Dance Techniques 2010 – Tanzplan Germany
Ingo Diehl (Project Director), Dr. Friederike Lampert (Research Assistant)
Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin (HZT)
The research team of the Co-operative Dance Education Centre Berlin: Gill Clarke, workshop leader // Prof. Dr. Franz Anton Cramer, Professor of Dance Studies // Prof. Gisela Müller, Professor of Dance Practice // students on the Contemporary Dance, Context, Choreography BA course and guests.
Gill Clarke: Minding Motion
“My way of teaching is not about right or wrong movement (unless it would cause injury). The rest is about choice.” This is how Gill Clarke understands her approach to training. Given that this way of thinking is universal in contemporary dance training today, it was particularly interesting to make an example out of Clarke’s methods, examining them closely and making them clear. As co-founder of the Siobhan Davies Dance Company, Clarke has worked with various choreographers, such as Rosemary Butcher and Rosemary Lee. She was Head of Performance Studies at the Laban Centre in London from 2000 to 2006 and still works there as a consultant. Today, she teaches students, professional dancers and companies and is an external consultant for many new, but also long-standing, international training projects, mainly in Great Britain.
The workshops were held from 4-8 May, 1-12 June and 13-17 July 2009. The DVD was filmed from 14-15 July 2009.
Quote from Julia Schwarzbach from the student discussion that took place on 14 July 2009:
"Gill’s work is about readiness, a readiness in the body to be able to move and not to separate the warm-up session from the session where you can only do certain other material once you get to it. Such a separation did not take place and I find that rather exciting. Many techniques were used as a basis although the repertoire you work with afterwards is actually something different.”