Every  year I prepare a final performance for this school in a small town in austria´s countryside around a main theme, this year I decided for COLOURS as overall subject.

SOME ISSUES TO KNOW BEFOREHAND:

I meet the dancestudents once a week in their sparetime and most of them stay for 3-4 years with me. Mostly girls, this year three boys turned up and wanted to learn about dancing!

The overall identification-code ;) for my position in the school is BALLET Teacher. Big part of my job is... spreading the "good news" what a huge field the term BALLET can cover (the images in people´s heads about ballet are still very limited); therefore...

...bringing in many different approaches to the dance-teaching: Alexander-technique, touch, improvisation and develloping movement material for choreographies, imitating dance-vocabulary, brainstorming... all as practical experiences and educational tools to support peoples skills, confidence and creativity .

HOW DID WE GET THERE?

After collecting associations and ideas as well as material I already had in hands such as a 10 metres of pink cloth and 6 blue-green finns (or the mermaids) and some music-pieces I always wanted to work with, we started with the practical, physical part of the work. My approach to creating dance pieces with and for students is very eclectic, no always apropriate strategies available! Most inspiration comes from the children without any words...

 Six dance pieces were the outcome of the work :

1 BLUEGREEN (7 girls age 6-8 )

Here is one of the instructions to find specific movement material and stretch their experience :

Imagine you have only one leg at the bottom end of your body and move within this restriction… Imagine you  live under water and can move just with a finn, but dream of two legs! 

Another instruction: we have two legs and are designed to use them in an upright way on firm ground underneath, but you dream of living under water…how do you move under these circumstances?  (view the pictures attached to my IDOC)

The two “worlds” between earth and water meet and exchange …

2 PINK (5 girls age 9-10 )

Five girls being in an adventure mode of "The Pink Panther"! 

The piece turned out to be a collage of moving images/motives around this smart and funny cartoon character. Each of them IS the pink panther. The dance piece was accompanied by the famous music piece of henry mancini, of course.

- 10 meters of pink, light cloth were the initial spark for improvisations in space and 

all of them should stay in touch with the textile, but still go through pink panther troubles...moving in synchronicity, sometimes individual efforts and surprises:

-building a trap and falling in the trap themselves- finding smart solutions out again, collaborating as a well tuned team as well as trying to be a little smarter than the others;

-"drawing" objects with their bodies and entering this virtual space, eg. a hole in the ground,a staircase, a chair.. to finish the scene, just wipe out the drawn line!

- pressing one´ s body against the upright piece of cloth, pink sculptures appearing !

For the final part, they all lined up to exit with the long pink "skin" in hand, unexpectedly the last panther  throws herself on the skin and gets pulled back stage by the others!

3 RED-WHITE-BLACK (3 girls age 12-13)

Three archetypical colours dancing to prokovief’ s music!

It´s a story about three differing temperaments and their interactions. That one is the most classical piece of the program in terms of dance vocabulary and choreographic approach: The musical phrases and instantly changing moods of "El Amor brujo" guide the dancers into the events.

4 LITTLE BLUE and LITTLE GREEN…(7girls, 2 boys age 5-6)

Two colours become friends, close friends and both turn green after a while…

Structuring the whole group in 2 halfs: one blue, one yellow. Each colour was supposed to draw colour on the floor with their wandering feet in various spatial patterns (straight line, curves, spots, with changes of level, circling..)  first the blues, then the yellows. From alternating,seperate fields the colours began to enter the other´s realm, finally diffusing into greenishness, becoming one...;) 

As sound we used two alternating qualities accompaning the colours through the dynamic changes.

5 COLOURFUL (8 girls,1 boy age 4)

Each child is dressed in one colour all over,  they play with each other within a simple score and change roles within the structure.

6 RED-BLUE-GREEN or   FROM   PASTELL  TO PURE  (young adults age 26-29 and myself)

A danced transformation from being a shaded colour to its pure quality, music by david garrett

For that piece I used the principles of the A.T. as somatic learning approeach: Guiding them out of habits with words and touch brought more clarity in their awareness and a reliable sense of difference between each other while being in contact.

Part 1:  the three women had made up a set phrase for themselves and moved in efforts like indirect, unexpected dynamic changes, no "social" attention and their use of space apart from each other.

A pause of five seconds- they realigne through letting their neck free and moving forward and up (A.T.) and come in contact  -

Part 2: change in movement efforts towards direct, light, alternating bound and freeflow .
A joyful, juicy dance expanding in space, like the reunion of a split parts, yet enjoying the differences!

COMMENTS:

All together it was an inspiring and fertile experience for me as teacher/choreographer/director, a true three- in- one job;)

The most difficult aspect were the parent’s expectations upon their children’ s performance and my attempt to direct things towards “reality” without frustrating anybody (myself included)In other words: keeping my artistic esteem high and the expectations low…

Another Insights: Trust the people involved just as much as the the scores and rules I set up…

Moreover, I received clear directions about how to continue my teaching next year with this grown synergy between ballet forms, scores and somatic practices.