IDOCs » LEAP Teaching Residency in Vitlycke - Document 1 FACTS
This document contains the facts (schedule, class plans, afternoon and evening activtities ) of the 1st Teaching Residency of the team: Vitlycke, ICK, ISLO and TW. It took place in Vitlycke - Center for Performing Arts, from the 30th of June to the 5th of July, 2014.
2014.07.27

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Teachers of the 1st TR in Vitlycke - Center for Performing Arts 

Pavle Heidler (Vitlycke)
Francesco Scavetta (Vitlycke)
Pia Lindy (ISLO)
Elina Ikonen (ISLO)
Maria Ines Villasmil (ICK)
Robin Berkelmans (ICK)
Eszter Gál (Wiener Tanzwochen)

Dancers (participanting in the morning classes and feedback sessions)
Aleksandar Georgiev, Carla Doorn,  Karla Búcaro, Alexander Aarø

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TIMETABLE:

MONDAY 30 JUNE 

Arrival at Gothenburg airport. Francesco comes with a car and drives us to pick up Pavle at the Central railway station. Due to the train delay we have an informal meeting at the station. We were talking about qualification trade marks of different somtaic techniques and how they applied in teachig contemporary dance.

Questions arose:
How do you cultivate your specific movement (somatic approach) studies into your own material? When and how do you start calling your teaching a method? Is there a need to name or title your work in order it to be recognized?

After Pavle's arrival it takes about 1,5 hrs drive to Vitlycke. We did shopping at the supermarket on the way there . Settling into our rooms, getting a bit familiar with the Center...

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TUESDAY 1 JULY

Morning session 10:00 -13:00

Elina, 1st class 1,5h

The aim of the class was to start knowing each other and taking pauses to feel the impact of the shared experienced in the bodymind. First sitting in a circle and introdused ourselves. Then continued the same in pairs with a set timing - working with watching to the eyes, touching, dancing - constantly changing pairs. Came back to circle and felt how was it to be there again after these experiences. Everybody pausing at the same time throughout the whole exercise. The attitude of acceptance and wellcomming any kind of impact was implied. No matter how beautiful or awkward - sensation, emotion or dance - thank you, like in trager mentastics approach.

Pia: For the morning session  at TR -residency I led a 90 min class which I led 2 weeks earlier as on open class in a suburb in Helsinki. These classes in Kontula are free of charge and attended by people of different age and backgrounds. 

Here is the description the class: FIND THE DANCER YOU ARE! open dance classes (90 minutes)  We start with simple exercises that support the exploring of your own moving and help to create your own movement material. The exercises work also as a warm up towards dance and improvisation. There is an emphasis on dance being an accesssible form of art for everyone. We can let go of focusing on technical virtuosity and aim more towards how dance enlivens one´s physicality and choreographic thinking as well as increases happiness from freedom of moving. (If you want to read more about the open class see: http://http://www.idocde.net/idocs/883 )

LUNCH TIME

Afternoon session

Themes/topics/ our needs, interests and aims

We all had around 30 minutes to introduce our work, ourselves the way we wanted. It became the ground for all what we had done in the next days. (We collected our notes in a shared dropbox folder.)

DINNER TOGETHER  around 20:00

informal talks around the table

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WEDNESDAY 2 JULY

Morning session  10:00 - 13:00 > Maria and Pavle

Silent Walk:

Walking for two hours in silence with a couple outdoor. In a certain moment each of them have to find the motivation and place to perform a private dance for their partner.

Finding the place and the tempo for doing that will be part of revealing the ineerlogic of the relation with the other while going trough a path where many decisions will have to be done.

How we arrive to certain agreements among the two of us trough the body and not language?

How do we communicate and interact with each other in the environment provided?

What can we take of a process where we place ourselves into the unknown?

Sharing the proposal offered with the practice of Pavle was opening the possibilities of preparing the body and mind to start a process. This was an experience that places the participants in a very reach state of mind and creativity.

 

from Pavle

On Wednesday I was to work with the group for a period of time. I was to take over from Maria, who proposed to work in silence and asked me if I could find a way to work in silence, too. I accepted happily, knowing there was no way for me to prepare for the actuality of the situation I was to find myself in.
 
Imagined Proposal:
My initial wish was to propose hands-on work; I imagined leading the group through excerpts of the hands on practice I call “Regenerative Deep-Relaxation Therapy”. I was going to communicate the work by recognising the “correct timing” in which I would take over the “leadership” of the environment, at which time I would start doing the hands-on work on my partner. Imagining the situation, I expected everyone to recognise the switch and join in what I do because of our previous agreement: the group was aware of my general plan.
 
Actual Situation:
In the actual environment I found myself surprised and impressed by the intensity of the focus present in the studio at the time I decided was my time to take over the “leadership”. I stood up, calmed down and offered my hands as if I wanted them to be taken so as to connect everybody as we stand in a circle. Initially, this gesture was misunderstood. The misunderstanding facilitated for the time it took to structurally and socially restructure the room.
We stood together, eyes closed. 
Next, I lay on my back and was joined by the group. Heads towards the centre of the circle. I took some time laying down and then initiated exhale-humming. As the group accepted the humming proposal, I left this effort and the circle to perform two manoeuvres from the “Regenerative Deep-Relaxation Therapy” on each body. 
I slacked all the limbs out as best as I could (tuning into the fascia to allow the muscle to relax into its fascial membrane, the bone into the soft surrounding and finally that whole environment into the skin, skin to fabric, fabric to floor, floor to the base of the building, the building into the rock, the rock to soil, etc.). To round up I went to the back of the neck and offered a slacking out Cranio-Sacral move I first learned from Shannon Cooney. 
When I finished the round I left the room. The decision to leave the room was made intuitively, because of the amount of information I sensed was being processed in the room at the given time. If I were to stay I would have gotten the desire to continue guiding the attention towards the solutions I would judge as successful. It was not my time to do that. I left the room so as to potentially inspire a sense of disappearance of authority. 
 

LUNCH TIME

Afternoon session:
starting with feedback and comments on the morning sessions (Tues+Wed)

Pavle performs the studio version of “It sleeps Behind the Sun, he said as he wept".

Eszter suggested to dance his solo back by more of us. We had danced a 2 minutes REflection REdancing.

DINNER TOGETHER

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THURSDAY 3 JULY

Morning session 10:00 - 13:00

Eszter and Pavle's class 

Ways to begin:
bring yourself into motion by dancing with music (a gentle push into awakening)

intention: working in small groups with touch, offering a direction from where everyone can find their own path within a group, communicate and build trust, fall into dancing together

working in trio's
one is lying on his / her back, 2 partners touching with the hands

In both roles: observing, noticing, following, responding, giving and receiving, taking in, recognizing and going with or going against

playing with the volume of the physical response and work with everything that is there at the moment

more specific directions for the persons touching:
- hands do not want – acknowledge, being
- direction through the fascia – into roundness and length and center of touch
- giving weight and direction taken into moving and being moved

after the 3rd round – roles merging → discovering the unfolding dance

note: this material can be offered in different contexts for professionals, and for non-professionals, as warm up for a jam, or for tuning into one self with partners, can offer a multi layered learning through support and being supported; addressing also: one can become aware of limits, own needs and welcoming what is there, saying yes to what ever comes

from Pavle

On Thursday I shared “leadership” with Eszter. She and I took time on Wednesday evening to prepare: we shared proposals, gave each other a little bit of an intro into how we were thinking to and what we were thinking of facilitating the next morning. Eszter took notes. I asked myself (silently) if I should be taking notes, too.
 
My initial proposal was to introduce the group to The Moon Practice, which half the group would perform for the other half and vice-versa. Eszter proposed it would be interesting to give everyone a chance to go through the process two times. I agreed.
 
On Thursday morning, when I took “the leadership” over from Eszter, I prepared 5 chairs, put them in a row facing the studio - “the stage” and introduced what I thought we were going to be practicing. 
 
The Moon Practice
The group of ten was to split into two groups of five. Of the two, one group was to perform, and the other was to witness.
Performing The Moon Practice means to stand “on stage”, shoulder to shoulder, in a line, facing the audience, looking forward. The task is to focus and observe any changing impressions of the internal or external environment, and allow those to take hold of ones ever-changing physical materiality.
Witnessing The Moon Practice means to sit as an audience would, observe the efforts performed by the other half of the group while focusing on what is becoming performed, or when something becomes performative (and why?).
Both groups are instructed that the work is shared between the two different roles, the work is about the meeting between /or of/ the performer and the spectator; the question in: where exactly is this “between” the meeting is taking place at?
 
Both groups were to perform and witness first, before gathering in a round to share observations from either side of the experience.
This process was to be repeated twice.
The talking was to inform the doing.
 
The practice itself brings into the room a specific attentional tonus, so to speak. The group decides what the specifics of the practice, as it's being practiced are. The group decides what successful means that day.
 

Closing integration by Eszter:

Stillness score (10 minutes)
Finding a place in the space, then a shape and become still (own definition of stillness). Be there, notice what changes or not through time, only move when you have a strong reason for it.

 

LUNCH TIME

Afternoon session:
starting with feedback and comments of the morning session

After feedbacks and comments we looked together at the paper " Some Questions to Inspire the TR Meetings". We had already talked how in our individual introductions many of the questions were touched.  

Raw thinking.

 1. Meta-teaching - Where is the teaching? Layers of teaching

What do you allow yourself as a teacher to do? Different roles with different groups

Teaching happening in many levels. 

 Perspective - seen it, been there, how do you make choices?

How does your teaching change with age?

 2.  Maturity of contemporary 

3. Where do you place yourself in the Artist - Teacher spectrum? Teaching as an artist

Where do you place the dance and art in your own thinking/in your own imagination?

4. Why do you teach?

5. IDEAL EDUCATION - What would be an ideal Dance education from our points of view? 

a short break

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OPEN CLASS TO local people  19:00 -21:00 

The class started with Francesco welcomig the local participants and introducing us and briefly the LEAP project. There were 11 participants from age 30 to 80. They were all from the Tanum area and some of them visitig Vitlycke he first time!

The moving started with Robin bringing a light hearted atmosphere into the studio by playing simple games, with attention on ourselves and the group. 

Already from the start the whole group was game and ready to jump into the unknown together.

Robin's part:

I wanted to create a playful and physical group atmosphere without much complexity for the people present. So I worked with movement games. Walking around and connecting with somebody or somebodies in space. First came walking around and trying to keep the same distance.

Then walking around and making the distance shorter then larger.

A bit of free movement within the score to play.

Then the triangles, in which one select two partners without them knowing and then to try and form a even-sided triangle with them. I explained that the impossibility is great, because we can then erase competitivity.The group will move like a group of fish or birds.

The last was the lying, standing, sitting exercise. Basically, one selects again two partners without them knowing and then one tries to create the situation that of the three partners, one is sitting, one is standing, one is lying down. Again the impossibility is present, yet a bit different. There's more room to play if one sees the opportunities.

ESZTER:  transition from Robin's games into sensing through the skin by touching the hands very lightly and discover the feeling of the hand by the other hand...

...in standing, putting the palms together and gently slide them on each other, feel the skin, the shape of the hand, notice the sensation of touching... hands, arms and face – open the face → moving towards a partner (suggestion was: choose someone they did not know)

...exploration with eyes closed and being guided - first the environment, then the body in relation to the environment and movement

principles: sensation can become a dance, letting go (expectation, holding patterns), opening oneself to notice, moving by touch, building trust

two roles: 1st round: guider and explorer (eyes closed) – the guider takes the eyes closed partner to a place in the space, then witnessing the explorer's journey as he/she discovering it by touching it, tasting the texture, the form, the temperature, the strength etc, following his/her own interest

(taking the partner to 4 or 5 places in the studio, then changing roles, then shortly share the experience by talking)

2nd round: initiator and follower

guiding the eyes closed partner into the space, move through, travel and take him/her on a journey, through imaginary landscape, and gradually invite them to simple movements, leading with listening

(changing roles, after each had their turn, a short solo is dancer to each other as feedback of the journey)

without any break Maria took over the guidance and lead the partners into a more open dancing. Francesco was a DJ. The free dancing with many partners was a great fun!

We finished the two hour class sitting in a circle, sharing one thought or gesture with the whole group. 

The local participants left with happy dancing bodies and many of them shared their positive feelings afterwards. Some of them also stayed a bit longer and asked about how the class was prepared and about LEAP and us as teachers/dancers, and IDOCDE. 

LATE DINNER

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FRIDAY 4 JULY

Morning session 10:00 - 13:15

Francesco's part: "white page"


“Empty your cup of tea”.
Proposal:
Following also Robin’s suggestion, I decided to share a praxis based and inspired by tai chi chuan. 
I guided a series of exercises and manipulations in couples, proposing some of the basic movements of the Hidden Tradition Yang style, including a few basic martial applications and, so called, “pushing hands” exercises. Directing the focus on centring, grounding and quality of muscular tone in the limbs, through apparently very simple exercises, we experienced:
- how the body re-adjust in order to absorb a push, without either falling back or to naturally resist -a sort of “fighting against” that generates just vulnerability-. 
- the quality of antagonist weight through the body
- the isolation in the limbs, especially in the spine -vertebra by vertebra-, while either rolling down (letting the weight of the head) or rolling up from the coccyx.
- the continuity and/or fragmentation in simply lifting the arms
 
Purpose
The idea is be in a state of observation. Moving as someone else is "doing it" and I am observing my body moving. Visualising a detailed journey through the body, involving each limbs without unneeded tension. Sensing which limbs are active while others are just receiving the movement. When one part of the body get’s “full” while another empty.
 
General reflection
I find interesting the “how" to approach any physical proposals. To create a constant state of openness: stays curious mode.
In martial arts, it's usual to come back to the same exercises that become a sort of “milestone”. The exercise stays the same through time and tells us where we are, reminding us were we have been. It’s not just a forward process and needs a constant update. It variates throughout the years, but also within an hour. It facilitate an awareness of how my body and its changes through time. It’s also work on removal. You need to throw away in order to fill up. You need to ideally forget, in order to re-find. An healthy erasing for a deep white page.
 
 

Robin in 5 sentences:

The premise: ' Mind guides chi guides body', a classic point of departure in Tai Chi Classics . Energetic work as a proposal for enriching somatic knowledge. Curious how it works with experts in the somatic contemporary dance field. Questioning if it is a practice at the fringes of somatic practice, a supplement to our body knowledge - or is it essential for of somatic development? Tuning the instrument of performance with 'white page mentality'.

LUNCH TIME

Afternoon session:

We started with feedback and comments on the morning session and that took us back to some of the topics and questions from the other day:

When you propose something - how do the people receive it? (That is very interesting pedagogically)

 How can I re-adjust my practice when the students are in question.

"Students are not the problem but you are" or "You might not be in a right place"

How do you get those who don´t show up in your class to come?

Talking about attitude, humbleness and failure.

The one who recognizes the problem has to deal with the problem. And the consequenses.

Where is the teaching? Where is the learning?

What is underlying your teaching? Or your learning?

 When you open the door of a studio it´s brings you to a social situation.  In Maria´s words: “always check the room first! How are you today? “Read the room.”  Practice  awareness: “you say different things to different people” (adjust to people)

We decided that the "Raw thinking" (discussion, questions and topics about teaching) would continue during next months in our shared google docs-folder and dropbox. And this is something we´ll bring to our 2nd LEAPrecidency-week in Amsterdam in November 2014.

 DINNER 

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SATURDAY 5 JULY

Morning session / evaluation 9:00 - 10:45ish / continue till 12:00

from Pavle

Prior to meeting on Saturday morning, the group agreed to meet in the studio at 9am and work for an hour and a half; before taking time to round-up, clean-up, pack-up and leave Vitlycke Center for Performing Arts. The actual physical material that the group was to going to engage in was going to be proposed spontaneously.
 
The mood I found the studio in when I entered and “read the room” reminded me of the atmosphere I encounter when I lead a class through something I would call my basic practice. (I call it The Process of Materialisation of Fiction.) Inspired, I proposed the work to the group when Pia asked if anyone wanted to propose anything. The group accepted.
 
When proposed as facilitated group work The Process of Materialisation of Fiction most often starts by the group I work with lying on their backs. If I can, I darken the room as much as I can and instruct the participants that it’s OK for them to fall asleep; that is, if the opportunity shows itself. I next calm myself down (best I can), soften my voice and lead the group through a series of different physical, anatomical, intellectual, emotional and maybe spiritual focuses. 
I repeatedly remind the participants of their breath, focusing particularly on their exhale.
I repeatedly remind the participants that they are entering and working in a non-linear environment. In this environment: their impressions are not expected to follow a chronological order; in fact, their impressions are not expected to be ordered in any way and are not expected to necessarily and immediately “make sense” (during the time of practice).
 
After 40 minutes (which seems to be a more or less general timing needed to warm-up and focus the attention) I start playing soft music, as softly as seems appropriate; to which I add, if I can, the tiniest bit of light. At this point I will be addressing the participants, some of which might be already engaging in movement perceivable to my eye, as if they were engaging in a dance of their choice. I use the word dance deliberately, knowing that some of them might be engaging in activities they themselves wouldn’t consider to be dancing just yet.
 
From here on out, I will be supporting, sometimes teasing the growing dance with my music choices and the amount of light I add or take away from the room until I recognise the dance as being finished.
 
The end of the Saturday dance was also the end of our working week. I decided that I wanted to finish by bringing the bodies back to heaviness and reminding the bodies of joy. I proposed the laughing exercise I first learned from Oleg Soulimenko.
One person lays on his/hers stomach, on the floor. The next person lays on top of the first person, and the third, the fourth, rarely the fifth. Persons included calm down, release their weight into and through the person on the bottom. The bottom person is instructed to start laughing. When the last laugh dies out, the bottom person gives a signal, and the people on top gently and softly slide off.
The exercise is repeated so that all participants get to be the bottom one.
 
I concluded by bringing the group back to the circle, hands together, eyes closed. I like to use this exercise to practice documentation at the level of physical, maybe molecular, focus. I like to use this exercise to practice gratitude and remind ourselves of the warmth our palms. 

 

a short break

We took 60 minutes to writing and doing things needed. Eszter had given us the 3 questions for evaluation the evening before and we answered to those as well.  

 

DEPARTURE at 13:00

And the SEA...

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Attachments:
in the field
clambing up
PAVLE
Fr 2
taken by Pavle
TR team inwork
panorama-four-small
3rd July - Manipulation into trio
3rd July - Manipulation into trio 0
3rd July - Manipulation into trio II
 
 
 
 

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