance and new media workshop for the third year students in collaboration with PIPS: lab and IDlab, an interdisciplinary interactive platform. In these workshops, students researched ways to experience dance through various media such as light painting (Lumasol), 360 film, VR, and mobile phones. I provided the basic theoretical context, and together with PIPS: lab we worked on the build-up and development of the practical exercises.

The Dance Dialogues sessions were initiated for the third year students.

Dance Dialogues were open sessions with invited professionals from the field and aimed to stimulate discussion between students and the invitees. It was also meant as a networking opportunity for

our students. Dance Dialogues emerged from the lunch sessions that I organised in the school library with alumnus Moreno Perna. These sessions were voluntary but the informal, open atmosphere where students felt free to ask questions and get an insight on the personality of the maker as well as their work were very beneficial.

The linking of theory and practice that has been central to much of my work is now seen back in the Gesture Project (GP) of the new Expanded Contemporary Dance department (ECD). The Gesture Project is one of the first creative projects of the first year. In GP, students are stimulated to reflect on personal history and social-cultural context to understand how they move, think, and value in their personal signatures as dancers. Working in small groups, they are asked to single out a certain gesture or theme to explore further through the dancing body. The students also read literature and search for ways to let that be a part of the physical exploration.

Working at MTD I discovered that fostering a particular attitude in students is what I value the most as a teacher: using content to cultivate open-minded dancers/students who are self-reflective

and critical. Bringing my knowledge and experiences to ECD, I am challenged in a positive way. With its emphasis on diversity and inclusivity, ECD encourages one to evaluate teaching practices to expand beyond Western traditions in dance education. How to teach dance theory that does justice to Western and non-Western dance traditions? How to achieve diversity in the examples of the work field from the past and the present?

Which choreographers to select and according to what criteria? Do I exclude certain voices, representations, identities?

ECD has a multiple perspective on dance; it brings a diversity of understandings and perceptions into a non-hierarchical juxtaposition. Developing myself as a teacher in the context of different truths is an inspiring place to be. Ñ

ZEYNEP GÜNDÜZ (TR/NL) studied ballet in Turkey and modern dance in the Netherlands. She received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2012 with a thesis on the role of technology in dance after a BA and MA in Media Studies (University of Amsterdam). She has been affiliated to the ATD since 2013.

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21 Julio César Ungo, graduated in 2001 from Escuela Nacional de arte E.N.A in Havana. Danced with the Danza Contemporánea de Cuba and was appointed resident choreographer in 2010. In Europe he has danced with Ultima Vez, Alain Platel, and Susanne Linke, among others. Ñ Dancers: Students of MTD 2016.

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CRACK IN DAWN. Julio César Ungo / Cuba (2016).

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CONTEMPORARY BALLET

UNDERSTANDING PERCEPTION AND EMPATHY TEXT_GIDEON POIRIER

WHAT MOTIVATES A DANCER TO COMMIT TO THE RIGOURS OF DANCE TRAINING? HOW DO I, AS A TEACHER, STIMULATE STUDENTS DESPITE DIFFERENCES IN BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE, WITHOUT LOSING SIGHT OF THE IMPORTANCE OF PERCEPTION AND EMPATHY. As dancers and performers, the different transitions in our lives can be fragile, turbulent, and not without risk. Each person’s transition and outcomes are different and can have a lasting impact on how they view their performing career and their validity in the here and now. My transition from performer to teacher and researcher was uncertain and somewhat unexpected. When I was finished performing I was uncertain as to what my future held, but what I was certain of was that I needed a safe space to experiment, practice, and develop the art of transmission/communication. Thankfully this uncertainty was short-lived. I found a home that gave me the confidence to fully embrace and take form in this new chapter of my life at the Modern Theatre Dance (MTD) department in Amsterdam at the Academy of Theatre and Dance

(ATD) under the direction of Angela Linssen.

During my time at MTD teaching contemporary ballet, I realised my interest lay in people. Specifically, it lay in what motivated dancers to commit to the rigours of dance training, creation, and self-reflection, and what my role was as a teacher and champion of these young dancers. My observation of the students: questioning, researching, strategising and practice started here. I wanted the dancers to move, articulate, and most importantly, feel comfortable with ownership of their movement production and the space they inhabited regardless of style, background, and experience. In my classes I celebrated their differences and encouraged them to do the same. But how could I best communicate to effectively transmit information and connect to these dancers so they could develop in the most holistic sense?

MTD encouraged curiosity and sharing.

After a short time on the faculty, I developed a deep desire and need to strengthen the fundament on which I was teaching. My progress with the dancers, although both satisfying and humbling, felt somehow insufficient. It was a gift

to share in their learning and to feel as though I was making a difference in their lives, but there was a next step necessary in my personal development in order to systematically tackle the dancers’ differences and to understand the impact my approach may or may not have had on them as individuals.

I wanted to ask myself more pertinent questions and direct my teaching in a more focused and deliberate manner.

With Angela’s support, I entered a master’s trajectory, which reinforced my teaching and changed my life journey.

I started to develop as a researcher; as someone who asked why.

My studies in Dance Science at the University of Bern in Switzerland and the University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom helped me define my research focus as motivation and perfectionism. Because my interests lay in people and communication it was both logical and organic that my focus would be turned to the psychological aspects of the dancer and what influence that has on their engagement and success in the art form. With the students of MTD I was able to combine my intuitive nature and research strategies. I was acquiring

knowledge in my studies and put it directly into practice in the studio with the dancers, MTD faculty members, and also the professional dance world.

Through my study I became cognisant of the many psychological layers each person possesses and the importance of understanding perception and empathy.

Realising that people’s pasts help form their present, while also working with the idea that a person’s past doesn’t always define their future, I was confronted with and observed the power and relevance that outside influences can have on an individual and the perception of their experiences. I became aware of the influence a teacher may have; we can champion or we can thwart, all with just a simple word choice or tone of voice.

This realisation was significant and fascinating and lead me into my master’s thesis which investigated perfectionism in teachers and the possible effect that could have on their teaching methods and in turn their students.

Although research was not my initial motivation to become a teacher, my time at MTD set me on a path to discover where my interest lay and why I was so passionate about teaching and working

with people. MTD helped me explore with a motivated student body and supportive and curious team. Just as I have always wanted to be a champion for all dancers and artists, MTD offered the same support and encouragement to me and I hope that I can continue that powerful MTD legacy moving forward with ECD.

GIDEON POIRIER(USA/NL) graduated from the National Ballet School of Canada. Upon graduating he worked as a contemporary performer for many dance companies in both the USA and Europe. He holds a MAS and MSc in Dance Science and has been affiliated with AHK/ATD since 2012.

The completion of my degrees coincided with the beginning of the new dance department Expanded Contemporary Dance (ECD). The new education brought with it a new mission and vision which asked the faculty to stretch themselves in ways that they may not have been asked to or practiced in the past. ECD’s mission of equality in all dance forms and styles and the populations that this represents is a true test of the skills that I have acquired and how I, with great sensitivity, use them to support and encourage a new generation of dancers with new motivations and passion. Ñ

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Y.E.S., based on Cecilia Moiso’s earlier work L.O.V.E. was adapted in 2014 for students of MTD. It is a movement and voice performance dealing with the euphoric need to feel happiness. Moisio danced with Krisztina de Châtel, and Ann Van den Broek. In 2014, she won the prize for Upcoming Choreographer at the Maastricht Dansdagen. Ñ Dancers: Marysia Wiercinska (at center).

Y.E.S. Cecilia Moisio / Finland (2014).

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

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IMPROVISATION / INSTANT COMPOSITION

UNFOLDING THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE BODY TEXT_MARÍA INÉS VILLASMIL-PRIETO

“NOT KNOWING” WHILE DANCING AND WITHOUT A PARTICULAR EXPECTATION ABOUT WHAT IS BEING PRODUCED, ENHANCES THE LEVEL OF ATTENTIVENESS AND AWARENESS. THIS IS A PRACTICE ABOUT PRESENCE AND FOCUS, PERFORMATIVITY AND ASSERTIVENESS. I came to Holland 25 years ago from Venezuela, as a professional dancer, to enroll at SNDO (School for New Dance Development) and to enlarge my choreographic skills. I was studying social sciences and at the same time training to become a dancer, having parallel careers in dance and sociology in my native country.

One distinctive aspect of my background and understanding of dance is the integration of theory and practice. Social theory inspires and informs my views on performance and choreography. While training as a dancer, I was embedded in the practice, but as dancers we didn’t often reflect on what we were doing, why, how or for whom. In my work as a social scientist, engaged in research, I discovered a bridge to dance. Then and

now, these connections enrich my way of understanding both social science and dance. Making these links happened organically, but not all at once at first, they seemed like entirely different enterprises. In the academic environment I was used to question the why and how, whereas in my dance practice, these questions were less prevalent.

Presently this differentiation between the two ideas is no longer delineated.

In 1999, while following an improvisation course at SNDO by Katie Duck, and a composition class by Scott deLahunta, I found that I was able to forge the connections I had been missing and began to make more conscious choices about how my personal dance practice consistently fed the production of knowledge led by the body, which is continually probing and questioning.

Another important reference for my approach is the American choreographer Deborah Hay, with her ideas about the body as a vehicle for expanding our perception. I had the wonderful opportunity to assist Hay while she was an Artist-in-Residence for SNDO in 2011 and making Breaking the Chord. To this day, this experience has

transformed my own way of looking at dance practice and choreography, as well as my understanding of my own artistic research through teaching.

TEACHING AS A PRACTICE OF ARTISTIC RESEARCH The methodology of teaching became an ongoing practice of artistic research about how to share my own questions with my students. I was invited in 2001 to teach contemporary technique at the SNDO, and some years later was invited to teach improvisation at MTD. At that time there was a program at the ATD for the transfer of knowledge, so that knowledge from senior teachers was not lost when they retired. I was invited to follow Katie Duck and she coached my classes on improvisation. This was a starting point in developing my own voice. In the beginning the course was designed to give students elements to enhance their performativity, using improvisation as a main tool to enlarge their experience and perception, but also the recognition of the self inside a collective of people.

Later, the course was organised towards composition. After some years I started to make it more specific. In this way, my improvisation course became a vehicle to explore the intelligence of the body with the students.

Unfolding this intelligence inherent in the body was already a goal of the course, but it took some time to arrive to the shape that it has today; to develop a canon and discourse to refine this process. The sessions are organised around the use of choreographic scores and verbal indications and is now more geared towards Real Time Choreography rather than learning set choreography.

My own research around embodiment also unfolds through my engagement with the Embodied Knowledge Research Group at DAS Research directed by Marijn de Langen. Here, I am delving into my fascination with the use of scores for training dancers with diverse dance backgrounds. In this research, I suggest that scores are an inclusive method that allows the students to practice attentiveness, performativity and perception.

The relationship between the dance and the dance score can be very tight,

or lightly “held”. That “hold” can be tightened in times of need; it can be consciously referred to, to initiate, adjust or affect the dancing. At times the “hold” is so loose that there is a perception that there is little or no relationship between the score and the dancing.

potentiality. This is still the main subject of my artistic investigation and a core part of my practical research as a faculty member of ECD. Ñ

The use of dance scores enables the possibility of dancing while “not knowing”. We use scores without having any particular expectation of what is being produced. Because we are all trying to figure out the score and solve the questions that may arise from it, the level of attentiveness and awareness is enhanced. This is a practice about presence and focus, about performativity and assertiveness.

Giving this course in the ECD program and the request to continue my research within the vision of a new education is a challenge, but the question remains the same: how to stimulate students to enlarge their physical experience and improvisational skills while giving them a score and the context to develop their own artistic choices and voice?

Unfolding the knowledge that is already in their bodies is a process of becoming aware of the body’s own logic and rich

MARIA INES VILLASMIL-PRIETO (VEN/NL) is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and writer, with a parallel career as a sociologist. She received a BA in dance from SNDO in 2000, an MA in Choreography from the AHK in 2004, and an MBA in Cultural Management from the University of Salamanca in 2012. She has been teaching at the MTD since 2003.

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28 IN-TENSION represents a vibrant landscape of lovely, but sometimes distorted humans. Milan Tomášik graduated from P.A.R.T.S in Brussels in 2004. He is a co-founder of the dance collective Les SlovaKs. Ñ

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

Dancers: Emmi Hakala, Matija Franješ, Anamaria Klajnšček, Andrea Pisano, Yulia Kalinchenko, Jaroslaw Kruczek.

IN-TENSION. Milan Tomášik / Slovakia (2017).

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PHYSICAL THEATRE / VOICE

EMBRACE RISK AND JOY! TEXT_JODI GILBERT

HOW DOES ONE ENTER AND EXIT THE PLAYING SPACE? A BODY-BASED EXPLORATION OF VOICE AND MOVEMENT ENCOURAGING THE ELEMENT OF RISK, AND THE KNOWLEDGE THAT EVEN IN FAILURE THERE IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN. I began teaching at MTD in 1990 under Martinette Janmaat (Pietje) at the invitation of Jenn Ben Yakov who was teaching “drama” early on. I taught first year, Jenn second and third. Pietje thought knowledge of theatre technique and voice was important.

The work was basic: how does one enter and exit the space? How does one hold attention and connect to the other dancers? The element of “play”, the “child-like” ability to embrace the moment full of risk and joy, was important. I was interested in the internal justification for movement from a neutral point a moment is filled, believable, and watchable. This is an important element in both dance and theatre not often addressed in dance technique classes.

When Jenn left the program, I continued to teach the first and second year, and Grainne Delaney was brought in to teach the third year. The first year focused on ensemble work and development of the individual within a group. This was body-based - awareness, presence, and connection. The second year focused on onstage relationships, conflict/agreement, high/low status, and use of subtext (what is said without being said). Voice, text, inflection, sound, and movement were explored. In the third year Grainne continued this work, adding monologue and text interpretation.

It was clear to me that the training of a dancer should also involve an awareness of the difference between dancers’ and actors’ timing. Dancers’ timing includes a sense of flow, shape, line, weight shift, musicality. An actor’s timing can also include these things, but is often differentiated by the idea of the “beat” - the thought process that motivates and justifies a movement or a shift in attitude.

It seemed interesting for dancers to be exposed to this concept; it gives depth and nuance to their work.

Voice training is also important in my work. Presently dancers are called upon

to use the voice. It is another skill and adds to their versatility. On the most basic level, being together in a group and sharing sound, rhythm, melody and harmony builds a sense of community.

Students learn that everyone has an expressive, dynamic voice - even beyond singing. The body and breath take over the mind, and sound becomes a primal, elemental communicative gesture.

FAILURE AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN

To develop my ideas I immersed myself in physical theatre: I attended various workshops, traveled to Bali to study mask theatre, and visited many performances. Back in the student role, I experienced the work from inside, with a beginner’s mind. From this experience, I was able to develop a strategy to challenge and support students as they faced material that was unfamiliar to them. They were encouraged to take risks, even to fail. In failure, there is opportunity to learn. The department was not turning out cookie-cutter dancers but individuals with personal stories and the tools to create a fantastic

and richly nuanced theatrical world.

As a basis of vocal technique I also started a study in Somatic Voice Work ™ under the auspices of Jeannette Lovetri.

This method works in harmony with the body in a deliberate and specific manner.

It is grounded in “body-centred” time where the changes are not based on manipulation of the sound, or the physical vocal mechanism, but the throat and body change gently and comfortably in an organic way. This seemed the perfect manner to work with dancers, who were just learning to use their voices, and were often fearful of what they felt they did not initially master.

The build-up that Grainne and I developed, from ensemble and presence work to on-stage relationships and subtext, and finally to monologue and solo work was a conscious choice and evolution. It gave dancers the tools to embody and create multi-dimensional performances. In the class they were asked to share constructive criticism and self-reflection. Grainne then began her work with choreographer and teacher, Liat Waysbort, bringing the voice/text and movement very much in line.

THE VOICE IS AN EXPRESSIVE TOOL With ECD, I now exclusively deal with vocal work. I teach “choir” and voice exploration, emphasising a diverse repertoire of vocal traditions from throughout the world. Students are given the opportunity to share their own musical cultures. This develops a sense of pride and emphasises diversity and singularity. Primarily through improvisation, vocal exploration fosters awareness of the connection between voice/text and movement. Using body, breath, emotion, thought, rhythm, texture and gesture, we go beyond singing into pure sound. The voice becomes an expressive tool. When individual vocal technique classes are introduced there is already an ease and knowledge of all the possibilities.

ECD is a department built upon the idea that each student comes with a unique background. It is not geared to a specific training that has been codified and does not seek to perpetuate an old Western tradition. It does not necessarily devalue these traditions, and it may

even embrace them, but it also proposes that there are many ways to train an excellent performer to communicate in the changing landscape of today’s multi-cultural society. Each individual is given the opportunity to become the best dancer they can be, and is exposed to diverse lines of creative thought. I am happy to add to this rich atmosphere by introducing the dancers to the sounds of their voices. A dancer has a voice, literally, and philosophically, as well as a body. Ñ

JODI GILBERT (US/NL) trained as a dancer, is a singer, and teacher of performance skills. In USA she performed with Meredith Monk, and others. She has been working on the international improvisational music scene for more than 30 years. She has an ongoing private voice practice. www.jodigilbert.nl.

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32 Inspired by works of Banksy, the students were asked to embody the human spirit of protest and to imagine the stage as a public city square where it is possible to scream out a critique towards society. Giulio D’Anna graduated from SNDO in 2009. He works as a teacher, choreographer and healing artist. Ñ

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

Dancers: First years students MTD 2014.

LET’S. Giulio D’Anna / Italy (2014).

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DANCE TECHNIQUE

RESEARCH, INCLUSION AND EQUITY TEXT_JOHN TAYLOR

HOW TO CREATE A STRUCTURE OF A LEARNING SPACE WHERE RESEARCH, INCLUSION AND EQUITY STAND CENTRAL AND COLLECTIVITY AND INSTANT COMPOSITION CREATE COMMUNITY AND DEVELOP AGENCY IN LEARNING. The work field is constantly changing in response to the visions of the artists who make up the community of practice and the changing context of the world that inspires us to make art and to dance. At MTD we saw that the role of the dancer/ performer was changing. Performers have been given agency and a more central role in creation following their empowerment during the Judson Church movement in New York in the 1970’s and developed through various lines of collectivity, democratic working methods, and instant composition. From these developments in the work field emerged a vision of the performer as co-creative artist, which became central to the curriculum development of MTD during the period of Angela Linssen’s leadership.

As a teaching member of the community at MTD I was encouraged to develop

and adapt my methods of teaching. I was inspired by how collectivity, democracy and instant composition could create community and develop empowerment and agency in learning. I wanted to stimulate the role of co-creator in the identities of the young performers developing at MTD.

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORIES

I dove into the Master of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and looked for methods and theories which would support the development of my teaching practice. The performance arts are social practices at heart, and I found three social learning theories which I could use as foundations for the development of my practice: Communities of Practice (Étienne Wenger), Self-efficacy (Albert Bandura), and the Zone of Proximal Development (Lev Vygotsky).

I needed a form or structure for that practice. I found one in A/r/tography. In the world of academic research, practicebased research and self-study are gaining acceptance and moving to a more central

place in the research field, empowering performing artists as creators of knowledge as well as art.

“A/r/tography references the multiple roles of Artist, Researcher and Teacher, as the frame of reference through which art practice is explored as a site for inquiry.

A useful way to consider these roles as research practices may be to view the Artist as someone who en-acts and embodies creative and critical inquiry; the Researcher acts in relation to the culture of the research community; and the Teacher re-acts in ways that involve others in artistic inquiry and educational outcomes”.(Graeme Sullivan (2006).

Research Acts in Art Practice. Studies in Art Education, 48(1), 19-35.)

In order to awaken the identity of each student as artist, researcher, and teacher/ learner I needed to create a learning space where research, inclusion, and equity stand central.

The first thing I wanted to do was to level the playing field, to encourage the agency of the participants in their own development, empower their points of view and self-study, and to encourage the idea of research where my material was

just one expression of the source principles of the classes. I wanted to encourage self-discovery and the development of personal embodied knowledge, exchange among peers, and the development of a shared embodied knowledge that would emerge from the process through negotiation and adaptation.

The source principles of the classes include spirals and curved pathways in the body and through the space, the anatomical transmission of movement through the body in response to gravity, breath, the mobilisation of the spine and successional initiation. Further, we examine how these principles change in response to three experiential focuses: an internal anatomical focus, a social focus emphasising the space between people (sharing, giving, and receiving), and an external focus that affects and is affected by the world around us.

THREE PHASES FOR DEVELOPMENT The collaboration with the students can be divided into three parts. During the first phase of the working process

the source principles of the work are introduced using my movement vocabulary. Students are encouraged to learn my material, improvise with the principles, and to explore adaption according to their anatomical uniqueness.

They begin to develop personal research questions. This is a learning and research phase.

principles. Each year group produces something unique, but that emerges from the same source principles. This mirrors the co-creative artistic process where the unique qualities of the dancers shape the outcome. At the ECD, the diversity is great and this practice will help to foster and support an atmosphere of research, inclusion and equity. Ñ

During the second phase the students are encouraged to set personal goals and take a partner as critical friend. They allow their personal goals to guide their focus upon the material of the class, observing and giving feedback to one another. This is a research and artistic choice phase.

During the final phase of the process the partners combine their research questions and artistic choices to create an exercise or practice which they share with the other students. Observing the others, they refine and develop their personal material in response to the group. This is an artistic sharing and teaching/learning phase.

JOHN TAYLOR(USA/NL), dancer, teacher and choreographer. Received a BA in Theater Studies from the College of William and Mary. As a

In the end we all contribute to the creation of a class that exemplifies the shared embodied knowledge of the whole group in response to the source

teacher, he has worked for Rosas, DV8, Laban Center, Codarts, and ArtEZ, and has been on the faculty of the MTD since 1993. He received the Silver Dance Prize from the VSCD in 1992.

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In this piece, Dunja Jocic explored the idea of the body as a landscape. She graduated in 2002 from Codarts in Rotterdam and has worked with Club Guy & Roni (NL) and Ballet du Nord (FR), Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten (ICK Amsterdam, NL) and Saskia Bodekke and Peter Greenaway. Ñ

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Dancers: Hanna van den Berg, Océane Borcy, Clotilde Cappelletti, Sandy Ceesay, Antoine Coppi, Iúri da Silva Costa, Gergő Farkas, Karlijn Roest, Isaiah Sellslaghs, Amber Smits, Amber Veltman, Daniel Vliek, Zora Westbroek, Winter Wieringa.

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

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HOLLOW BACK. Dunja Jocic / Serbian-Dutch (2017).

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CUNNINGHAM / ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE

LIGHTNESS AND FREEDOM IN MOVEMENT TEXT_JODI GILBERT

CUNNINGHAM TECHNIQUE LAYS DOWN A STRONG FOUNDATION WHERE THE STUDENTS LEARN TO “STAND ON THEIR FEET”. ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE EMPHASISES THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BODY-MIND RELATION IN TRAINING A SENSATE ARTIST FULLY PRESENT IN THE BODY, IN SPACE, AND TIME. I came from an amateur dance school and completed a degree as a dance teacher/performer in 1969. Most of my training at that time was in ballet, but while working at the opera in Israel I came into contact with modern dance.

Travelling to New York on a scholarship I studied Cunningham technique and was attracted to its versatility and lightness. Upon returning to Holland I taught Cunningham at various academies and companies. I met Angela Linssen at the Dansproduktie studio, and she and I worked together at the collectives Vals Bloed and Het Concern.

I started teaching at MTD in 1989 under Martinette Janmaat (Pietje) and continued when Angela Linssen became director in 2000.

I taught Cunningham, composition, made choreography, acted as a mentor and coach, and was a member of the core team. I was one of the main technique teachers for the first year, using the Cunningham technique to lay down a strong foundation where the students learned to “stand on their feet” and focus on dynamics, presence, space, breath, alignment, and gaze.

There was room for creativity, and for me, very importantly, a large dose of humour.

In my mid-forties, I stopped performing.

I wanted a change in how I was working. With financial support from the school and the government, I started a three year study to become an Alexander Technique teacher which I completed in 1998. Pietje, herself, was also visiting an Alexander practitioner, and saw its value for the students.

Alexander Technique became integral to the curriculum, and Angela has continued to support and value this practice.

Alexander Technique brought a lot of change in my own teaching. I learned more about the function of the body as it relates to structure and technique.

How I spoke about movement and function became clearer. I had more tools at my disposal to help students bridge and connect the information from one subject to another. Since I was teaching a variety of subjects, from Cunningham to Floor Barre, I could bring this awareness to each subject.

There was a crossover of information.

Through Alexander Technique there was also a marked change in the students’ physical awareness, a way of being fully present with space and time.

Their “everyday” physicality was more connected to their dance. Awareness as a way of living in any context, not only in the studio; a person as a holistic entity. Alexander Technique really underlines this for the students.

THE VALUE OF SHARING PRACTICES

A good department uses the skills and strengths of the teachers to compliment one another, to stimulate the creativity of both the students and teachers.

There is space in the school for different perceptions and interpretations of

dance: is it theatrical? Is it creative?

How does one move through space?

How is time used, music, dynamics, rhythm, quality, even humour? These are all very important elements in my classes, and not everyone addresses them equally. Each teacher has their strengths, but the sharing of practices and ideas between teachers creates a whole. Angela instituted a mentoring program where practices were shared, and I taught Alexander Technique workshops to other teachers in which there was discussion about the vocabulary we use to describe movement. This created a continuity between classes and teachers which was very useful. In a time where inclusivity and diversity are becoming such important issues, open communication with an awareness of what, how, and when ideas and knowledge are offered is important. Students are exposed to a range of choices and aesthetics. This can be cultural, social, and political. “There are many roads leading to Rome”, with the final result of a thinking and feeling artist. This, to me, is a holistic approach.

Alexander Technique as well as other somatic practices are now being carried

over and developed in the program of ECD. In discussing the program of ECD, Bojana Bauer had conversations and took lessons with Hildegard De Baets in order to get a hands-on experience. She spoke to the students to get their perspective. She understood and valued the principles of functional awareness in movement and presence where the individual is honoured and embraced; the importance of the body-mind relation in training a sensate artist. This transferal of the research I have done with the students is a testimony to the forward thinking of the new department and an important development in the present day training of a dancer/artist. Ñ

HELGA LANGEN (NL) was an important pillar of the MTD providing the foundation from which students began to build their craft. In 1998 she became a certified Alexander Teacher, and since then uses this knowledge to support the students’ development as dancers and artists. Alexander Technique is presently also included in the ECD program.

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40 In PASSIBLE, the choreograper explored with the dancers ways to elicit material through the filters of emotional tension. Liat Waysbort danced and was rehearsal director for Ohad Naharin’s Batsheva Dance Company. She received a Masters in choreography from Codarts and has choreographed for numerous international companies. In 2015, she founded Bitter Sweet Dance Foundation to develop her artistic practice.

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

Dancers: Third Year students of MTD, 2018.

PASSIBLE. Liat Waysbort / Israel (2018).

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CONTEMPORARY / MOVEMENT RESEARCH / VOICE & MOVEMENT

THE JOURNEY INTO PERFORMATIVITY

An example of the vocabulary used during (“the nightmare” ) warm-up session.

TEXT_LIAT WAYSBORT

TRANSFORMATION HAPPENS IN THE SENSORIAL BODY. PRACTICING VIRTUOSITY WITH THIS AWARENESS FACILITATES A RANGE OF EXPERIENCE AND DEVELOPS THE PERFORMER’S FULL POTENTIAL AND A CURIOUSITY IN WHAT ONE MOMENT BRINGS IN REAL- TIME PROCESSES. As a dancer in Batsheva Dance Company (1992-2000) I found a deep understanding of Ohad Naharin’s artistic and intellectual motivation from the way he collaborated with dancers. The search for versatility and pleasure was guided by the clarity of his physical practice and vision. Dancers had to co-create, manipulate, expand, and find their own story within the totality of the work.

While this created the roots of my belief in the total dancer, later work with other choreographers demanded other strategies, confirming my desire for excellence not by repetition of movement, but by sensorial and physical awareness of the process. Practicing virtuosity with sensory qualities facilitates a range of experiences and develops the performer’s full potential.

THE THREEDIMENSIONAL PERFORMER: A TOTAL PERFORMER Part of my research with the students focuses on the possibilities of using technical skills and performative qualities in improvisation; it concerns curiosity about structure happening in real-time as opposed to learning and repeating existing structures. What is the potential one moment brings? What emerges the moment after?

The journey into performativity starts with the tension between practice and performance.The student will process and monitor flow, action, and effort while inviting the unknown to emerge.

This process demands investment. A three-dimensional performer is a whole being with awareness of body-spacetime, while being involved with the physical-mental-emotional landscape of one’s self.

The ”nightmare” is introduced as a key practice for the students. This is an

improvisation-based practice, focusing on sensory awareness and multi-tasking activity. It is the essential conversation we strive to have with our bodies, about knowing them in the current moment; the desired synergy between thought and action. We inform and monitor ourselves at the same time.

It is rigorous. It is intuitive. What is the internal narrative? What am I telling myself. It is associative: I see, I react, I come up with instruction on what I see in the room, or what I don’t see.

This practice is not attached to aesthetic choices but gives the students access to resources, supported by a rich technical toolbox. The aim is to arrive at exquisite performativity.

While students are often busy trying to arrive at a perfect execution, I remind them it is about the vitality of the process. What is the movement in the body, what is the impulse, from where does it come, how efficient is it, what quality does it have, and what is the intensity? As performers, we tend to look for solutions; we think about and cognitively analyse things, and sometimes it is the right way to act, but sometimes it blocks us. We must open

the sensory system then. We need to let it land in the body. The transformation happens in the sensorial body.

I enjoy working in dichotomy; wanting to know, and at that point of knowing (control), letting it go, to transform into the new. The polarity in the content, form, and structure can lead to an open environment where we are free to explore

WORKING WITH THE UNKNOWN: EXPLORATION AND COLLABORATION Angela Linssen, the artistic director of the Modern Theatre Dance department (MTD), proposed collaborations with professionals from other disciplines, initiating a dynamic space, a playground of expertise, which opened up a field of possibilities.

These collaborations, going into the unknown with colleagues and students enables greater discoveries, stimulating the urge to re-invent teaching vocabulary.

Counting on learned information helps us to touch the unknown. We layer and

transform information. This approach is also a principle in the movement research course developed with MTD teacher Roos van Berkel. Using principles of Laban Movement Analysis as a functional tool to help organise one’s body and articulate the relationship between things, we start the journey towards the unknown territory and can commit to a sense of abundance. The development of new practice domains and collaborations include: composition for performers, artistic coaching feedback, self-reflection,the sensorial body dance technique, movement research.

The research involved in these collaborations sharpened the thought about the tutor-student relationship.

I realised the impact creativity has on the development of dance students, and how a creative environment empowers their individual process. The collaborations helped me to unpack the relationship between the creative student, the creative teacher and the creative dancer.

MTD third year students, and Grainne Delaney, MTD Drama teacher. We wove text and movement together, discovering the voice of movement, the movement of voice. This became an integral part of the MTD curriculum.

My work will carry over to the Expanded Contemporary Dance department (ECD) led by Bojana Bauer.

My intuitive and rigorous methodology, where the individual is central and working from an internal process, is easily reflected in the diverse and everchanging dance discipline as a reflection of our society. Ñ

LIAT WAYSBORT (IL/NL) is a performer, choreographer, a movement coach. She worked at Batsheva, No apology, and DV8. Liat came to the Netherlands to complete a Master of Choreography. In 2015 she founded her company Bitter Sweet Dance. Liat is exploring

Other examples of collaborations are the creations Better Through the Heart (2007) and Before/Beyond (2015/16), created with

her own way of communicating dance to professionals and amateurs through teaching. www.bittersweetdance.com.

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44 Jos Baker (UK) was commissioned to make the 2015 graduation piece. He is a choreographer, dancer, and teacher who studied at Laban Center London, and P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. He worked with Peeping Tom and DV8 Physical Theater, and has also made music videos and short films.

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

Dancer: Ann Kathrin Granhus.

WHAT DO YOU DO? Jos Baker / UK (2015).

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46

DRAMA / VOICE AND MOVEMENT

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS TEXT_GRAINNE DELANEY

HOW TO STIMULATE THE DISCOVERY OF THE DANCER’S VOICE THROUGH TEXT, COMBINING MOVEMENT AND SOUND, EXPLORING IMAGES, OBJECTS, AND PERSONAL MEMORIES, AND BUILDING A TOOLBOX THAT OPENS THE STUDENTS’ DYNAMIC AND AUTHENTIC SELF? To deliver an authentic and confident performance, an actor must work to fill the emotional landscape in the spaces between words- what is not being said.

How can we teach this to dancers? And how can it become an integrated part of their curriculum?

This was my starting point back in 2005 when I took over the Drama class for third year students at the department of Modern Theatre Dance (MTD). I was a teacher of IB Theatre Arts for International Baccalaureate (IB) at the time and initially believed that writing their own texts through building a character was the fastest learning process for them. The first years were spent mopping the tears of dancers, confronted with the real challenges of using their voice. The dancer at that

time did not have to speak, and some had even been told not to!

-I’m afraid, said one student.

-Of what?, I asked.

-Words, she whispered.

-But they’re your words, I replied.

-I know!! she sobbed.

I shifted content and chose a selection of poetry from one established author.

This gave many advantages: structure, visual imagery dancers could connect to, stylistic unity in the text, freedom to explore the author’s political and cultural background and solid themes for the ensemble to improvise from.

My course begins with commitment to individual learning goals. I meet students where they are and prepare personal feedback according to individual progress. Written homework assignments include journaling emotional responses to the exercises, as well as recording visual and oral reflections.

We build towards a final presentation of their poetic monologue in character, as well as Ensemble work. At the end of the course, we circle back to

evaluate their goals and celebrate their achievements. I continue this format with ECD students, as a method of engaging ownership and for measuring progress.

A DANCER’S VOCABULARY Initially I had to find a way to build a vocabulary that opened and articulated the dancer’s inner emotional world.

It was not something they usually expressed in words. My research began by showing sound as a tangible force, or vibration. Without imposing meaning, we deconstructed the word so dancers could connect and associate physically.

Where does the shape of each vowel, or consonant begin as an impulse internally?

We developed further by exploring images, objects and personal memories, combining movement and sound to create ‘energetic pathways’ through the body. All this material becomes the playground for generating choices, researching and making decisions to ‘colour’ speech with a variety of qualities and textures.

Students were encouraged not only to articulate their rationale for individual choices, but to also speak up in class and contribute to shaping the final ensemble presentation. As I progressed with this teaching content and method, I saw a clear development over the years in the ability and confidence of former MTD and current Expanded Contemporary Dance (ECD) students. They believe they have a clear part to play in the creation of material, bringing more of themselves into the process. Less afraid, not only of words themselves, but also in offering their personal thoughts to debate around a subject, or approach.

INTEGRATED APPROACH My Masters Degree in Psychology and Drama, a qualified Theatre Arts teacher for IB and regular performances on stage, supported much of this journey when devising, preparing and presenting work.

Becoming a certified coach helped with the pedagogical management of student’s personal challenges.

Working within dance also stimulated my own research into the physical actor. I

continued my studies with masterclasses alongside voice coach Kristin Linklater and Grotowski movement specialist Jorge Parente, returning this into my teaching to enrich the associative practice.

It allows them to integrate their learning and experiment with their own creative body and voice. Because we know the dancers, diversity is actively cultivated in a safe space, through coaching in the real-time generative process.

Since beginning this course in 2005, my goal with dancers continues to be building a toolbox that unlocks and nourishes their unique voice so they no longer ‘read words’ but embody text.

As the demand for dancers to engage their voice as a creative element increased, the MTD curriculum evolved to enable it. The ECD curriculum continues this experimental arena with Drama as an integrated subject.

It provides not only the techniques of speech and song, but the opportunity for students to generate text, compose vocal soundscapes, improvise stories, and to share dance from their whole dynamic self, with authenticity and confidence. Ñ

The next step is for students to use text as a resource in itself; to speak freely, using their voices as another limb in the space. Stretching, squeezing, rolling, rotating, extending the voice in patterns the same way they would work to shape their bodies. In 2010 Angela Linssen invited me to collaborative research in voice and movement with third year students and choreographer Liat Waysbort.

GRAINNE DELANEY (IRE) is a performer,

The ‘The Physicality of Voice: The Voice of Physicality’ intensive workshop offers a deeper applied practice.

Using contemporary themes from the performative field and process work, students are encouraged to deal with multiple layers of emerging information.

teacher, and coach. She has a Diploma in Physiotherapy, a Masters Degree in Psychology & Theatre and a Certification in Coaching.

She has been teaching Theatre and Drama in Holland since 2001 and specializing with dancers at MTD since 2004. She performs regularly herself. www.inresonance.nl

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Broken Water was based on a functional approach to dance, resulting in beautiful, abstract and humorous situations. Choreographer Heidi Vierthaler worked with The Forsythe Company, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Next to her work at ATD she teaches her own Stream Flow technique, internationally.

PHOTO_NELLIE DE BOER

Dancers: Second year students MTD 2015.

BROKEN WATER. Heidi Vierthaler / USA (2015).

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MOVEMENT ANALYSIS & RESEARCH

A CALL FOR CURIOSITY TEXT_ROOS VAN BERKEL

ARE THERE UNDERLYING ‘FIXED’ NOTIONS OF A DANCING BODY? REVEALING UNDISCOVERED MOVEMENT POSSIBILITIES WHILE PERCEIVING THE MOVING BODY AS A DYNAMIC ENTITY IN CONSTANT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ENVIRONMENT. In designing the MTD curriculum, Angela Linssen looked for different somatic approaches: engaging with underlying movement processes that resulted in a specific embodiment rather than moving from forms or shapes.

In my movement analysis classes I emphasise a holistic approach derived from the Laban/Bartenieff framework: perceiving the moving, dancing body as a dynamic entity that is in constant relationship with its environment.

Students explore, talk, improvise, write, and compose, and through these different practices, are encouraged to discover layers within their movement experience.

The ‘body-mind’ engages with the fact that movement is a chain of events: “All the elements and their connections show how many small parts work together in one movement, and even though they are

small, their role is big. When you change one of them, the whole movement changes”.

Movement Analysis also helps students verbalise their movement, offering a vocabulary to describe the ingredients of movement(s). The classes introduce ways to perceive the body during action, i.e. how many ways can one sense and articulate one’s relationship with the ground? This empowers students to practice and play with perspective, and to recognise which movement characteristics they have an affinity for.

Although the Laban/Bartenieff framework is rooted in the Western European dance tradition, I try to stay away from teaching a specific movement vocabulary. The goal is to give students the opportunity to research their own movement in an open inclusive space.

Not engaging with terminology for the sake of ‘labelling’ movement, but using terminology as a medium to expand a dancer’s movement signature: “I found new ways to move and expand my vocabulary”.

We engage with movement as patterns of neuromuscular connections, while

playing with patterns of thinking in action. We embrace ‘habits’ (i.e. how movement initiates and sequences through the body), and we take time to deconstruct them. This helps students do the same exercise in other classes, without going into repeat mode, but having a personal journey that reveals information, not only about initiations, but other kinds of imagery and becoming aware of different relationships to space: “The movements felt more fresh and only then I could start playing with it. It also helped to find trust in my body”.

This work is also important from a compositional point of view: “Movement Analysis helped me to find ways of moving I thought impossible.

All these interesting and different verbs - such as Dream State and Awake State - revealed undiscovered moving possibilities”.

MTD set out to educate co-creative dancers with an autonomous body-mind that contributes to the artistic process.

Movement Analysis provides different ingredients to play with, which also means working through discomfort.

Students found themselves - often unconsciously - attached to certain

aspects of their dance: ”When working with choreographers, I noticed that it gets easier to try out new things and offer new ideas to the process, because funnily enough, I start to be more comfortable with being uncomfortable”.

In 2014 I teamed up with colleague Liat Waysbort to co-teach Movement Research. We developed a ten-day workshop for first year students that revolved around further unpacking and evolving the dancer’s movement signature. Co-teaching with Liat impacted me as a teacher, artist and person. It was great to meet a different didactic and artistic approach in a live teaching context and it reverberates in my own teaching practice. I thank Angela for initiating this: co-teaching is highly relevant for knowledge transfer and innovation.

I taught weekly for 6 months of the year, so I had regular contact with Angela and the members of the team in meetings and participating in one another’s classes.

We were encouraged to professionalise ourselves as teachers: for example, through the course ‘Teaching in the 21st Century’. This challenged me to rethink the what and the how of my teaching.

I use different ways to discover how students process course material: in-class observations and conversations, short chats after class, sharing sources etc.

The final reflections by the students also prove to be a useful tool, not only in assessing their development, but also in searching for underlying question. Did my approach support the body-mind of every student in this group?

The student population of ECD consists of dancing bodies with diverse backgrounds. What are the needs of students with diverse cultural roots and dance backgrounds? How can hip-hop and breaking dancers trained in an informal context, relate to my classes as much as contemporary dancers trained in a formal context? This impacts how I approach the different concepts I teach, which sources: books, videos, podcasts, music, to use. What are the differences in the way movement or dance is defined?

This means reconsidering the values embedded in my course. How are these values connected to Western, Eurocentric views on dance?

and it can feel disorienting to relate to dance backgrounds such as krumping, a style of street dance popularized in the United States, described as Afrodiasporic dance and characterised by free, expressive, exaggerated, and highly energetic movement, simply because I have no personal history with it. What are the artistic values in that dance style?

Which emotional and sensorial gateways drive the movement? It is a call for curiosity. Ñ

ROOS VAN BERKEL (NL) is a choreographer and movement researcher. She was educated in dance theatre and Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis in London and New York. As an interdisciplinary artist, she connects art and science. Her work stimulates social cohesion by striving to counterbalance polarisation. She has

Are there underlying ‘fixed’ notions of a dancing body? My dance background lies in the Eurocentric contemporary tradition

taught at the ATD since 2008. *I thank the cohort of MTD 2016-17 for the quotes embedded in this text.

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52 Bojana Bauer, artistic

ECD

director of Expanded Contemporary Dance Department (ECD).

NOT-KNOWING TOGETHER: A CONDITION OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION MTD CLOSES AND AT THE SAME TIME OPENS NEW HORIZONS. ECD IS IN A UNIQUE POSITION OF RESEARCHING THE ANSWERS IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT WHERE OTHER DANCE SCHOOLS ARE YET TO PUSH THE ENVELOPE THIS FAR.

Expanded Contemporary Dance (ECD) invites a critical re-examination of the established term of “contemporary dance” and it’s artistic and educational conventions.

The vision of the ECD program rests in the understanding that “contemporary dance”, having for reference western theatre dance canon, is only one approach to dance and choreography amongst many. Situating “contemporary dance” in this way goes together with undoing the global domination it exercised over dance aesthetics from other cultures and its claims of universal artistry and contemporaneity.

Of course, this Western canon is not monolithic. For many decades the term “contemporary dance” refers to a wide range of practices and forms. The training of dancers has moved from mastering a single vocabulary and embodying its aesthetic, to a more eclectic combination of techniques.

What this “mix” should be and particularly

how it should be practiced and to which end, varies from school to school, company to company, project to project, individual to individual. Contemporary dance has been a shifting landscape for some time, claiming diversity and non-normative approach to dance aesthetics, moving bodies, or artistic production. One can think of some particularly strong moments of critical selfexamination, such as in the 1990’s in Europe when the very understanding of the notion of “dance” was put to the test.

We are perhaps living another such moment today, where dancing community is facing the reckoning of “contemporary dance” as a western, white, institutional art form, infused with unconscious biases and quietly exclusionary practices. The already eclectic, yet paradoxically homogenous field of contemporary dance is cracking itself open in the effort to recognise what it didn’t include and why. Which influences

PHOTO_SJOERD DERINE

TEXT_BOJANA BAUER

and inspirations were not acknowledged, which creations were not understood and thus shunned, which voices were silenced?

What is (hopefully) happening is a deep reexamination of values and destabilisation of harmful norms.

The consequences for art education are rather considerable. If we are questioning the very foundations of the artform we practice,

what knowledge is to be transferred to new generations? How to teach something that is constantly moving and redefining itself, composed of ever growing multiplicity of practices? How to teach something while recognising biases inherent to one’s own practice, knowledge, modes of perceiving, communicating and therefore, teaching? How to embrace such radical gestures within an art academy - precisely the type of institution

that embodies the institutional dominance of the western art canon? It may appear a daunting task, which demands facing the not-knowing.

This is the task of Expanded Contemporary Dance as a bachelor program born out of critical reflection on dance education today. Importantly, this reflection is carried in part by a team of teachers previously

working within the Modern Theatre Dance Department (MTD). Carrying out a radical project while assuring institutional and human continuity is not necessarily a contradiction, but demands certain conditions. Thinking of the legacy of the MTD department as parts of it continue to live in ECD, invites us to reflect on the conditions in which something akin to a revolution can be carried out without

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PHOTO_SJOERD DERINE

54

First Year ECD Students (2021)... And everything in between. Choreographer: Horacio Macuacua. wiping out the past to start with a totally blank slate. From this perspective, possibly the most important legacy of MTD is the culture of shared learning instilled over the years in that department by Angela Linssen and the core group of teachers.

LEARNING COMMUNITY When I started building the ECD curriculum and teaching team in 2017, MTD was about to enter its phasing out period. The period of overlap when ECD was building up and MTD was building down, gave me an opportunity to gain insight into how this department functioned and to get to know its teachers and decide on their role in the ECD team.

What I found and deeply appreciated, was the human and professional connection

MTD teachers had with each other and their full engagement with their teaching mission.

The faculty functioned as a community composed of collaborative, open-minded individuals. The evolution of the MTD curriculum over the 22 years of Linssen’s leadership was the result of the questioning and discussions involving the teaching team. They talked about the changes in the dance field, new artistic directions, work conditions, and progressive visions on what it is to be a dance performer. Thus, when I arrived, I encountered a team that had a habit of reflecting together, both on content of the curriculum and educational strategies.

Above all, through these conversations, they learned from each other, exchanged tools, and gave each other critical feed-back.

Changes in the MTD program were developed slowly over time, unlike the ECD which starts with an entirely new curriculum, new profile of students and a

reconstructed team. ECD acts as a major institutional transformation, however teachers that can actively take part in reflection, such as those working previously at MTD, can sustain and support such transformational processes.

As the ECD program runs now with its first cohorts of students, one part of my mission is to create conditions for the ECD team to cultivate this spirit of connectedness, openness and reflection as it shows the students that the school is a learning community.

TEACHING, AS LEARNING, AS RESEARCH The texts by core teachers of MTD collected in this issue, show clearly that

they never stop learning in informal and formal ways. It can go from analysing examples from classes with a colleague, visiting each other’s class and discussing critical feedback, asking students for feedback, participating in the knowledge transfer from senior to junior colleague, incorporating their previous knowledge from humanities into the choreographic practice, undergoing formal training or pursuing a Masters degree. This whole range of continuous learning strategies is used by MTD teachers at different moments in their careers. It is important to notice that their attention goes equally to artistic development, and to building their didactic skills. How to share the content with the students? In which form and at what moment? How to define the principles of what they are teaching? How to create conditions in the class for a student’s selflearning process? How to support them in learning from one another? How to focus the class on students’ questions, rather than on predetermined content? How to understand the psychology of a learning process? These are only some of the questions that motivated teachers to seek and produce new knowledge. Engaging with these questions led them to finalise training in didactics, become certified coaches, complete Masters in sport science, choreography, educational science, to name just a few. Thus new course contents, teaching methods and collaborations amongst teachers are born. The fact that teachers ask themselves questions, analyse the materials and situations they work with, acquire new skills, experiment with new contents and methods shows that they approach teaching as an ongoing research.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE REDEFINED As said previously, ECD is born out of the observation that today’s choreographic creation emerges from multiple sources, references, and traditions. What we call “contemporary dance” is being redefined by complex histories and relationships

to the present, entertained by different dance artists and communities. Aiming for a ”comprehensive” curriculum in such heterogeneous and plural contexts becomes rather meaningless. The ECD curriculum is at the moment resting on pillars of EuroAmerican, African, and Street and Club contemporary dance references. Within these still broad pillars, specific choices have to be made. How to maintain the diversity in the curriculum while giving the time needed for the process of embodiment?

What is the balance between skill mastery and experimentation? How do contrasting, sometimes contradicting approaches produce stimulating dialogue within the curriculum? How do we educate our eyes and bodies to read and feel physicalities yet unknown to us? When ECD started, we didn’t have ready answers to any of those questions. We started with a set of hypotheses that teachers, artists, theoreticians, and students are exploring together.

One ongoing research is about the ways in which a functional and principle-based approach to physicality can support diverse dance training. Instead of mastering a form, students are invited to build the awareness of their own physicality through different forms of movement. Technique classes, somatics, movement analysis, experiential anatomy, and fitness classes all gravitate around this exploration. Curriculum is structured based on movement functionality implied by different vocabularies. Different programatic solutions are being developed, tested and evaluated.

Another focal point is the connection between physical practice and artistic creation. Rather than having a fixed schedule of technique, improvisation, composition classes, flexible guidelines are used. Thus, the regular training can be adapted to the artistic projects curated every year. It can prepare and support the creations by guest artists - who themselves transmit their practice while creating with the students. Learning, experimenting and creating becomes inseparable. The curriculum functions more like a structured improvisation than a fully set piece.

Lastly, I’d like to point out the cultural learning process. ECD students and teachers come from all over the world and when from European countries, they are often of mixed heritage. Ethnic, cultural, linguistic, gender diversity in the department is growing, as well as the diversity of dance cultures. Hip-hop meets academic culture, theatre meets club culture, institutional meets non-institutional cultures. We are developing conditions for this diverse learning community to thrive. We need to ask questions such as: which mental, emotional, physical, behavioural aspects are included or excluded from the system of western academic art education? What do we need to include or change in order to respect cultural integrity of colleagues and students hailing from different systems?

What language do we use? How do we use space? What forms of attention do we practice? What measures of success do we use? How do we, in other words, create a culturally relevant learning and artistic environment?

Many questions are ahead of us. ECD is in a unique position of researching the answers in the european context where other dance schools are yet to push the envelope this far. The not-knowing together, which is the condition of research and innovation, is a process in which I feel privileged to lead the exceptional group of teachers that has grown and developed within the MTD department. They are growing continuously and devoted to the support and the growth of a new generation of dancers.Ñ

BOJANA BAUER (SRB) is the artistic director of Expanded Contemporary Dance. A former dancer of the Ballet of the National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbia, she is a dance scholar and dramaturg. Her writings are published in national and international journals, and as a dramaturg she has collaborated with Renata Piotrowska, Latifa Laâbissi, Vera Mantero, among others.

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OUR CHOREOGRAPHERS

OUR TEACHERS

Amos Ben Tal

Grainne Delaney

Nan Romeijn

André Gingras

Hildegarde de Baets

Michael Moore

Andra Perrin

Guilherme Miotto

Nicole Beutler

Andrea Boll

Igor Podsiadly

Michael Vatcher

André Gingras

Guy Nader & Maria Campos

Ohad Naharin (Repertory)

Aneudi Cabral

Iñaki Azpillaga

Monique Wetzels

Andreas Hannes

Heather Ware

Olatz de Andrés

Angela Linssen

Iris Reyes

Nancy de Wilde

Angels Margarit

Heidi Vierthaler

Paul Selwyn Norton

Anouk van Dijk

Jack Gallager

Nicolas Rapaic

Ann van den Broek

Hilde Elbers

Rick Merrill

Amy Raymond

Jakub Truszkowski

Nina Wollny

Anna Konjetzky

ICK Emio Greco & Pieter Scholten

Robert Poole

Ayaovy Kokousse

Janine Dijkmeijer

Ohad Naharin

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

Ingrid Berger Myhre

Roberto Galván

Barbara Meneses

Jenn Ben Yakov

Paul Estabrook

Rosas (Repertory)

Itamar Serussi Sahar

Roser López Espinosa

Bart Fermie

Jesus de Vega

Patrizia Semperboni

Anouk van Dijk

Itzik Galili

Sanna Myllylahti

Bertha Bermúdez

Joanne Zimmerman

Peter Koppers

Antonin Comestaz

Jakob Ahlbom

Sarah Wickorowicz

Birgit Gunzl

Jodi Gilbert

Ria Higler

Astrid Boons

Jan Martens

Serge Arthur Dodo

Bruno Caverna

John Brown

Rex Lobo

Bianca van Dillen & Ton Lutgerink

Jeanine Durning

Shusaku Takeuchi

Cas Kemna

John Kayongo

Rombout Willems

Blenard Azizaj

Jenn Ben Yakov & Jodi Gilbert

Silvia Gribaudi

Carolien Hermans

John Taylor

Roos van Berkel

Bruno Listopad

Jennifer Hanna

Susana Amarante Duarte

Cathie Caraker

Josje Neuman

Sara Wookey

Cecilia Moisio

John Brown

Trisha Brown (Repertory)

Christina Oorebeek

Junitha Plass

Shahar Biniamini & Iyar Elezra

Chris de Feyter

Jos Baker

Uri Ivgi & Johan Greben

Christopher Beck

Jurgen Paulsma

Simon de Mowbray

Chris Leuenberger

Judith Sánchez Ruíz

Vera Sander

Claire Philippart

Katie Duck

Suzanne Bakker

Cristina Leitão

Julio C. Iglesias Ungo

Daniel Smith

Kevin Gregan

Tamara Beudeker

Connor Schumacher

Karin Post

Daniela Graça

Laurence Korsenti

Ted Willemsen

Conny Janssen

Kenzo Kusuda

Derek Cayla

Lia Poole

Tim Persent

Club Guy & Roni

Keren Levi

Det Rijven

Liat Waysbort

Tom Koch

Damián Muñoz

Krisztina de Châtel

Diane Elshout

Lobke Mienis

Trude Cone

Daniele Ninarello

Leine & Roebana

Doro Saykaly

Loïc Perela

Valentina Campora

Dario Tortorelli

Liat Waysbort

Ederson Xavier

Manuela Tessi

Vicki Summers

David Hernández

Louise Vanneste

Elisabeth Boender

Margot Rijven

Vicky Shick

David Zambrano

Lucinda Childs (Repertory)

Erin Harty

Margriet van Waveren

Vincent Colomez

Didy Veldman

Manuel Ronda

Erzi Hoogveld

Maria Ines Villasmil-Prieto

Vincent Cacialano

Dunja Jocic

Maria Ines Villasmil-Prieto

Eva Karczak

Marie Josette Aerts

Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito

Edan Gorlicki

Marie Goeminne

Fleur van Hille

Merel Lammers

Yael Ben Ezer

Eldad Ben Sasson

Marie-Cecile de Bont

Francesco Barba

Martinette Janmaat

Yaniv Abraham

Fernando Troya

Marinke Eijgenraam

Guy Shomroni

Marleen Grol

Yaset Artola Rosell

Francesco Scavetta

Maya Delak

Gideon Poirier

Marta Coronado

Zeynep Gündüz

Frank Haendeler & Diane Elshout

Micha van Dullemen

Grainne Delaney

Martin Nachbar

Gabrielle Staiger

Michael Jahoda

Grigory Chicherin

Mat Voorter

Giogia Nardin

Michael Schumacher

Gyula Berger

Michael Schumacher

Giulia Mureddu

Milan Tomásik

Helga Langen

Michal Sayfan

Giulio D’Anna

Mirjam Berns

Hilary Blake Firestone

Min Li

*MTD until 2022 / We apologise for the inadvertent omission of any names in these lists.

dans ateliers

Dansateliers is an independent house for the development of dance and a home for dance artists in Rotterdam.

Dansateliers produces and promotes a variety of works, facilitates artist development and curates programmes for knowledge creation.

PHOTO_SJOERD DERINE

Dansateliers works on the basis of trust and reciprocity, warmly welcomes a curious and investigative mind & body and assures artistic freedom.

MTD LEGACY PROJECT/ Team and Writers. (From right to left) Roos van Berkel, María Inés Villasmil-Prieto, Jodi Gilbert, Grainne Delaney, Det Rijven, Helga Langen, Liat Waysbort, Gideon Poirier, Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito, Zeynep Gündüz, John Taylor.

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MTD LEGACY PROJECT TEAM Roos van Berkel, Jodi Gilbert, Zeynep Gündüz, Det Rijven ,Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito, John Taylor, María Inés Villasmil-Prieto and Liat Waysbort.

MTD LEGACY MAGAZINE Publisher: Omar Khan, María Inés Villasmil-Prieto.

Managing Editor: Jodi Gilbert, Zeynep Gündüz, Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito, María Inés Villasmil-Prieto.

Texts: Bojana Bauer, Roos van Berkel, Laura Cull, Grainne Delaney, Jodi Gilbert, Zeynep Gündüz, Helga Langen, Gideon Poirier, Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito, John Taylor, María Inés Villasmil-Prieto, Liat Waysbort.

Interviews: Jodi Gilbert, Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito.

Creative Input Interviews: Zeynep Gündüz , Angela Linsen, John Taylor.

Copy Editor: Jodi Gilbert.

External Editorial Advice: Laura Cull.

Photography: Nellie de Boer, Sjoerd Derine.

Design and Layout: ESTUDIO 2729, Madrid, Spain.

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Thanks to: Bojana Bauer, Nellie de Boer, Fien Bloemen, Sjoerd Derine, Sher Doruff, Jeroen Fabius, Anthony Heidweiller, Rosie Heinrich, Sanne Kersten, Liesbeth Koot, Bart Kusters, Marijn de Lange, Angela Linssen, Marjo van Schaik, Pieter Wybenga, Jan Zoet, the ATD Library.

Very special thanks to: Laura Cull, Wouter van Loon and Paul Jeroen Willems for their unconditional support for making this magazine.

This publication has been possible with the financial support of the Educational Development Funds of the Academy of Theatre and Dance (Onderwijsontwikkelingbudget) and DAS Research.

We also want to thank the MTD school as well as their students and teachers, that collaborated and inspired us to embark upon this Project.

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