Artistic traces and potentials in the process of teaching

For me the question about the relations between teaching and artistic practice cames up again and again. Sometimes I think it is evident that teaching and artistic practice have a common ground, because both are dealing with of ways of sharing. At the same time one could say, there is not so much correspondences, because teaching has a more objective goal, then making a piece together. I am curious to hear more thoughts about that and send each teacher / choreografer / peformer of the LEAP_Residency the following questions. The questions are meant as an inspiration, an entrance for an 4 min monologue, which I recorded and transcribed. Most of the statements you find here were about 6 min.

Would you agree that teaching as well as creating, deals with sharing? In which way this sharing is similar? What is the difference?
Do you have an artistic practice?
Does art play an important roll in your life?
If you would relate your practice to art history - to which period would you relate it?
Are there some artists, which are especially dear and inspiring for you?
Do they influence your practice, your esthetically choices? If so, in which way?
Are there correspondences to your teaching?
Is your teaching influencing your artistic practice? If so, in which way?
What would you say are future potentials for contemporary dance teaching?
What do you think are the future potentials of art / artistic practice?
Do have three or four words which are guidelines for your practice / expectation of teaching contemporary dance and your artistic practice?

Simon Wehrli:
I think, when I started teaching, I came from a knowledge and experience, that what you teach is not necessarily what you perform. It is a technique, which helps you to have your body ready, have your awareness in a certain way. But in the outcome, the shapes are not the same as what you will do in on stage later.

I tried to believe in it, because that is, what I knew. But through time I figured out, that somehow I need to bring the teaching much closer to my artistic interest. Of course there are things, which are just necessities of any body, like stretching the muscles, which I probably will not perform, which are just necessities of any body. But even to find something, even if is more technical, form oriented or sequencing certain movements, it is important for me that there is a freedom, which also can go more into expression, where the forms becomes more a frame or purpose and it can be forgotten. It is good to still remain with the form, but if we go further, the form is more a toy.

But there are other forms of teaching, which at the moment I am more focussing on, or more interested in, which is discovering and uncovering potentials of participants. To release what the body is doing and to be aware of how this happens.

This are my ongoing questions and discoveries in my creative process, which is influencing my teaching and the teaching is influencing my creative process. In a way I feel a big freedom in teaching, because there I am not looking for a particular result or outcome. Have no particular goal, if I set a task; -  what comes out can be totally unexpected. There is a certain freedom of expression in class, an artistic freedom, which sometimes is not found in a creation process, because we put on some blinders and  don't allow us to look out.

So it is a place of research also the teaching for you?
Yeah, or you can really do things or things are happening, where you think "I never thought about this, or would never put that on stage." So finally it is about the individual and what the individual is doing with the material, or how this group of people is doing something. It is so unique. For me this is important. It has some totality. Maybe in an ideal world I would say, there is no difference between teaching and creative process. I would not be able to separate it. Maybe this is not reality, but I think, they finally feed each other a lot.

In terms of the mind of the mental space, is there something, or someone,w which or who is inspiring for you? Do you use sometimes exercises in class, which you use for your own process?
There are a lot of exercises of everybody, which became part of my teaching. According to a creation process, I would transform them to this specific purpose. I could name all the people, which I took exercises from, which is almost everybody I ever took class with, because somehow there is always something which triggers you.

Right now I have to say, I am a bit lost in that sense, because there is no one, where I would say, this is how I want to do it, or how it has to be or what ever.
What I really find inspiring is, when I see individuals, which are totally on their trip, who zoom into their way of discovering the world. I find this idea interesting and then the outcome can be what ever, if I like it or not.
This full engagement into one thing, if there is also a certain stubbornness, is fascinating for me. If I can see the mind of this person spreading out through the whole. It is fascinating in teaching or performing or what ever; it need not even be just in the studio.


Kerstin Kussmaul:
When I look at your questions I stumbled at the one, "do you have an artistic practice?"
I thought it is funny that you asked that, because my teaching is part of my artistic practice. My artistic practice has a lot to do with relating; relating to people. I feel I can relate really on a very deep level to people, when I share being physically in space with each other. I feel closer to them than in performing. And I like, if there is more dialoguing and back and forth, some sort of exchange between the participants involved.

Is teaching a kind of performing or a way of performing for you?
We did an idoc on that!
Of course every teaching has a part of performing in it. But I am not interested in it as a part of a presentation or representation; - but as a part of an dialogue. Juliette said the other day, that she is interested in the spirit. I really can relate to that. I often noticed, how little is being transmitted through words. There are so many other levels, which influence deeply, what we do. It happens there, in a dance, which at the same time is so ephemeral. It is that, which drives me nuts and what I really love.

Here is another question of yours: Are there some artists, which are especially dear and inspiring for you? Actually I am inspired by someone for quite a while and probably he would not have thought about him as an artist: it is Buckminster Fuller.
He really dared to think out of the box. His way of describing of doing something new, is not seeing or describing something new, but looking at something you know and thinking something new.
There is something in the width of his spirit, which I find really inspiring. That he was excepted in the sience world, as well as with the Beatniks. He had a vey unique personality. He really sticked to his vision, and some of them worked and some of them failed.
Now, if I think of it, it brings me to your other question: If I feel connected to a creation art history? It is really the 60ties! They always have a feeling of incompletion to them. We missed to complete them. I always feel, we moved on a little to quickly. As if I want to say, wait a minute there is still something. Of course it is different now and you can't revive it. But there are still things in there, which I feel are getting lost again, without them really being deeply implanted in our society; - which I regret.

Could you say, what is the inspiring thing?
I think, it is the notion of: "everything is possible". Of course, there are things which were not so great, there was also a very conservative movement active. But there was an opening up of thinking. It could be rational or irrational. So there was this counterpart to the restrictions, there are always counterparts.
I also like the courage to realize things. That things are not just in a potential space, but people really did it.

Is there another question, which you would like to answer?
You ask "Do they influence your esthetically choices?"
I always thought aesthetics are personal preferences. I always thought, there must be a permeation.
Sometimes if you look at elderly movies, you see that some of them age really well, others don't;  they just feel outdated and dusty. With others you can sense the decade, or where they come from, but there is still validity, and that is what I look at. In this sense coming back to Buckminster Fuller, in many ways it has a ridiculous touch, but some of it has really great value till today.


Juliette Dürrleman
I try to connect everything. I don't know if it works out, but I try.
The most important for me, is the person and the individuality of the different people in the group.
This is what I try to teach through working with the body, but also if I am in an artistic work.
For me it is important, that I feel that the people are really unified in something. Maybe this sounds a bit eccentric, but it is important that the students are well in what they are doing. It is very important for the feeling of togetherness. 

Is there a historical period, other artists - can be actual or not, teachers, scientists,- which are inspiring for you in you work artistically or teaching?
I am dancer from a period, where we had to learn all different methods. I think it is the yoga practice, which unified things for me. In fact also my artist work is about Yoga. Yoga, is clear and simple as a base; - the principals give you freedom in creation. It is about ethics, like: your engagement; to be enthusiastic to do things; non violence - not in a way, that you have to be happy all the time, -- non violence in relation to oneself, to the others; to be careful, what you say; how you are. It is about being authentic.
So all this big themes. The "jama" of Yoga are principals for my work. Also for live. For me art is live.

Another thing which is very important for me, is music. I am a singer. I like music. Contemporary music, classic music, songs. It is really an important aspect. Also text. I like to hear peoples voices, the meaning of things, so there is also a lot of texts in my pieces. It is very mixed and in the same time, there is an essence; something which unifies this mix.

Those last years I worked a lot with young people and it teached me a lot. Because it is education and artistic work. I made pieces with them. And for teenagers it is very important to have the possibility to bring in and engage with their personalities. For adults, too, but for teenagers even more. It has a directness. Abstraction is difficult. They have to feel why. So that kind of why is still with me now.
I appreciate it.



Anne Garrigues:
If I think about the people, who inspired me the most, I now see the figure, which I prefer from all of them, although I did not see her so often. It is Trisha Brown. Her freedom, lightness and playfulness, the respect for the body, the person. It was really important for me to work with the dancers of her company. The way she is organizing her movements having no center in body, but working with the periphery, which becomes the center, is something I like a lot. I use this a lot in my work as a teacher and a artist.
The way of training the body in the company is really developing the art form. As a dancer and as a choreographer I am often interested were is the center? Which center are we talking about? The center of the stage, the center of the focus? I am really interested in periphery of things.
I am someone, who is very peripheral in my work and my preference. Sometimes it is difficult to center. But I like to  be related to both. It is always a negotiation.

As a improvisations teacher, I am always wondering, which space are we sharing, when we improvise together? It is always a question of space. Always: which spaces are we sharing? The real space, the in-between spaces, the texture… What are we sharing? There so many things, not only the persons, not only the identity of a person. I like the person and meeting the other, but the unknown is also very important to me. That which is around. I am practicing BMC and in embryology one  recognizes the creation of space, the awareness of spaces. So that supports me a lot. It is a big theme.

What is the difference between teaching and artistic work, -  is there a difference for you?  
I work with amateurs in creating and I appreciate that a lot. It is a mixture. I also teach dance to little children since a long time - they are 5 or 6 year old. I am there with a pianist. This is a space I like a lot. If I am there, I am a dancer and at the same time, I am a teacher. So it is complicate for me to separate. Because if I am dancing, I know what I have to do. If I am teaching, I am not engaged as a dancer. I notice, when I was a student of BMC, I was more away from artistic practice and researching. I realized after a while, that my teaching was a little dry, not so creative. I was not able to be enthusiastic. I was more "okay what can we do"; somehow less poetic. But infact the poetry supports the teaching a lot.


Andrea Boll:
I am basically always approach teaching from the point of view of creating. Because this is what I am doing: I make pieces and I am a performer on stage. I'm always interested in giving classes, which make bodies and minds available for the creation, rehearsals or going on stage.

I find it always very important to see, what is the environment of teaching, what is the assignment, what is the institution. That plays a big roll in how I approach it. Often I am also very clearly asked to teach a technique class. But what I found most important in teaching, in creating and working with dancers is, that people find their personal interest in what we are doing, every day, every moment. So I always try to propose things as  an invitation to the people to go on a journey together. No matter, if it is set or improvised material.
In rehearsals improvisations often have the purpose to create scenes for a piece. When I know I want to create a pice with a certain theme I always try to approach it from different angels. So that I can make it available for everyone and ask everyone to find their personal interest and research in it. I believe you can do this in improvisation, in fixed material, in choreographies in taching and taking a class. You can do that everywhere. Maybe I like teaching, because I'm interested in the people and what make them moving.

When I was starting to do choreographies, it was very difficult to work with a group and very quickly it become a very essential and central question: what do you do with a group? How do you relate
together to a certain theme?

I like to place the work in an environment. At the moment I even work outside in nature and in the city, to have an environment, which asks for different ways of moving. Dancing with one person makes me also move differently, than another person. I find this interesting. I like the relations between the people and the quality, which comes out of that. That can be with a creation, an expression or a theme. I am always looking, what is the invitation. If it is towards a colleague, a student, an audience.The proposal I can give to peoples is, that they can find their own responsibility, traveling through material.

Lately I started to work in technique classes with certain principals, that I am integrating; certain elements of movements. Sometime they be very functional, anatomical, sometimes it can be a quality.
To propose a set sequence and then to dig in it and let people work with it. To improvise with it and research different aspects, can be very enriching. For instant what we did yesterday: to improvise with this connection of shoulders to the sit-bones and sit bones to the heals. When you work with this, find your own movements in that and then come back to something set and apply it there as well and find equal freedom in there as well.

I love skills. If I see someone can do somethings really well, I am fascinated and I want to learn it. But in a way that I understand the journey this person makes, or what goes through the mind. What is the connection in the body, what expression comes out. So in this sense I can work with something, which is even not my taste, or style. I can get interested in what is the trip of another person. And if a teacher invites me in this, if I can follow the experience, the thoughts, the knowledge and the practice someone does, then I get interested to learn and i can learn it. That is also how I try to teach.

Make materials and ways available for others through sharing, that is the basic for any relations ship. So I think I am always looking for that, even unconsciously. You have to follow your nose.

Fifteen years ago teaching or making a piece was a big difference for me. Now not so much anymore. Just where you put your focus, is different. I think in a creating process, you limit yourself to a certain group of people, you have chosen to work with and they have chosen to work with you. For a creation period you can dig and go very extreme in that. I like to dig into stuff deeply. I feel very challenged doing that. And if you can do that with others, it is an adventures trip. But I do need to work and amuse myself also alone in the studio or outside before I'm able to share.


Sabina Holzer:
I would say my way of looking at choreography and performance is based in the postmodern dance - Judson Church and also the Fluxus Movement.
I am looking for physicality, I like meeting, confronting the physical body with all depth, juiciness and madness. Materiality and action is very essential for me. Thoughts and emotions are also material, matter to me. At the same time, shapes are not so important for me. I am inspired by the postmodern dance sayings "Daily movement is dance.", "Pedestrian qualities of movement are dance qualities.", "Everyone is a dancer." and "Dance is very much made also from the way one looks at it, from ones awareness, how one composes things while looking."
So my interest is not so much teaching form, it is more to find some a permeation between content and form and context and form. I would say, I am looking for weak shapes. Shapes, which function as an instrument, not a fetish. Sometimes it is interesting to look at bodies, in which a certain form has been inscribed, or one has developed a very specific and personal style. It is like an ready-made, it looks everywhere nearly the same. But I am more interested, if people try to get rid of these inscriptions, trying to get ride of one personal attitudes, to be playful with them. - Of course one can never get rid of them, but through trying, there is a space opening through which something else gets visible, a different connection. It is a detourement. I like the notion of struggle. I like appearances, which are not completely at ease. Although at the end of the day, it is very importnat to embrace yourself.

I am interested - in teaching and performing - to find frames to improvise in combination with set movements or memory of movements. Again here I look for an openness, some way of freedom, which stays in relation to the others, to time and space -- and is not just going on the own trip.
Maybe the physical form is like an phenomena for me, -- not a sign --. It is to be read by looking also at the surroundings, or at the sequence and the composition. All the different factors, which are there. So the body is not a cut out thing in a white space. I like bodies, as a human, as living materials, who are informed through experience, through time and place; are situated and confronted with things and thoughts. So I am looking for ways in my teaching to share this and I am interested in which ways that can be stimulated through teaching. It means, that people get an awareness for there own interest, their passions and talents, believes and disbelieves. I want to share, that there is always an own responsibility and own choice. That the teacher is giving a kind of a methodology,  different approaches and students can go on and discover for themselves.