The whole of last week I was lucky enough to be chosen as an independent dance artist to take part in Ransack Dance EXPLORE program.
It was a little bit of a physically challenging week, doing 6 hour company sessions each day, multiple workshops throughout the week, my regular teaching (which during half term wasn't so regular but Extra!), the private one to ones, running my developed courses and still keeping up my personal training; it was a bit full week of dance and even though i felt tired - I am so blessed to be getting it!
I, not being a professional contemporary dancer (well I guess I've been paid to do contemporary fusion pieces - but still I don't see that as making myself one), took a step back from being my usual vocal about all things dance self and focused on listening. And I can honestly say I learnt a lot!
So I jump right into the ransack professional classes, technical contemporary technique with their own variations - beautifully explained and delivered I must say, to the point even the warm up and cooldown exercises were so well thought out and held their own unique style of training throughout; everything had a sense of purpose and reasoning behind it and as a dancer who strongly believes there must be purpose behind the movement within dance I resonated with this.
Without giving away Ransacks practise methods, I'll try going into what I most took away from this experience, in the hope my experience and inspiration with and from Ransack could inspire other dancers ideas and practise:
The use of feeling and emotion as purpose for and to drive the dance past the usual physical movement added another layer to the thought process which shone through with a purity within the physical act - which although "expressing" like this can be present within other dance styles, isn't always the driving factor and doesn't carry this level of clarity through to execution but I believe the technical operation/processes followed to work towards those result could be replicated within any other style, which could breathe life to new ideas.
Breathing within dance, I have had a huge focus on within my own dance but always as the physical act of and its sports science benefits to my dance - lets just say, I have only ever thought technically about it while training my anaerobic and aerobic breathing to perform towards my physically greatest results: Stamina training. Ransack added another factor to breathing - Freedom: Letting breath guide the dance, body parts, isolations even; Ransack have and practise practical techniques for it - that again I believe would be beneficial to other styles of dance. And the combinations of those two factors of breath would be wonderful to see. The last big takeaway from this experience has to be the literal/physical application of inspiration, every dancer talks about inspiration as either something/someone/a moment within dance or something completely external to it, that seems like both bases covered right? My big take was the implementation of an external inspiration within the dance, I guess I have seen it and felt it before but it has always been an end result worked toward (like my dance painting experience) - never as the practise tool, it felt like like working backward from how I had previously experienced this process; yet their direction was always forward moving, toward an unknown (for me anyway) direction, again: without giving their working practises and processes away I hope I gave a good enough account and explanation of that process it was a difficult one, yet: another idea and practise I believe could bring incredible joy and astounding results to not just other dance styles but artforms even! Thank you Ransack Dance, Sarah, the wonderful company dancers and the other amazing independent artists, choreographers and dancers for your inspiration and a wonderful week.
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About the Writer:
Tommy Boost is a Professional Breakdancer, Executive Dance Coach and Dance Industry Consultant from Wales, UK.
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