Dance Training

English Summary

In the book Present with the body. The technique of Polish butoh dancers I cover the practices of Polish butohh dancers and I create amodel of butoh training. The analysis of available material led me to the conclusion that butoh’s substance is not the aesthetics of adance act (improvisation, performance) but the specific training practices that are at its core. In the first chapter of the book I present the current state of research in the field of butoh: the history and development of the modern Japanese dance form and its critical analyses with particular consideration of the butoh technique analysis. In my dissertation I used the few available works of butoh technique researchers (Kayo Mikami, Lee Rhizome, Toshiharu Kasai, Sondra Horton Fraleigh) who use non-standard terminology and pay special attention to different aspects of the training process. I also underline the transcultural potential of the genre, which is visible both in the universality of its psycho-somatic training and in its proneness to all types of hybridization. The research process, which resulted in the creation of atraining model, was divided into two steps. The pivots of the preliminary phase of the research were artistic biographies of Polish butoh dancers with particular attention de-voted to the psychophysical practices which involve bodymind practices and the so-called butoh techniques. After analysing the source literature I carried out aseries of interviews with the Polish artists, I took part in the genre acts as an expert observer and, finally, I participated in butoh workshops with both Polish and Japanese dancers. I was mainly interested in the artists’ explicit and tacit knowledge of butoh. I inquired about butoh’s perception and definition and its different training practices. At the core of my research was the question of previous psychophysical practices which predestined artists to engage in butohh. In the second stage of the research (during the analysis of the gathe-red data) I created ageneral model of butoh training sessions on the grounds of the individual trainings I observed. In the process of construction and analysis of the integrated training model I implemented an interdisciplinary approach. The knowledge employed includes the fields of cultural studies, cultural anthropology, psychology, philosophy as well as neurobiology and cognitive sciences. The second chapter presents the training practices of the Polish dancers and performers who are involved in butohh: Paweł Dudzinski, Justyna Jan-Kru-kowska, Sylwia Hanff, Krzysztof Jerzak, the Amareya Theatre (Katarzyna Julia Pastuszak, Agnieszka Kaminska, Aleksandra Sliwinska), Tomasz Bazan (.e Maat Project .eatre), Aleksandra Capiga-Łochowicz, TO-EN (Anna Brałkowska), Irena Lipinska and Katarzyna Zejmo, Iwona Wojnicka, Miho Iwata, Rui Takayuki Ishihara. I focused on the unique psychophysical disci-pline preferred by particular artists. The training practices of the Polish butoh dancers include methods and techniques of different provenance. Among them are the methods and techniques explored mainly from the stage-ada-ptation point of view which function in different types of performing arts, mind-body disciplines as well as body and movement therapy. All these practices are used creatively by the Polish dancers and are integrated with the so-called butoh techniques. Through the analysis of detailed models I was able to create ageneral training model of butoh of the Polish dancers. The technique of the Polish butoh dancer includes techniques which aim at reaching the psychophysical state known by the Japanese theorists and practitioners as butoh-tai (the butoh body). Movement (dance) has its origin in the kinetic reaction to the stimuli coming from the surrounding environment, updates of the contents saved in the memory of the body or/and embodiment of the mentally created contents. The techniques which are used in the integrated butoh training are atool of self-change and its catalyst. I analysed the sequence of the stages which create the process and the structure of butoh training. I observed three main steps: intro, following and embodiment. In the first one (intro) I singled out endurance training and mindfulness training which are both aimed at achieving the state of total presence (in other words the butoh body, butoh- tai). In the second stage (following) the dancer explores the stimuli coming from the inside of his or her body (among other things the data gathered in SUMMARY the body’s memory) and from the outside (for example sensory excitement ofthe body). The core of the third stage (embodiment) are the ideokinetic and ideodynamic reactions which constitute the primary method of work in butoh: working with images (the tools are the so-called butoh-fu, butoh notations). The dancer’s and the viewer’s transformation, which occurs as aresult ofthe above-mentioned methods, is the essence of butoh. The process of ceaseless transformation and the experience of transformation are both present in the butoh training practice and the stage practice. This is why I finally pre-sent the possibility of applying the category of performativity, in the Erika Fischer-Lichte approach, and the phenomenon of neurobiological empathy which is at source of the simultaneity of transformation in all participants ofan event (aplay, stage improvisation, performance).

This article is a result of a small-scale interview-based study that explored the social conditions of ballet and contemporary dance production in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. This study draws on interviews given by twelve professional dancers and choreographers both freelancers and company based, who for the purposes of this research offered to share their experiences of studying and making dance. More specifically, this article aspires to map the social conditions of possibility of dancing and making dance, drawing on the class condition and career trajectories of those individuals who became dancers. With the aid of Bourdieu’s (1984; 1990; 1993a) concepts of ‘capitals’ (economic, social, cultural and physical), ‘habitus’ and ‘trajectories’, this piece of work will discuss how class conditions give or limit access to vocational training as a career pathway to dance.  It is argued that, although the social origin of this sample presents relative variety, dance is an activity that demands different types of support, which are eventually more accessible to those social groups with more assets.

Ballet and modern dance teachers often exhort students to ‘travel across the floor’ and ‘cover ground’. These instructions invoke metaphors of travel and mobility that capture an array of common assumptions about dance, space and movement. This essay examines the spatial and mobility discourses that these instructions simultaneously build upon and produce while exploring the seductiveness of technique's promise of mastering space through the moving body. Threading auto-ethnography with critical theory and moving across different disciplinary fields and writing styles, the article explores the ways in which these instructions leak outside the perimeter of the dance studio to feed into the narrative of a dancer's extended physical, geographical and social mobility. Analysing the mobility and travel discourses of dance training vis-à-vis poststructuralist theorisations of the subaltern power of the nomad and theories of space and place, it is argued that this narrative becomes complicit in the construction of an idealised notion of artistic nomadism, which, in turn, aligns with current neoliberal logics organised around the production of mobile subjects.