Rosemary Brandt Practice

My research and teaching is based on Laban's theories which invite thinking about movement, its meaning, its syntax, and issues related to it. Choreological Studies is the discipline that has been established as a result of this thinking. Its concern is to establish approaches and practices that. view dance as a performing art and a practically oriented scholarship.

The utilisation and application of these theories to the teaching of ballet is the specificity of my particular approach. This application provides for the identification of the seemingly elusive qualities of dance, (rhythmicality, musicality, expression), which are not the gifts of the talented few, but virtual components of movement itself, which must and can be explicitly addressed and taught in terms of dance skill

My methodology is based on an approach to the understanding of human movement BEFORE we deliberately make dance/art.

• A key choreological model views the human body from a structural perspective, not an anatomical, physiological, psychological, or sociological perspective. It reveals that the structure of the body’s movement is inextricably linked with the structure of the body with its torso, limbs, head, joints and surfaces organised and arranged in their particular way.
• It identifies human movement as having five intrinsic structures, namely body, action, space, dynamics and relationships, all of which can be examined and explored separately, the relationships between them
• informing an understanding of the principles of movement which govern function which illuminates the wonderful complexity of dance.
• It allows for the clear identification of what the dancer/mover does and what that visibly creates by naming the perceptual properties of movement.

Practical exploration, experimentation and application of the structures and principles of movement identified by this model encourages verbal and physical accuracy,

• develops movement literacy
• and observation skill, which includes the ability to observe and name the perceptual properties of dance, that so often remain unknown unseen and unnamed in the teaching/dancing process.

• For the teacher being able to separately identify the physical necessities and perceptual properties of a danced movement in the teaching process means that communication includes information and not simply mere physical instruction.
• For a dancer the understanding of technique includes not simply what she does but what that doing serves to create.
• For the choreographer formulation/manipulation is understood as the turning of content into a visible entity, rendering content accessible to others.


I have also found it valuable to study and understand movement in the context of communication.
Body movement is a learned form of communication. Only by participating in this patterned way are we able to incorporate our society's way of viewing and testing the world. Through the examination, exploration and analysis of communicative body motion (kinesics) and spatial manoeuvres (proxemics) in the context of communication and social order, we discover

• That a system of expression is already in place and patterned by our spontaneous reactions to our lived environment.
• That movement is already expressive and dance does not ‘invent’ this expression (its not a facial expression!)
• That a choreographer's dance vocabulary or the vocabulary of an established dance style or technique is a selection, an organised elaboration, repetition and intensification of everyday movement patterns, which collectively generate a particular aesthetic

This recognition further demonstrates that our moving, dancing body is
• the place where the individual lives and the developing artist grows.
• where the origin of the impulse to move or dance arises, and
• where knowledge derived from the dancing experience resides.

It also clearly suggests
• that as individuals we are our greatest resource for dance,
• that our own bodies are our unique and only instrument and
• that our own movement is that which we consciously manipulate and control for dance.


CONCLUSION

The current and traditional approaches to the teaching of ballet must be challenged making it impossible to separate
• training the body from educating the person
• the notion of technique from expression,
• of doing from making,
• the physical from the perceptual properties of movement
• the actual from the virtual,
• and ‘steps’ from dancing.
• position from motion
• theory from practice

The understanding and knowledge that a choreological approach to dance brings, allows for a coherent development of artistic intelligence, physical competence, creativity and autonomy in students and artists of dance, be they performers, choreographers, or teachers. Dance scholarship is possible as a studio-based practice and needs to be developed if significant art and artists are to emerge from its practice

(FOR BALLET AUDIENCE ONLY)

And so the pendulum swings. Classical ballet today needs to give voice to the 21st century. Whose visions shape the future of an art form?

I conclude with Lincoln Kirstein words, which are as pertinent today as when he wrote in 1935;

“Ballet is a vocabulary of gesture, collectively accrued for 400 years. Its uses depend on artists who understand its language but in a profounder sense who comprehend the moral and emotional idiom of the times in which they live. The use to which they put ballet is a reflection of their present; the closer the reflection the greater the reference and impact of their art.” (Lincoln Kirstein. A Short History of Classic Theatrical Dancing. p. 326)