Hello dance educators! Very curious what anyone thinks about my Blog style reflections on my approach to being a contemporary dance performance 'teacher' in 2013.

I will respond to any and all feedback/discussions...now that I'm up and running with Idoc Jack Gallagher :-)

Now the bloggy stuff

I see the body as a series of many parallel processors. In that sense, technique, which is losing ground as a 'concept' today in a learner centered environment, has to be reconsidered. On the one hand, there needs to be a potential for every student to tune in to their own practice, their own interests for the day. On the other hand, there needs to be a "container" of ideas and methods and exercises that provide opportunity. I actually enjoy this challenge and all its variety. My artistic practice is fed by the myriad of passions and issues that surface, each in their own way and in their own time.

The longer I teach dance, whether it be with aspiring professionals, professionals or just enthusiastic people, I've become aware that what we seek as a performer (on any stage, in any walk of life) is rarely addressed in 'technique" class. Since i started developing a comprehensive training method with Anouk van Dijk in 2000, which aspired to link the physical with the mental in an artistic wholeness which include health and well being as well as drive and desire. Becoming conscious of "risk" in all its appearances proved for me to be a key in activating the performing body in class.

I like rigor, sweat, repetition and going deeper into the body's intelligence. Sometimes that's facilitated by moving away from language; sometimes language is a tool which uncovers the access route. As the Zen Buddhists say, there are three distinct types of action with the human body: speaking, thinking and doing. I find risk as a performer in all three. I find risk as a dance practitioner in all three. I try and make friends with all the risks that appear in a dance environment, in what ever capacity I am there. Inspired by the book "A choreographer's Handbook" by Jonathan Burrows... I would have to say that by engaging body and mind and art in a class focused on particular skills for that day (yet providing opportunity for exercising even more) and becoming aware of what for that particular body at that particular time is experienced as 'risk' is how "I want to work". Unassociated with drama, but not unfriendly towards it, any potential to explore risk, in whatever sense of the word or action (ex: to inhibit s.t.) is a welcomed activity.

Jack Gallagher, Tilburg, 8 february 2013

This below is to date the attempt to describe my classes generally. Something I'm always modifying for a particular environment. Thanks for reading. :-)

Jack gives a rigorous upright class which challenges the body with a series of exercises based on expanding a body's interaction with space and bringing artistry to the surface. The emphasis is on effective effort, dynamic versatility and calculated risk. The class combines different mental and physical efforts simultaneously, releasing one into the other, creating reciprocal flows of cause and effect. The normal duality in dance between what is considered 'formal' or 'theatrical' dissolves into more contemporary issues: energy management, articulation, bio-feedback and making use of personal experience: The intelligence of our embodied cognition.

Vigorous Risk is a principled class, structured with an open view on the inter-dependancy between the mental and the physical realms: brains, languages, signals become interactive with trunks, legs and heads. By using questions like: “What goes where?” and “What effects what?” - a very different artistic experience is generated in contrast to and yet complimentary with 'form based' techniques.

 By rigorously training the use of three primary efforts- directing, sourcing and sequencing, an artistic transparency arrives in the training. By processing these efforts, the dancer learns what (s)he uses and is using, what (s)he has learned and is learning, releasing in the process her/his embodied cognition. 

THE BACKGROUND

Jack Gallagher has derived his Vigorous Risk technique from various influences; from studying release technique with Zvi Gottheiner and Sara Rudner in NYC, as well as working with Amanda Miller (9Point/Forsythe School). He has been practicing yoga since 1990. From 1997 to 2007 Gallagher was involved in the development of the Countertechnique by Anouk van Dijk, with whom he still maintains a fruitful artistic working relationship.