Think outside the old box: how a return to pedagogy can (still) support our creative and physical capacities

The body is already written, but our experience of discovering it not.    Why then, is our exploration and nurturing of our body's capacity through technique understood as a more creatively constraining, unconnected, and outdated vehicle, in comparison to those processes that we access when choreography is being made?

We've hashed out what doesn't work about pedagogy.  We've articulated how and why creative processes stimulate our development.

But....

It seems like the body has certain needs.  Functionally, I can't offer a sustained improvisation as a dancer if I haven't supported myself with some physical endurance training, as well as some training to support work of focus and presence.  I can't sustain any body anything if I neglect what it basically needs: strength, mobility, stimulation, sustenance.  There is no escaping the biology.  Right?

I was reading over my notes from a workshop I participated in as a dancer and this caught my eye:

"What [activities, tasks, approaches, or forms] could I go back and test?  [I could] work work at different levels or with different degrees of intensity, I could work specificity (stable increments), and then flow.  Work is not always a progression.  How do we change propositions to encourage integration of concepts, of work?"

      Aha!  The training that we do is about our learning.  And learning is about understanding something.  So the protocols for engaging with material in class should function as a means for us to understand our facility (our bodies, our creativity, and so on).  

      So, great if I go to pilates to work specifically the strength of my hamstrings, so that I don't over-recruit my quads.  But this is a moment specific task, that is, I need more hamstring strength at this moment, and hopefully I won't have to go to pilates forever to answer this need.  Because, pilates is a test.  It is a resource.  It is only one part of me developing.  And my developmental needs are in flux.  If I work on my hamstring strength, at one point, I won't need this specific work anymore, it will be time for me to integrate it into a larger flow of work, a complexity of work, that I am (hopefully) also engaging in.  

      Pedagogy doesn't need to be something that is fixed.  It can (must) fluctuate with our needs.  Biological, aesthetic, creative, or otherwise.  It can shift to support our curiosity.   (I know practitioners who have shifted their pedagogical approach; this is underway, though less acknowledged or visible).  At one point we need to make the conversation of what is possible in pedagogy louder than our complaints regarding it's limitations.  No?

This post was inspired by an article in Research in Dance Education:

"Interfering with the lived field of dancepedagogyfrom organizational and leadership studies perspectives–an explorative intervention with performing and teaching dance artists"

by Tone Pernille Østern & Eirik J. Irgens