teChnIque, rituals
So what is technique?
It’s a form of action to get to some conclusion, goal, somewhere.
Strategy is almost the same but not quite. Strategy is a more long time survival thing, within strategy you might use different techniques, to get to your goal.
So what do we talk about when we talk about dance technique?
How technique evolved? What were the goals why a set technique was needed?
To get certain body type. To be able to fullfill certain action within certain aesthetics.
Ballet needs a certain technique to fullfill the aesthetics of the ballet, and not only technique also certain type of body to start with. And I think a lot of the modern dance techniques follow the same path.
And now comes a jump. What are or is the technique of contact improvisation?
Is there one?
And there’s not. CI bases on certain principles of gravities and forces and being able to sense these forces and use them. That creates the dance, dance isn’t created by following certain steps or certain aesthetics that would be given from outside. It’s created by principles. Thus, technique is needed to find those principles, and after that we can be free of it (sort of). That’s why teaching contact improvisation is so hard and interesting, you can have thousands of different techniques to sense the gravity of the earth, the touch of another body, the rhythm of the dance, heartbeat. We are trying to find the princles working when doing patterns, but how to explain that so clearly that the pupil will understand the principle behind/without the pattern? At least in my years in school (ground, high) we learned mainly by following examples (and then after my 1st year in dance school that one started to go into same direction, slowly, thank god). There is/was right and there is wrong. I think many people have used to that, we are so keen to hear that we do things right, we want to know what is right. And when we don’t have clear example what is right (since your senses are yours mine are mine, I can’t know what do you sense, but sometimes, I might think I know), we are easily lost, confused, not knowing where to go.
Eventualy I think that most of dance techniques have aimed to getting to know the principles of movement, but so easily they become just empty repeated patterns, with no real substance or content, empty moving shells.
Then again, to be able perform something, well, it often needs technique, or at least if you have it (yo, la tengo!), it will help you a lot when trying to express whatever you’re expressing (even without trying). There is techniques for writing, playing, talking, small talking, etc.
And if your technique is good, it might help, but if it’s just that, without real content, it will be empty and it will be seen, maybe not by everybody, but some or many. This is also something what Pirsig writes about in “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” (read it if you haven’t)
Then to connection to ritual… Ritual, how I understand it, became into being by the need of community (to have some goal, conclusion, outcome or maintain something). At some point those rituals were set into more or less strick rules/forms, and eventually they became just a repetiton of words/actions without connection to the community or it’s needs. And lately we have even lost all sense communitys more or less. So now we have old rituals going around the world for new age hippies trying to have the sense of community. But community can’t live without commitment (or can it?), and now days most of us have trouble to commit ourselves to anything. If rituals are separated from the life (everyday normal life) and if they’re not able (not allowed) to be renewed, they become empty shells, serving nothing, except those who gain power by being in possession of making those rituals. But little by little that power will decay since there’s no more people (community) behind it, believing in it.
So Technique or ritual easily becomes and empty shell without substance, but can it work another way around?
This is something I though a long time ago, but typically I didn’t get anything done.
What if I start a ritual, certain routine that repeats repeats repeats and which is at the beginning empty, without any clear meaning to me. Will it, through that repetation create the substance for it self and for me?
I actually think it probably does. Something more than “this is the way I’ve always done it”.
Maybe I get myself by the neck and start, finally, something.
