There was a significant piece of research done in the middle of the twentieth century, known in shorthand as 'Harlow's Monkeys' (1). It was a gruesome piece of animal investigation involving unspeakable deprivations for baby monkeys, taken away from their mothers at birth and observed to see what conditions they needed to ensure their survival. The babies who were given no 'Mum' to cuddle up to were doomed. Those with a cloth substitute survived, but were found later in their lives to be severely disturbed. Over time the research showed that, if they were not only to survive but also to thrive, they needed a 'Mum' substitute to touch and snuggle, and to move and be moved, and to play for at least a small part of each day. There you have it. It seems to me that we humans have got our selves into a right old state if we need to carry out this kind of research to prove something perfectly obvious - something we already know in our bones.
My primary focus is trying redress a balance, because we in the west seem to have forgotten that touch, movement and play are vital to human survival and well being. I want to reveal, and encourage, an intimate relationship with sensation, feeling, movement and image - all the languages of the body, not just movement. I'm interested in the gap that has grown between being a body, and just having a body. And what happens, to our whole culture, if we can close that gap.
About this word 'methodology'
I've never use the word 'methodology'- keeping things simple is a deeply held principle - and I wasn't sure what it meant. Something about method, of course, but it sounds like it must mean a lot more. That 'ology' bit sounds loaded. So I reached for the dictionary not knowing if I had one by another name, or indeed, if it was something I would run a mile from once I had pinned it down. 'Methodology: a range of methods or practices'. No problem there then. Nice and simple, no need for the 'ology' at all. I've certainly got methods and practices, very clear ones. In fact I'm known as 'The Thin Controller' at work. In pursuing particular goals I am very fussy about the way we do things.
My methods are all about helping people to notice that sensation, feeling, movement and image bubble away alongside the ever-talkative intellect, offering suggestions and ideas of their own. I want to help people to listen to these languages and give them credit, to make sense of them in ordinary ways, as an ordinary part of ordinary life. (Perhaps this gives a clue to my problem with the word methodology. It just isn't as ordinary as I'd like.)
Do you use different methodologies for different purposes, groups and contexts?
I think of myself first and foremost as a translator, not as a dancer, translating the languages of the body for a culture more interested in the intellect. To this end, I consciously and very deliberately use a use a wide range of different practices because there are a vast number of people, each with their own professional concerns and their own feelings about the body and movement, that I want to influence.
Sometimes I do presentations - sort of stand-up marketing really. I unashamedly use every trick I know to sweep people off their feet, to inspire them, to make them feel something about this material.
Sometimes I write - particularly for those who wouldn't come near a movement activity if I paid them. Lots of people are very interested, but it is all too exposing and uncomfortable to place themselves in a situation where they would have to move. It doesn't mean that they are not part of the complex web of people needed to bring about new opportunities for others. So for them I write in a variety of styles, from very academic and formal, to red-top tabloid.
Sometimes I devise training courses - to pitch the material right into the heart of different contexts, offering very practical skills so that people who want to, can go right out and do it themselves. Lots of what I do can be passed on brilliantly by people who aren't artists, or teachers, or dancers - or whatever I happen to be calling myself that day.
And sometimes I teach, or lead movement work. But it's certainly not the only method I use to get movement, touch and play noticed.
Each one of the above is a method of reaching towards a particular goal and there are precise practices within each one, of course. This business of unpicking an approach reveals a warp and weft, a complex mesh that makes up the finished article. These are some of the thicker threads that can be teased out.
- 'Amphibious': my practice is not that of an artist, taking dance into different contexts. I am an arts-recreation-health-social-care-education worker equally at home in any of these contexts, using methods and practices derived from each. (I fear this puts me in the unhappy position of being an a.r.h.s.e). This is a new way of working, (emerging from the midst of many practitioners at the moment), which needs to be identified as a new profession, or it runs the risk of always being defined in other people's terms. Not real teaching; not quite health work; not real dance.
- Play: it is the practice of free flow play that I am primarily concerned with. "Free-flow play = wallowing + competence". So says Tina Bruce (2), fabulous writer in the field of early years education, but her definition has complete relevance to the kinds of learning environment I want to create for people of all ages. This means my methods have to support two things: the serious business of wallowing, (in sensation, feeling, movement and image), and the competencies required to learn from the body. (Listening, sorting, sifting, reflecting and integrating). It also means giving people permission to take spontaneous movement play seriously as a practice in its own right.
- Boundaries and space: we can only truly wallow if we feel safe. Creating this safety is a key concern for me. Each person, and the group as a whole, needs just the right amount of space, (not too much, not too little) and the right kind of boundaries to push against to make the serious business of wallowing possible. The delicious phrase 'boundaries and space' comes from DW Winnicott (3) and clarified everything I did the instant I found it.
- Simplicity is bliss: I want everything - writing, teaching, training - to use simple language and to articulate ideas simply so that it is fully available to everybody. I want to identify technical language and jargon, but to find matching everyday words that don't exclude anyone, or make them anxious
- Person-centred: all the methods I use aim to place people, and relationship, at the centre of the work. This affects all aspects of teaching and learning - the way the material is offered, the shapes we work in, (always circles so that everyone can see everyone else); the understanding that each person is the expert in their own body, movement and feelings; the fact that the tutor has the role of leadership, not actual leadership in the group.
- Be rather than do: my practice suggests that people get interested not just in what they do, but how they do it, in order to become more aware of who they are. There is encouragement to 'just be', with no external pressure to conform to rules, pressures, goals, tasks or definite direction
- Groupwork: I have learned a great deal from groupwork practice about inviting people to use the group as a microcosm of the wider society, a safe place to learn about the ways we interact with others, the roles we adopt, the strategies we employ.
- Deeply ordinary: call it artistic practice, call it education, call it social care, I want what I do to be entirely mainstream, totally ordinary. This informs every aspect of the work I do - the way I choose to dress, the words I choose to use, the kind of tea and biscuits provided, the language in the handouts, the images on leaflets, and the venues I use. I seldom work in arts spaces, for instance, because they intimidate the people I most want to reach. And whilst we're dwelling on the truly ordinary, I regard a dustpan and brush, and the act of cleaning, as essential aspects of my practice.
How did I arrive at these methods and practices?
By following instincts and urges that I cannot explain. They most definitely come from my bones, my blood and my gristle. They have formed in feeling over the years, gradually drifting into some sort of discernible shape as I sought the means to make sense of the deep urges and instincts. They are hugely influenced, of course, by a selection of practitioners - some dancers, some therapists, some group workers and some teachers, that I have worked with over the years. But I think the interesting thing here is why I sought out, or was influenced by, these particular practitioners. I can get fancy about it all now, and fit what I do into paradigms and philosophies that have been beautifully articulate by academics. But it really is very simple. The root of all I do goes back to a sunny morning in 1958 when a bunch of kids got the wind up their tails.
When Barry-up-the-road was excluded from the bike race in our garden because the big boys didn't like him, I ached. I physically ached at the injustice. And I ache now, remembering. Feeling powerless and desperate I went upstairs and got my purse, (full of big copper pennies saved over years but still adding up to nothing in a big boys eyes), and gave them to him as some kinds of recompense for the beastliness of his loneliness. This was no great act of generosity on my behalf. I knew it was faintly stupid, even then, even though I was only three. Nevertheless, I was compelled to do it to quell the awful sting in my guts, and the fizz up my arms. What I really needed to do was to hold him, be held, to make direct contact human to human. But such things were impossible.
In this story lie the two primary drives that have affected all the choices I have made through my life. Firstly, I had to respond to what I perceived as the effects of injustice. I could not ignore it - not then, not now. And secondly, I had to notice that my body spoke to me. It shouted too loud to be ignored. And it still does.
So although I have always been concerned with the body, I have always had an equal and opposite drive to get to grips with how we treat each other, how we organise ourselves as social beings, how we live. The connections with my work are pretty obvious. My body still shrills and calls in and out of everything I do, and I have discovered, of course, that it's not just mine - other people's bodies do the same. Making use of this ordinary, intimate relationship is at the heart of my practice. But I am only interested in being a dancer if I can use what I know to discover more about how we live with each other. Address some of the injustices that fizz in my guts. The 'pennies in my purse' are now the things I write, the courses I teach, the presentations I make. (And I still feel faintly stupid that this is what I have to offer - still no great shakes in the big boys eyes.)
My methods and practices are completely inseparable from who I am, from those base instincts and urges that are not right or wrong, or sophisticated or simplistic - they just are. In pursuit of being a dancer who might influence how we live I have bounced about from one training to another - dance techniques, theatre direction, group work, process work, dance therapy, developmental movement - and I have picked out the bits that make me able to work with movement and the body in totally ordinary contexts. With human touch, movement and play.
Epilogue
Barry, where you are now? I moved soon after the bike incident and never saw you again. Bet you've never given that day a second thought. O how you gloated that evening when our dad got home and played merry hell because of the mess we made of the lawn with those bikes. That probably finished it for you. Justice was done. The next day it was we who were grounded, kicking our heels indoors, whilst you were out and about with the rest of the gang. And as I wound myself up in the curtains (over and over) until the twist of cloth pressed down on my head and made me feel better about all the brouhaha of the previous day), I had no idea that I was beginning a life time of my own kind of research. Action research into the way we explore our feelings in our bodies. Perhaps we could call it 'Greenland's Curtains' for short?
Penny Greenland is the Director of JABADAO. For information see www.jabadao.org or email: info@jabadao.org
(1) Harry Harlow was the head of the Primate Laboratory at the University of Winsconsin. Research carried out in the late 1950's. I've read about the research in many places, a useful reference for dancers is: Juhan, Deane Job's Body. Station Hill Press. 1987 ISBN 0-88268-134-6
(2) Bruce, Tina Time to Play: In early childhood education. Hodder and Stoughton. 1991 ISBN 0-340-53878-3
(3) Davis, Madeleine Boundaries and Space: an introduction to the work of DW Winnicott. Brunner/Mazel 1991) ISBN: 0876306415