Teaching Residency 1st afternoon 24 of March _ Monday

A) Defining personal interests / goals of each one for the week for the TR-research:

Afternoons

- Sabina, Simon, Juliette: What is essential in the teaching / in class? brainstorm:

To wake up body awareness
Connecting inside outside
Relation between breath and movement
Evoke a physical or mental tiredness to get beyond.
To get to know more of oneself
wake up creativity, perception
friendly environment for cooperation
Care for body and alignment

This list was later completed / changed to this list:

To create a space for a learning experience

and to this (Andrea):

The ball of the essential things for a class:

To wake up body awareness 


Connecting inside outside


Relation between breath and movement 


Evoke a physical or mental tiredness to get beyond / to get to know more about oneself / to wake up creativity,

a friendly environment for cooperation


Care for body and alignment, giving tools for not hurting onesself

The list can be seen as a "ball" with non-linear entrances and exits - no specific order!

- Andrea, Anne, Kerstin: How do creativity and learning relate (is creativity a pre-condition for learning) and what does that mean for a dance class? The question of formalism in somatic training, or how to connect somatic training with a "coordinational" one?

Practice: "Clumsy Ninja" (Game / App for Ipad): Translating the virtual movement style into language and into physical movement. Practice conclusions: A common denominator for somatic and coordinational training could be the training of instinct and reflexes. Also because reflexes make up the "alphabet of movement".

somatic work                  -                   coordinational work
              I                                                 I
                           instincts & reflexes 
                            (as common base)
                                           I
                               how to train them (invent practices) ?
          (so somatic & coordinational work can intertwine)

In case of the "clumsy ninja", the training focuses on the righting reflex (regaining verticality) with a strong element on varying muscle tone, and the element of surprise / timing.

25th of March (afternoon)
- Long discussion about yoga and contemporary dance. What is the benefit? What is the difference, the specificy?

- Demonstrating the exercises with which Juliette, Simon and Sabina found in relation of the essentials of a class:

- Juliette: to create in cooperative environment / waking up the perception:  introducing a simple sequence of one person going down to the floor, while the other person strokes her/his back. Explaining yoga - asanas "down facing dog" and .... In detail and then creates a phrase.
- Sabina: Connecting breath and movement: Sequence of breath: breathing in and out through the nose. Breathing in through the mouth, breathing out through the nose; in through nose, out through the mouth; in and out through the mouth; in out through the nose, very softly, as smelling a flower.
Finding a comfortable position on the ground, sitting or kneeling, arms another the floor. With every breathing in expanding, unfolding; with every breathing out folding in. One can work with big movements or small movements. Every move is related to the breath. After some while one can play and manipulated the length of the breath.
 

Simon: to create a physical and / or mental exhaustion for "letting go" From standing going down into the floor, rolling over the belly onto back with feet on the floor, knees drop into all 4s, spiralling up to start again.

a) Using the voice by naming what we are doing. "Feet..left...feet....feet....right." etc.

b) Getting closer together into line going up and down as one group.

--) Giving up your own concerns and let yourself moving more by instinct and surrounding energy.

26th of March (afternoon)
Working in two groups. Both groups deepen one aspect of interest.

Andrea, Kerstin, Juliette:
Creating "the ultimate phrase". A research for a phrase or movement material that is purely functional and free from any style.
Showing to the other group.

Anne, Simon, Sabina: Logomotion (connection of movement and word/voice)

-Sabina: Warm up: "Automatic speaking":1) speaking what ever comes in your mind, if you do not know what to say, just repeat what you have been saying; just take the letters, speak jibberish -- but keep on talking. While talking engage in your gestures while you are talking. Enlarge them into full body movement. After a while another person is taking over / interrupting.

- Simon: 1) two people sitting motionless in front of each other. One is talking and the other one is speaking with him the same words at the same time.  
2) the person speaking includes his / hands while talking - person copying copies the speaking person exactly.
3) speaking and full body movement. entering into more complex movement / vocal expression

(Variation from Sabina inspired by Ruth Zapora: simultaneous dialogue: standing side by side next to each other; one talking, one following. - watch out that you do not become to anticipatory, the person talking talks and lead.
Variation: trying to formulate the same word at the same time.)

- Anne: one person is moving, the other one describing the movement of this other person.( Exercice from Billy T Jones)

About Anne's excercise: Describing movement helps the moving person to get more clarity and precision. More awareness. When we manage to talk thorugh the movement it gets more integrated in the whole body/space.

27th of March (afternoon)

1) Everyone learns the ultimate phrase of Juliette
and makes a own variation

We relate to the ultimate phrase.

- Kerstin variations the phrase:
Like a water bottle
The spatial awarenesss
To have parallel path to the phrase
Like Marie Chouinare's turning
- Andrea: Enlargements of differents elements / aspects of the phrase (blow up certain moments, diggin deeper)
- Sabina: Play with the sensation it give to you - in large them in movements
- Anne: not changing the form but the content - Changing the tone and initiation. No squentiallity. Try to connect in a simple whole rolling from side to side, to gather the upper and lower limbs to the kidneys and the both sides of the back.
- Juliette: continued her phrase by creating lines.

- Simon: using the "baby like" side to side movements for finding other ways of moving into space on the floor

Discussion
Is the development of self related to gravity?

Through BMC one can find different ways of organization within the body. We are fluid before being related to gravity. The pression against the membrane of cells and tissus creats a "tensgrity", a coherent system. Our body can move , change form and come back its the initial shape. But the relation to gravity happens at the bearth and is inherent of the life on the earth. The squelettal system and the fascia, muscles soft tissus creats another kind of tensegrity.

How to change deeply the way we are organizing the body.
Why are habits always bad?
Mostly injuries are happening if one is not able to be supported by the whole space.

Learning, changing and repattern.
The repattern is a transformation, often a new way of learning.
Learning in a way of editing, and supporting self-confident
The process of repattern is a deep process. So what is the task of the teacher?

In open classes one has to offer something and the student also comes here, responsible for their own desires.
And the knowlegde to not do something which will hurt him/ her.
For professional students it is not the aim of the teacher to repattern but to support and give confident for the pathway of the student.
It is also good for students to know what kind of students one is.
To provide a class as a an environment for learning, one sees how the students are dealing with it.

2) Moving - talking: interviewing each other with the questions about teaching

28th of March (afternoon)

1) Discussion about which abilities a contemporary dance student gain:

Physicality like : sliding , spiralling, curbing, ability to related to the floor, articulate different parts of the body in many different ways...

Adaptability
Improvisation
Voice / vocabulary
Cooperation and partnering
To know oneself and be independent
Being use to sense, fell and think in action

Being able to create

Being able "to let it go"

Being your own teacher and your own coach

A question : what kind of teacher am I ?What kind of student am I ?

2) Thoughts / plan for Grenoble

Coteaching by 6 the morning class:
The order for the first class in Grenoble :
1) cooperative friendly environment - Simon
2) breath & movement - Anne
3) sense of alignment - Sabina
4) lâcher prise - Juliette
5) finding out something about yourself - Kerstin
6) engage your creativity - Andrea

The afternoons will be prepared by each team. The first one will begin by the french team.
Maybe the Wednesday's afternoon could be a work in research with the children company (12+) .The friday's afternoon is opened at this time.

The Ultimate Phrase : each of us is going to create his/her Ultimate phrase, for an ultimate warm up of an ultimate class... And we will share them in Grenoble.

The symposium : Sabina, Andrea, Kestin and Anne will be there and present a sort of "lecture démonstration" of this TR. We will use the videoprojecteur to show the idoc we have done.