MODE05

Thinking, acting, moving and joining together with different people and their approaches to teach dance and choreography marks one of the exitements and interests for me. In particapating mode 05
I would like to find a clearer vision about the contemporary demands and chances for a education model, which trains, forms, constructs and open up ways of thinking and moving the body.

Since beginning of 2004 I have started to accept teaching opportunities in the field of performing arts. Before that I always refused because I didn’t know what i could teach and on top of it how I would teach that. That are the questions that I tried to work on since last year during several experiences in different education context. So my interest in MODE05 are :
1 : to continue to work on these questions
2 : to work on the formulation of a utopic model for an ideal education time and space . Taking in account that teaching or learning art is, I think, an impossible task. But it is an interesting impossibility to use in order to produce some ???

Here are my first toughts on motivations for mode05 from about a month ago:

When I got interested in studying dance, I could only find programmes that would interest me in the Netherlands. In Germany, there was not a single programme that would treat dancers/choreographers as artists from the beginning on (and not only after having undergone a rigid physical and/or intellectual practice) and offer theory, practice and space for own work as well as for reflecting oneself within various contexts. Still, such programmes are rare in Germany, if at all they exist. For me, co-organising mode05 is an opportunity to help change this situation plus the benefit of organising a sort of international think tank on the issue. Effects that go beyond the situation in Germany are more than welcome to me.

Hello everybody. As you can see from the list of participants I am not an active participant in the first place. Ulrike and Martin invited me to join the whole thing as an observer, so I will stay out of the process itself during the week in Potsdam. Although I want to contribute to the preparation: a little collection that grew when I tried to get more clear about what to go for and what to expect and what to avoid in this discussion. See you then.

My education was very traditional: school, university, sports and even dance in the beginning, was based on the idea of accelerating knowledge and development and pushing evolution. The theory of linear growth of knowlegde implicates an efficient and goal orientated learning, which at least the teacher should be able to define. The moment I started to question all this, was when I realised that I was bored so quickly. To recreate the mental structures I am used to for many years, is an ongoing process oscillating between creativity, mind, consciousness, psychology, emotions, disciplin, frustration, freedom and fun.

Today we had one of our regular meetings at fabrik Potsdam; Sabine, Martin and me discussing and projecting what might happen in two and a half weeks when we're all together for mode05. Kind of hard... how to prepare an open process, knowing that all meaning and fixations are up to the process itself and the energy of 30 people starting a one week exploration on the issue of dance/choreography education?

I don’t consider myself a dancer. I didn’t go through a dance education, although sometimes my name is mentioned in programs in the category dance or even choreography. I rather consider myself a writer, although, during 7 years at university, I hardly got any proper instructions how to write. Nevertheless, I somehow learned to write by writing. The same with critical thinking. Nobody ever taught me how to do it, I simply learned it by following and rethinking others people’s thoughts. My most critical warm-up ever (by the non-dancer Jan Kopp) started with the words: „Strzn biideda liq bulglzst flüp da blgnouggntr.“

What is attached is a collection of thoughts around the teaching at the School for New Dance Development, derived from a meeting of Gonnie Heggen, Alfredo Fernandez and Jeroen Fabius, all teachers at the school currently.

The Jazz and Musical Program of the Theaterschool in Amsterdam has started a new model of learning in dance this year.

Organising mode05 there is no specific educational model we (Ulrike and Martin) have in mind and think of as being suitable for future dance/choreography education.