From training to artisanal practice: rethinking choreographic relationships in modern dance

Abstract

In the first part of the twentieth century early modern dancers created both a new art form and the forms of group social organisation that were its condition of possibility. This paper critically examines the balletic and disciplinary 'training' model of dancer formation and proposes that the assumption of training in dance can obscure other ways of understanding dance-making relationships and other values in early modern dance. An 'artisanal' mode of production and knowledge transmission based on a non-binary relationship between 'master' and apprentice and occurring in a quasi-domestic and personalised space of some intimacy is proposed as a more pertinent way to think the enabling conditions of modern dance creation.

Dancing and Listening: Odissi across Cultures

“…Rather than conceptualising Sangeeta's humility and self-effacement as 'traditional', and therefore not 'modern', it might be necessary to start to recognise that there are affective states and feelings that can make certain kinds of knowledges possible but which are systematically unintelligible within a dominant construction of the modern Á a construction that I have argued elsewhere does not work for so-called modern dance either (Gardner 2011). The modern subject does not experience feelings of devotion or reverence except supposedly in an explicitly and highly structured religious situation or discourse, as such feelings call into question her/his independent, autonomous subjectivity.…”

“…11 I was keen to hear first hand from someone who had recently experienced learning dance in a relatively traditional, albeit modified, guruÁsisya relationship. 12 In my own earlier research on (American) modern dance, I argued that the relationships of dance transmission and production in what was a new individual art form at the beginning of the twentieth century were in some sense 'pre-modern' or 'artisanal', much like those of a medieval 'master' and apprentice Á a European parallel perhaps to the guruÁsisya relationship (Gardner 2011).…”

Injuries in Contemporary Dance

“…The movements of modern dance are diverse and varied and even have a lot of repetitive movements (Gardner, 2011). Mastering movements, especially skill projects, is beneficial for improving dancers' self-protection ability and promoting their comprehensiveness.…”