Doing, re-doing and undoing: practice, repetition and critical evaluation as mechanisms for learning in a dance technique class ‘laboratory’

Abstract

This article identifies ways to encourage students to realise their movement potential through their own active participation: to repeat movement material, to make mistakes and to identify their own strengths and weakness. A dance technique class provides a useful forum for dancers to explore their potential, confront their limitations and start to recognise their own learning through trial and error. In proposing that a technique class is ‘a laboratory’, where problem solving and finding out about out how things work are emphasised, opportunities arise for students and teachers to work productively with their abilities and their limitations, to value movement for its own sake and to question its context and meaning. Other perspectives are proposed for learning to dance by reflecting on the legacy of the Limón technique, examining its impact on other dance techniques and scrutinising its core values. Effort, exertion and perspiration are all functional aspects of the movement in this technique and become, in their disclosure, part of a dancer's expressive potential, as the ‘how’ of dancing becomes privileged over its ‘what’.