Feldenkrais Practice - Movement Research - Partner Work

Format: team-teaching by Sascha Krausneker and Georg Blaschke

This IDOC has been written by Sascha Krausneker and Georg Blaschke

Our experience has shown that the format can be adapted to a length of 120 up to 240 minutes.

Please note: This IDOC is linked to another IDOC that documents an exemplary lesson of the same format.

Introduction:

We have been developing this special format of team-teaching over a period of the last seven years to investigate into possible connections between the Feldenkrais Method and the domain of contemporary dance and performance practice. We have collected a wide range of experiences teaching in different contexts such as  workshops at dance institutions for professional dancers, programs for dance education and for performing arts projects. The process of documentation in a form of a regular sharing on a verbal level with the group and between us is an inherent part of the methodology of our teaching proposal. It helps to mirror both the ongoing process as well as our roles as teachrs and facilitators within the process. It is a pleasure to team-teach in this context!

With the Feldenkrais Method we can learn to move with ease and to enlarge our comfortable movement range. We come more in contact with our self.

The possible themes of Feldenkrais-lessons cover a wide range of human movement: from infant development to high-level performance abilities. The Method is a unique and revolutionary approach to the understanding of human learning, movement and function. Its focus is on the practical development of one's own individual potential and ability. People learn to improve the way they organise themselves for action.

Description:

It has turned out that this special format needs a certain time frame to facilitate a flow from the beginning to the end of the class, so that 150 to 180 minutes would be the optimum length. Usually we work workshop-based, that means there is a  general theme over a period of at least one week with a group.

General structure:

1. We start with an  ATM / Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson - mostly on the floor on mats - focusing on a certain functional theme. This process usually takes around 45 minutes. Sometimes it can already include moments of partner work to sensitize touching qualities in the sense of  following other persons' small movements hands on.

2. Transition into space. During this very delicate period we acompany the group from the more inside towards the outside awareness into the space by giving enough time to integrate sensations, play with and open up movements, qualities and vision. In some of the lessons this process can also happen in carefully established constellations with partners.

3. Imporvisation and Movement Research. Certain improvisational guidelines to explore movements, contact and how the bodily articulation is represented in the surrounding space lead to a gradually extended group presence and eventually to challenging tasks of partner work and dance dynamics. Choreographical implications might be introduced.

4. At the end of the lesson there is enough time to come back to one self and to get into resonance with the experiences of the entire class and the original Feldenkrais lesson.

Our experience with different groups has brought up a range of  general qualities that arise during that process. We can describe them as: a full engagement with each movement in the present moment, a qualitiy of being connected, a sensation of feeling alive and authentic in each action, a state of feeling present and spontaneous, a non-judgemental approach to develop individual dance and performance skills.