Learning by making and making by learning how to learn

There is a new technology of the dancer’s self, a new care of the body already in practice now, entirely dissociated from the premises of mastery and authenticity. I will illustrate it from an example of the choreographers I have worked with.1 Instead of pondering whether to take a ballet or modern dance class or any of the established bodypractices as a general warm-up before the rehearsal, some choreographers think they should rethink their training more specifically. Each project develops its own technical procedures and the body specializes accordingly. Another approach to physical technique in currency now stems from the question: what kind of body practice should one set up from the concept and work method one is elaborating in parallel so that such a body practice may positively interfere and transform a habitual methodology? So, rethinking the body training anew runs along two lines: either dancers have become pragmatic and opportunistic to fully accept that their body intelligence is relative to and instrumental for particular purposes, or they invest in searching for means without ends in order to prevent themselves from consolidating the knowledge or the “mindset” in which they’re going to make a performance. In both cases, they […]