by Artistic Research PhD Candidates of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Supervisor: Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond
This PhD project investigates alternative educational practices in the performing arts. It focuses on approaches to classical ballet training that deviate from the western canon’s conception of rigor as linked to virtuosic appearances. In the research, ballet technique is examined as a site of feeling, aligning with other dance forms like contact improvisation where, according to Steve Paxton, sensation is the palette of the dancer. Prioritising sensation in ballet training creates dissonance with standardised learning structures that value image-production over feeling. In feeling we encounter vulnerability, and the opportunity to instruct repetitions of movements not from the position of mastery, but rather, from the intention to connect with others and situate embodied knowledge in practices of care. How might alternative ways of studying traditional forms embolden dancers to re-imagine the social dimension of learning embodied aesthetics?
The wish for this research is to reveal what becomes possible when the boundary of a classical art form is pushed at the level of embodied technique, which is always transmissible. Working with the concept of anarchive developed by Erin Manning, the research approach is self-reflective and collaborative, in particular, it engages with traces of the independent ballet teacher Janet Panetta (1948-2023), whose pedagogy theorised ballet technique as a place to re-imagining traditional hierarchies of dancer to dancer and teacher to dancer. A documentary film will be created as an alternative archive, exhibiting reflections of Panetta’s alumni students, as well as creating other performative and discursive spaces to unpack what is lost when we diverge from traditional ways of learning.
Andrew Champlin is a dance artist based in Berlin. Originally from the United States, he trained in ballet at the School of American Ballet before entering the field of contemporary dance and performance in New York City. He received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from The New School University, focusing on artistic practice in social and political contexts, and an MA in Choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts, concentrating on performative practices. He works as a performer and teacher, bridging the areas of art and education together through his embodied knowledge of movement technique.