Spotlight
Experience Sharing 3: Biblioteca do Corpo 2015 - School of Dance Students participated in ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna
He Mengmeng
09 August 2015
This is the third week in Vienna. We basically have adapted to the life in Vienna and also felt fortunate that we could take different workshops and contact different types and texture of dance. In the meantime, it also allows me to see how many ways can move in your body. Here is a good chance to open our mind, and also to build a bridge to communicate with those who came from different places and with other cultures, and to share different experiences.
So we learnt not only dance, but also opened our own thinking by using different ways to think about life and reflect ourselves.
Ismael chose two workshops for us this week and we studied repertory from the Rosas Dance Company. It is a long segment and the learning pace is really fast, which requires us to be concentrated, but I still enjoy the learning process. The teacher required direction of every detail; everybody needs to be very accurate. For example, the hands cannot be held more than 90 degrees; the feet must be parallel. On the other hand, teacher gave each of us to arrange a different role, although there was no special arrangement of action and music tempo, she told us the movement belonged to its own rhythm.
Teacher asked us to form in a group and used our mutual learning material. But each group has a different outcome.
Warp speed - Axis Syllabus is very interesting. The intention of this class was to relax our external muscles, in the meantime, to feel our internal muscles. It helped us to borrow the energy from our body to relax when we did the movement.
Teacher also taught us about bone anatomy, it also let us further understand our own body. However, what was more important for me in the process is that I calmed my mind, because it is a different contemporary technique which I learned from school.
Even though it is not a complex combination, when you calm down and engage more focus on the internal muscles inside, you can feel a subtle feeling in the body.
In the evening we rehearsed with Ismael, in which I had a section of partnering, the rhythm was very fast. My partner and I had a language barrier, so I needed to spend more time to work and communicate with him. As we never worked with each other’s body, this made me understand that I needed to take initiative to work with people, rather than waiting for teacher to help me.
However, I'm not only learning when I'm dancing, but also by watching rehearsals.
As you can see different dancer's body, to see how they were dancing, everyone is so different.
Ismael taught us what we were doing with every movement was not just movement, but was to embrace the whole world. “You are not a student now and cannot just stay in your technique. You have to think about how to use every opportunity to let yourself become a dancer on the stage.” This sentence is very meaningful to me. In the process, I think I do not only learn from others, but also gain a kind of self-learning and reflection.
Background on Biblioteca do Corpo
The Biblioteca do Corpo® education project was developed by choreographer Ismael Ivo as a special method to coach and train young professionals individually and allow them to reach their personal level of excellence as dancers and artists. The project was launched in 2013 within the frame of ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival and will take place in 2015 for the 3rd time.
09 August 2015
This is the third week in Vienna. We basically have adapted to the life in Vienna and also felt fortunate that we could take different workshops and contact different types and texture of dance. In the meantime, it also allows me to see how many ways can move in your body. Here is a good chance to open our mind, and also to build a bridge to communicate with those who came from different places and with other cultures, and to share different experiences.
So we learnt not only dance, but also opened our own thinking by using different ways to think about life and reflect ourselves.
Ismael chose two workshops for us this week and we studied repertory from the Rosas Dance Company. It is a long segment and the learning pace is really fast, which requires us to be concentrated, but I still enjoy the learning process. The teacher required direction of every detail; everybody needs to be very accurate. For example, the hands cannot be held more than 90 degrees; the feet must be parallel. On the other hand, teacher gave each of us to arrange a different role, although there was no special arrangement of action and music tempo, she told us the movement belonged to its own rhythm.
Teacher asked us to form in a group and used our mutual learning material. But each group has a different outcome.
Warp speed - Axis Syllabus is very interesting. The intention of this class was to relax our external muscles, in the meantime, to feel our internal muscles. It helped us to borrow the energy from our body to relax when we did the movement.
Teacher also taught us about bone anatomy, it also let us further understand our own body. However, what was more important for me in the process is that I calmed my mind, because it is a different contemporary technique which I learned from school.
Even though it is not a complex combination, when you calm down and engage more focus on the internal muscles inside, you can feel a subtle feeling in the body.
In the evening we rehearsed with Ismael, in which I had a section of partnering, the rhythm was very fast. My partner and I had a language barrier, so I needed to spend more time to work and communicate with him. As we never worked with each other’s body, this made me understand that I needed to take initiative to work with people, rather than waiting for teacher to help me.
However, I'm not only learning when I'm dancing, but also by watching rehearsals.
As you can see different dancer's body, to see how they were dancing, everyone is so different.
Ismael taught us what we were doing with every movement was not just movement, but was to embrace the whole world. “You are not a student now and cannot just stay in your technique. You have to think about how to use every opportunity to let yourself become a dancer on the stage.” This sentence is very meaningful to me. In the process, I think I do not only learn from others, but also gain a kind of self-learning and reflection.
Background on Biblioteca do Corpo
The Biblioteca do Corpo® education project was developed by choreographer Ismael Ivo as a special method to coach and train young professionals individually and allow them to reach their personal level of excellence as dancers and artists. The project was launched in 2013 within the frame of ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival and will take place in 2015 for the 3rd time.
