Pedagogy   [back to the Category]

Ways and implications of teaching multiple embodiment in Classical Ballet   [read the french version]

Author :   Paula Salosaari

P.M. Salosaari
Theatre Academy, Department of Dance and Theatre Pedagogy
Helsinki, Finland


Paula Salosaari’s doctoral dissertation posits the ballet dancer as an experiencing artist into the core of the evolving tradition and dancer’s artistic identity. The dancer is seen as an experiencing agent of change within the art of ballet rather than material or instrument to perform the dance. The research proposes a way to teach ballet which acknowledges and gives space to this agency by introducing divergent teaching and structural images of the dance as tools to create with.

The research was conducted by arranging practical ballet workshops in which structural images were introduced as tools to explore, interpret and expand the ballet vocabulary in class. Dancers discussed their experiences while performing ballet and creating their own compositions in class.

The emerging interview results, obstacles to experiencing, revelations and stretching cultural limits, are explained through Cordas’ cultural phenomenology and the dancer’s experiencing of the strength of the representing semiotic codes in ballet. The dancers’ comments reflect the cultural cycle of embodying, transcending and objectifying the manner of performance. The dancer becomes an active member of the culture, who through experiencing the tradition and its transcendence takes an active role in the evolution of ballet.

During the research principles of teaching multiple embodiment were defined. They result in a continuum from re-vitalising the performing of traditional vocabulary to creating with it. The teaching enhances interpretation and expansion of the traditional vocabulary as well as composition of new dance material having the tradition as a starting point. By juxtaposing tradition with the developing forms of contemporary ballet, it illuminates the connection between the two and shows a way to include both in the education of a contemporary ballet artist.

The dissertation, Multiple Embodiment in Classical Ballet; Educating the Dancer as an Agent of Change in the Cultural Evolution of Ballet, has been published by the Theatre Academy and can be ordered by e-mail from: tiedotus@teak.fi.

Further information:

Paula Salosaari, Ph.D.
24 Kendal Place
London SW15 2QZ
UK
Tel: +44 20 8871 9421

This is the abstract of a paper presented at the Helsinki symposium on Dance Medicine. June 3-4 2001. All rights are reserved by the individual author(s).