Since April 20, Daniel Aschwanden, Peter Stamer and I are in Beijing where we meet and work with a dance company that has toured in Asia and in Europe.
We are giving daily sessions of about two hours in which we do some of the things we know, with the dancers and choreographers of the company. Mostly we do imprvosiational and game structures that deal with choice making and the field between presence and action.
So, in a way we teach them.
In a way, we are expected to teach. At least, that was what one of the company asked us in the beginning of our stay: Show us some of your techniques and games.
One might expect cultural problems to occur. But so far the only questions we have had were: What is it that interests the members of this Beijing company, when they ask us to teach them? And, as we have been lucky enough to watch their rehearsals: What is the way they usually create?
Besides aesthetical differences, there seems to be an understanding of creation, that there is an author realising his ideas with the dancers, which differs quite a bit from our understandings of creation. But I am not totally sure yet.
