Tanztheather Theory – Online Class

Wednesday Jan 20th | Choreo, Impro and Theory

Something you remember from visiting a foreign country
(anything apart from an actual dance phrase)

Include the following into ONE phrase:
– Breath once heavily through the chest, then straight after with any other body part
– Reach for something followed by two heavy accents
– Tickle your foot or rips with something other than your fingers
– Defend your space from an imaginary giant monkey throwing bananas
– Hesitate to execute a big move, find the courage within and do it

• The moment when the teacher asked me and I didn’t know the answer
• When pain turns to change
• Imagine you talk to your loved on through a thick wall of clouds
• Something I wished my parents had taught me
• Try to make a fish laughThree pigeons sat on a park bench and thought about life

Wednesday Jan 13th | Choreo, Impro and Theory

Nice to be back after the Christmas break.
Here is the video of today working on how hand gestures and face expression create more depth for a longer phrase:

Wednesday Dec 2nd | Choreo, Impro and Theory

This was the last Theory Wednesday class for this year so I want to thank everyone who has joined in. We learned and shared a lot and I am really grateful for that.
Here are the recordings from today:

Wednesday Nov 25th | Choreo, Impro and Theory

Here is the Virtual Background Choreography. Looks really nice:

Wednesday Nov 18th | Choreo, Impro and Theory

We started with The adventure of the magic pen
Tell an adventure story of a pen traveling through each participant’s screen. Make us feel for the pen.

And then we went to create a response to any of these photographs while we used the picture of choice as a virtual background for the phrase.

Here is the wonderful result of both tasks:

Wednesday Nov 11th | Choreo, Impro and Theory

We looked at some special places that we cherish and used that as a starting point for creativity.

In the end we tried to make a little ‚movie‘ by adding an order to the sequences.
Take a look here:

Wednesday Nov 4th | Choreo, Impro and Theory

After an initial exploration of joints and the little brain exercise of moving each joint precisely two times we went on to find 2 ways to :
Flow
Block
Glide
Implode

And finally we worked on individual phrases which we then combined to a little Zoom choreography.
Today’s phrases were:

Leaves are falling from the trees, autumn turns to winter

If you had to replace your family members with animals, who would they become?

Surprise yourself

When true beauty is discovered, not presented

Imagine a Triangle Sonata, now dance to it

What happens when you have truly evil thoughts while dancing a phrase about unity

Here is the video:

Wednesday Oct 28th | Choreo, Impro and Theory

Started off by playing the Opposition game: Clear a state | relationship to others | body motion – then other group guesses which of the above group one has chosen and then group two dances the exact opposite.

We then went on to make a little experiment, in which everyone chooses two dynamic and moves in only these two dynamics while having a conversation about one of these topics:
1) The joys of child birth
2) Remember when we strangled the armadillo in Tijuana?
3) The dilemma of the 2020 election
4) We took a picture of ourselves every day for a year and this is what we found out

And finally we looked at the Include XYZ into one phrase from the system for creation:

• Place your fingertips on two different body parts and make both hands meet
• Whenever you sit down your hands go up
• Use at least 5 of the magic 10 chest positions
  Singles:
  1)Tilt
  2)Contraction
  3)High Release
  4)Rotation
  Doubles:
  5) Rotation + contraction
  6) Rotation + High release
  Triples
  7) Contraction + Rotation + Front Shoulder FRONT
  8) Contraction + Rotation + Front Shoulder UP
  9) High release + Rotation + Front Shoulder FRONT
  10 High release + Rotation + Front Shoulder UP
• Brush off dust with your feet
• Your left hand is attached to a thread that is controlled by someone else, the right hand tries to free you from it

Here is the video of the final task:

Wednesday June 10th | Choreo, Impro and theory

In today’s the session we covered the Aesthetics of Tanztheater and the Bigger Picture with a special look at the the areas of Psychology, Philosophy and Social Science and finally we looked at the Legacy of Tanztheater.

We started off though by looking at the last element of the System for Creation: The expression of a state.

For that we used the following Medicine cards and tried to connect the physical state of the animal with the emotional state generated by the poetic words.
Take a look here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Wa1nZgqWziuG3kbd7

If you have taken all classes so far, you have now dived into every element of the System for Creation. From next week we will take that step further and not just understand it but also start to use it properly.

But before we use the system to create material I thought it was helpful to put Tanztheater into the bigger context so let’s look at these elements:

Now we should have a much better understanding of all the different elements Tanztheater uses in order to be able to create something that is bigger and deeper than just the dance itself.

Wednesday June 3rd | Choreo, Impro and theory

Today we talked about Hands and Gestures.
Especially the Rotation of the fingers is really useful to generate bigger movements that start from the the little finger or thumbs.
(See improvisation and short gesture phrase in the video below)

Then we continued by diving into the important XYZ phrase which enables you to create versatile and exciting sequences.
For today’s session I asked you to include all elements into one phrase:

And finally we talked about the last column of the system for creation, which is the immaterial Question Improvisation.
First, we talked about how we can create the best questions that help us create individual and exciting elements we can stage. The questions or statements should include some sort of friction or contradiction and should be open to various interpretations to let the dancers create whatever they feel is the most honest answer they can give.
We use the Theme, State, Example and Task|Question|Statement as such:

This is a strong tool to get really authentic answers, which can be given in the way of an actual dance phrase or using speech and song or by doing an action, all inspired by the emotional state that the question or task evokes.

Today we used these questions, tasks or statements:

And here is the video recording of the session:

Wednesday May 27th | Choreo, Impro and theory

We started with the ‚Emotion Generator‘ using Letters A-F for an emotional state and numbers 1-6 for an action.
You choose three letter-number combinations (Example: 5B, 2F, 6C) and then connect action and state.

Here are the elements of actions:
1) Wash or swipe hands
2) Take a sip
3) Sit down
4) Open window
5) Hoover or clean
6) read

And here the way of how to do it:
A) aggressively
B) hesitantly
C) totally confused
D) overexcited
E) hyperactive
F) lethargically

Then we continued to explore the middle column of our System for Creation. We looked at the way to create material by searching on precise tasks and by finding different ways to solve the same task.
We usually say to find 3-5 different ways to depict something.
Some examples are below:

Here is the video of the session:

Wednesday May 20th | Choreo, Impro and theory

Despite the poor internet connection we worked on the fascinating principle of ‚Speed of Thought‘

Unfortunately I couldn’t film the responses to the task, but we will do that again next Wednesday.

Below is the idea of this principle.

Note:
Remember the more precise the thought the better the performance quality and authenticity.
Example: Happiness
Don’t just try to think about the big theme (I feel happy) while you move but rather think about a precise moment:
I feel happy when the sun is softly touching my face.
Big emotions are too abstract to physically depict in a clear way.

Wednesday May 13th | Choreo, Impro and theory

If you missed our first session, here are the main things we worked on:

We talked a little bit about the History of Tanztheater and ‚Ausdruckstanz‘ mentioning:
(Click on link for more information)

• Isadora Duncan
• Kurt Jooss
• Hans Zuellig
• Rudolf von Laban
• Berthold Brecht
• Pina Bausch
• Folkwang University

Then we looked at the general System for creation highlighting the three different ways to reach an element you can show on stage.

• Using Principles and Dynamics to create fixed choreography
• Giving body improvisation tasks
• Giving immaterial improvisation tasks (Question-Answering approach)

We then continued to learn the following phrase:

The task was then to figure out  which dynamics and principles were used for each movement of the short phrase.

Here is the same video with the list of dynamics (white) and principles (red)

And lastly you were asked to create your own phrase using the following Principles and Dynamics:

And here is the video of those attended: