I am writing from the perspective of a performing dance artist and long-time teacher. I wish to propose that, in preparing dance students for the future we should think about the education of creative artists over and above the training of skilled professionals. I do not believe that emphasising creativity and imagination needs to result in a lack of rigour, skill or discipline but it does require a shift of focus away from teaching as a didactic process of passing on a finite body of knowledge and towards teaching as the facilitation of student learning and exploration.
I started dancing at an early age, studying classical ballet as a hobby in a context where performance was the stimulus to learning rather than exams.
I never contemplated enrolling in a full-time dance training, (instead choosing to study literature at University). In fact I never dreamt of becoming a professional - dancing was something that I loved doing - and I didn't think that went with 'having a job'! I then gained an interest in Contemporary dance and studied when and where I could, motivated by my curiosity - that quality which is essential in any dance artist and therefore in any graduating dance student. My learning went alongside my work as a performer and teacher and was greatly influenced by the choreographers I was engaged with. Despite an ongoing appreciation of 'New dance' in performance, my training remained for many years, within what could be termed a 'technical' framework, rarely broadening out to include improvisation or bodywork. The closest I got was to study 'Hawkins' technique with Janet Smith when she had just returned from immersion in New York. The deep connection of legs through to torso and the limbs as 'tassles' was a fantastic challenge to a mind-body developed through extension!
About twelve years ago, however, coinciding with the beginning of my working relationship with Siobhan Davies, a door was opened that I was dying to go through - into a world of movement exploration from the inside/out. I ran eagerly into this world - pursued Alexander, Feldenkrais and Klein techniques - and read avidly - 'The Thinking Body' by Mabel Todd became my 'bible' and my body my laboratory.
Why had nobody ever encouraged me to think from my own, moving structure before? Where I had worked on the idea of 'balance' through willpower previously, or through muscular effort, now it became a question of mechanical logic and imagination - how to balance MY body over its fulcrum and use gravity rather than work against it!
These new ways of thinking about movement improved my 'technique' as seen in traditional terms - I felt more in control, stronger, more articulate - as well as opening up myriad creative possibilities of how I might choose to move. I felt that my senses were being awakened, but also my mind and imagination stimulated - I felt more wholly present in my dancing. I frequently speak to people involved in dance education who fear (exacerbated by the use of the highly confusing term 'release') that to work through a developed awareness of the body will take valuable time away from 'real technique', that it will result in letting go of hard-won control, and is more concerned with self-development than skill acquisition. 'Anyway', they say, 'it is all so sophisticated and subtle that surely you have to acquire a strong 'technique' first and then go on to these more advanced aspects?'
I do not agree. I do not think that any of these fears have a good foundation. To work from an embodied understanding of one's own instrument results in clearer, more efficient movement patterns and - based on my teaching experience- taking time to work deeply can be rewarded by strikingly rapid changes in movement awareness and execution. It may be that many mature professionals are now turning to these 'alternative' or somatic movement approaches to enrich and inform their dancing, and that they happen to have previously studied traditional contemporary techniques. But once bodies of knowledge, or certain practices, become common currency in the professional domain is it not our responsibility, as educators, to give dance students access to them? How else do we move forward?
If we can develop in our students a movement intelligence based on an embodied understanding and attentive consciousness of themselves in motion we prepare them to encounter new and unfamiliar situations and to apply themselves creatively to the explorations which will move the artform forwards.
The profession
Contemporary dance in Britain has come of age - we have our first generation of mature artists - and it is beginning to be taken seriously as an intelligent artform to stand alongside, and collaborate with, contemporary visual art, music, drama, film, as well as infiltrating the commercial spheres of video, film and theatre.
About 15 years ago, enterprising dance graduates could get quite quickly onto the bottom of a funding ladder for the support of their own work or even hope to enter a full time company. Now this is not impossible, but the climate is dramatically different. The marketplace is crowded; there is no simple funding route or an obvious career path for young artists. (let alone mature ones!) There are only a handful of full -time jobs for contemporary dancers in the whole country. Choreographers increasingly choose to develop their work with a group of mature dancers over a period of years, and so do not even audition recent graduates. Students' aspirations can be bruised when they realise that the artists whom they respect and admire are still struggling to make a living whilst pursuing their art on a part-time basis.
Yet the picture is not one of doom and gloom - in part it reflects a more mature profession, an ecology that has evolved, not so much by raising the glass ceiling of resources for existing activity, but by extending its web of activity and influence outward to many different areas of society. There may not be so many full-time jobs for dancers But, there are many more and increasingly diverse opportunities out there for dance graduates - including partnerships and projects in mainland Europe and further afield.
However, the path of employment for young artists will probably not be simple or linear and will for most entail a series of roles and jobs throughout their career, and often require the juggling of several concurrently. In this respect dance is ahead of the field. While the rest of the world has started talking, relatively recently, about 'portfolio careers' as the future of employment, dance has been there for some time! We are multi-taskers par excellence!
The funding picture has changed also, influenced by political and economic shifts and the increasing placement of the Arts on wider agendas. Artists will in the future be less reliant on a single ladder of support from government subsidy, yet increasingly a mixed economy is emerging. Artists are beginning to form mutually beneficial relationships with businesses and trusts as well as negotiating partnerships with educational establishments, youth projects and community organisations, all of which are realising the benefits of creative activity to their own concerns and agendas.
The market place, therefore, might be changing in nature, to one where artists sell their knowledge of the moving body and shape it to the demands of diverse contexts and agendas. (20 years ago young choreographers cut their teeth on small regional repertory company projects, today it might be a trade show or a project in a prison. In this respect dance is interacting with a wider spectrum of society than ever before).
In return for such 'commissions' and 'contracts' dance artists piece together a living and accumulate the support or income to make their own work. Architect Louis Kahn once spoke of the architect having two responsibilities: - firstly to develop his/her professional skills to put to the service of others- and secondly to nurture her own artistic expression. In actual fact, as in dance, the 'professional' role cannot exist without the artistry, for it is this that leads to the artist being commissioned in the first place. What I am suggesting, though, is that young dance artists can expect to spend part of their time placing their skills in dialogue with the agendas of others. This could be considered a compromise, or seen as a creative challenge, a rich learning ground.
In any event we need to consider if we prepare graduates for this kind of professional reality - one in which artists (whether focusing on choreography or performance) need to have a resourceful comprehension of their own skills, an imaginative grasp of their own knowledge and how it can be drawn on and shaped in multifarious creative ways.
Alongside these changes to the cultural and political environment, artists themselves are remoulding the artistic terrain - artform boundaries are being crossed and definitions blurred. Choreographers are choosing to work with performers who are five and 75 years old, disabled and non disabled, amateur as well as professional, trained as dancers or not; they are collaborating across artforms and working across styles, genres and cultures. They are making their work for many contexts, to be placed in bus stations, pubs and galleries, or transformed onto film, CD Rom, or Internet - indeed their performers may even be virtual!
It is therefore no longer sufficient for dancers to be technically proficient and obedient interpreters. Dancers are creative artists actively involved in the devising of work and the research of movement languages, and so require many of the skills previously thought to have been the reserve of choreographers. Choreographers meanwhile, whilst frequently not the makers of dance material, are the providers of the ideas, the drivers of their transformation, the editors and shapers of form. They therefore need to be skilled collaborators with, and directors of, other artists. They need the stimulus of ideas beyond their own field, and to have developed a discriminating eye for movement, time and space.
It is my belief that as the world of work becomes more digital and sedentary dance artists become the invaluable harbourers of the art and knowledge of the moving body. As mass reproduction puts 'packaged' artistic experience in the individual hands of the consumer - the ephemeral and communal nature of live performance, the existence of an artform that puts us in touch with our own physical and mental nature, becomes literally more 'vital' within society.
The fact that Contemporary Dance is spreading its net ever wider, that it invents new languages, collaborates beyond its boundaries and forges new media for its expression does make the task of Dance Education ever more difficult; the debates about what the curriculum should embrace, and what exclude become more complex. Yet we could, perhaps, identify some characteristics of graduates whom we might consider well prepared for this world.
- The profession needs creative and talented individuals who have a confidence in their own imagination and skills: individuals who are bursting with energy and ideas, backed up by the practical know-how to navigate, and influence, the existing structures to make things happen
- They should be comfortable with, and stimulated by, uncertainty, but with a hunger and curiosity to explore the unknown and the unfamiliar
- Their confidence should be complemented by a reflective and inquisitive approach to the world around them, to new perspectives and ideas
- They should embody a well-developed movement intelligence as well as an articulate intellect - with a resourcefulness and versatility to apply and adapt their knowledge to new situations.
- They need to be self-motivated and should feel well-prepared to take initiative - to create jobs and roles, as well as search out existing opportunities - and to articulate their ideas to those individuals and organisations who might support, or work with them
- They need to be autonomous and self-reliant but also cooperative and collaborative in their practice
- They must be determined and resilient, with a stamina for work, and yet driven by a desire to keep learning and discovering.
This is a daunting list! If I had to sum that up in one essential quality I would say - curiosity.
These personal attributes are nurtured more effectively, I believe, through an educational ethos, than one based on the notion of vocational training. Training implies the acquisition of a limited set of skills to carry out a range of prescribed tasks. There is very little pre-scribed and predictable about the evolution of an artform - except the inevitability of 'change'. Therefore students need to gain 'understanding' in addition to 'know - how' so as to be able to adapt their skills and existing knowledge to charting unknown territories. To be able to competently demonstrate their skills only in the ways and context in which they have been learnt is not sufficient.
As Contemporary Dance asserted its right to independence, from Physical Education, its structures were influenced by traditions built up in other disciplines. Sometimes models were borrowed from Conservatoires in classical ballet or music. Both of these are primarily concerned with the training of interpretive performers to service an existing canon of work - or new work made within the same traditions. In ballet this led to the format of the large group class which works well to develop a corps de ballet requiring a uniformity in line, timing and spatial configuration. It has been retained, perhaps rather unquestioningly, in Contemporary Dance institutions, partly because it caters rather conveniently for the large groups of students there is economic pressure to accept.
In classical music there is an appreciation of the individual tuition and hours of individual practice required in the development of skill in playing a particular instrument. No musician will get anywhere without the dedication and self- discipline this entails, whilst the private lessons nurture the individual voice of a soloist. By contrast traditional dance technique teaching tends to promote uniformity at the expense of the unusual and particular, and works through imposing a discipline, with the danger that students can become over-reliant upon outside motivation to drive their progress and performance.
I think it would not be an unreasonable generalisation to say that today's contemporary choreographers look for dancers who have a strong individual voice (not to be confused with an inflexible ego or self-promoting personality!) They look for dancing that is an honest reflection of the particular performer, rather than a demonstration of a 'schooled style'. How frequently do professional dancers talk about needing to 'unlearn' what they know? To a degree this is inevitable as the artform tries constantly to re-invent itself, but could we help students more effectively towards their own movement understanding, the uncovering of their individual voice?
A rosy future
To put on rose-tinted spectacles for a moment - I would love to see graduates enter a professional world where dance artists are appreciated as holders of a specialist knowledge of the body in motion, and are invited to turn their talent to many diverse projects which interact with society in an ever increasing numbers of ways.
This would be a world where individual movement artists could make their own way in the marketplace - selling their knowledge and skills for a proper professional price in exchange for the resources to spend time on the work that they want to make. They would have the confidence and self-esteem built on this independence, rather than, as at present, an insecurity that is fuelled by a dependence on the benevolence and judgement of funders and promoters.
They would therefore take initiative to make things happen on their own artistic terms, individually and with other artists, based on a conviction of their own place and value in society.
They would be collaborators working with other artists and in many media. Their work would not consist of the shaping of existing forms, but be driven by their ideas and their talent to grasp the creative potential inherent in the manipulation of time, body, movement and space.
In this 'future world' artists would no longer need to continually justify their existence, since the web of influence of dance and movement would have spread into all areas of life - dance would be as accessible and familiar as the visual and musical arts There would be a lively climate of articulation around movement art which would place it in the stream of discussion around contemporary ideas, philosophies and theories extending far beyond its own boundaries.
Dance would be so much a common currency that it might crop up anywhere and people would no longer feel the need to ask what it is about, but would be ready to engage in the experience on its own terms.
In the UK, the support structures for Dance are still largely focused around the idea of 'product' and the touring of that 'product' to as many people as possible. In my 'future world' dance would be appreciated as an expanding body of knowledge and an artist would be seen as able to play many valuable roles in society extending beyond the making or performing of choreographic 'products'.
Developments in creative process and practice would be recognised as influential on the evolution of the artform in society, and 'product' would be more transparently seen and understood as reflective of an ongoing process of inquiry.
After many years of living with cancer Gill Clarke died on 15 November 2011.