Gaga (dance vocabulary)

Last updated

Gaga is a movement language and pedagogy developed by Batsheva Dance Company director and teacher Ohad Naharin. Used in some Israeli contemporary dance, [1] it has two educational tracks which are taught in Israel as well as several other countries:

Contents

Many dancers have said that Gaga classes have reignited their passion for dance, and provided new ways to connect to their freedom and creativity in movement without self-consciousness. [1]

Gaga students improvise their movements based on somatic experience and imagery described by the teacher, which provides a framework promoting unconventional movement. [3] The imagery guides the performers' movement expressivity by focusing attention on specific body regions. For example, "Luna", "Lena", "Biba", "Tama" and many other words are used to experiment in a performer's body while they are dancing. [4] Mirrors are avoided, to facilitate movement guided by sensing and imagining rather than seeing. [1]

About

The Gaga movement language was created by Ohad Naharin, former Martha Graham dancer and artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company as of 1990, and has been further developed in relation to Naharin's research in dance and choreography. Naharin created Gaga as a reaction to a back injury he was experiencing. The language is intended to facilitate communication with the dancers and help them care for their bodies while also testing their physical limitations. [5] The terminology within the language often emphasizes pleasure and freedom. [6] The idea is that the mind can undertake many tasks and the body can still explore its power, so long as it adheres to pleasure; the movement can be uninhibited, as pleasure prevents injury. [6] The language allows for the breaking of movement habits and the experience of effort and exaggeration, with an emphasis on sensation. [7]

Methodology

A Gaga class is given as a procession of instructions that give access to bodily sensations. Each instruction is meant to help the dancer use mental approaches to create physical research. Because Gaga depends on the actual setting and people involved, there is no uniform class structure, though specific methodologies are employed.

Float

A floating sensation (referred to as 'float') is cultivated throughout. Float does not ignore the existence of gravity. However rather than giving into gravity and adhering to heaviness, the body uses gravity as a force of energy and even elevation of the limbs. [8] Naharin states, “We sense the weight of our body parts, yet, our form is not shaped by gravity.” [9] Additionally, float is intended to facilitate a constant awareness and activeness in which dancers are never completely released, even when they are doing nothing, leaving them 'available' for movement. [10]

Vocabulary

Naharin created Gaga terminology specific to bodily functions that activated throughout a dancer's Gaga practice. “Biba” means to pull the body away from the seat bones. It is meant to create more space and freedom in the lower spine. “Tashi” means to move with feet glued to the floor. “Pika” is the activation of the spot right beneath the pubic bone. [8]

Focus on pleasure

Naharin emphasizes the return to pleasure, especially within moments of exaggeration and bodily effort. His belief is that pleasure is always good for the body. Gaga often requests demanding actions, such as running and shaking, but the effort of “burning muscles” must be tied to pleasure in order to keep it healthy. [8] Gaga has been taught in centers for people affected by Parkinson's disease. [11]

Release of aesthetic ambitions

The Gaga language focuses on the internal sensations. Due to this, classes are run without mirrors. Naharin emphasizes the release of ambitions or inhibitions. He states, “We might be silly, we can laugh at ourselves.” [9] This kind of instruction is an effort for exploratory research without limits or tensions.

Connection to groove

With or without music, dancers are asked to connect to the musicality of their movement. [12] Naharin emphasizes attention to groove, a universal experience regardless of technique levels. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involves a subject to which various items are presented. In this sense, seeing a yellow bird on a branch presents the subject with the objects "bird" and "branch", the relation between them and the property "yellow". Unreal items may be included as well, which happens when experiencing hallucinations or dreams. When understood in a more restricted sense, only sensory consciousness counts as experience. In this sense, experience is usually identified with perception and contrasted with other types of conscious events, like thinking or imagining. In a slightly different sense, experience refers not to the conscious events themselves but to the practical knowledge and familiarity they produce. Hence, it is important that direct perceptual contact with the external world is the source of knowledge. So an experienced hiker is someone who has actually lived through many hikes, not someone who merely read many books about hiking. This is associated both with recurrent past acquaintance and the abilities learned through them.

Contact improvisation is a practice of movement research, where improvisation and momentum, relation with gravity and with others are the main focus. This form has been developing internationally since 1972 and it started from the exploration, research and inquiries of Steve Paxton. It involves the exploration of one's body in relation to others and the space of presence they visit, by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and its fundaments relate with dancing without being guided by music, instead, the dancers learn to listen to the sounds that the dance itself brings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Weidman</span> American choreographer, dancer and teacher

Charles Weidman was a renowned choreographer, modern dancer and teacher. He is well known as one of the pioneers of modern dance in America. He wanted to break free from the traditional movements of dance forms popular at the time to create a uniquely American style of movement. Born in 1901, he choreographed from the 1920s until his death in 1975. While he is most famous for his work with Doris Humphrey, Weidman did much work on his own. He created a bridge to a new range of movement that he only began to explore. His work inspired many and helped to create a whole genre of dance that is still evolving today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Sokolow</span> American dance artist (1910–2000)

Anna Sokolow was an American dancer and choreographer. Sokolow's work is known for its social justice focus and theatricality. Throughout her career, Sokolow supported of the development of modern dance around the world, including in Mexico and Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blues dance</span> Family of historical dances that developed alongside and were danced to blues music

Blues dancing is a family of historical dances that developed alongside and were danced to blues music, or the contemporary dances that are danced in that aesthetic. It has its roots in African-American dance, which itself is rooted in sub-Saharan African music traditions and the historical dances brought to the United States by European immigrants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ohad Naharin</span> Israeli choreographer and dancer

Ohad Naharin is an Israeli choreographer, contemporary dancer, and creator and teacher of a unique system/language/pedagogy of dance called Gaga. He served as artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company from 1990; he stepped down in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contemporary ballet</span> Dance genre combining classical ballet and modern dance

Contemporary ballet is a genre of dance that incorporates elements of classical ballet and modern dance. It employs classical ballet technique and in many cases classical pointe technique as well, but allows a greater range of movement of the upper body and is not constrained to the rigorously defined body lines and forms found in traditional, classical ballet. Many of its attributes come from the ideas and innovations of 20th-century modern dance, including floor work and turn-in of the legs. The style also contains many movements emphasizing the body's flexibility.

Affect is a concept, used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, that places emphasis on bodily or embodied experience. The word affect takes on a different meaning in psychology and other fields.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Batsheva Dance Company</span>

The Batsheva Dance Company is a renowned dance company based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was founded by Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild in 1964.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dance in Israel</span>

Dance in Israel incorporates a wide variety of dance styles, from traditional Israeli folk dancing to ballet, modern dance, ballroom dancing and flamenco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheron Wray</span> British dancer

S. Ama Wray, known formally as Sheron Wray, is a professor of dance at the University of California, Irvine, USA. She is a British dancer, teacher, choreographer and theatre director. She studied under Jane Dudley at the London Contemporary Dance School. She later performed with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and the Rambert Dance Company before forming her own company called JazzXchange in 1992. She is presently an associate professor of dance at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine.

Israeli Australians refers to Australian citizens or permanent residents who are fully or partially of Israeli descent. The population colloquially refer to themselves as Ausraelis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tero Saarinen</span> Finnish dancer and choreographer (born 1964)

Tero Kalevi Saarinen is a Finnish dance artist and choreographer, and Artistic Director of Tero Saarinen Company. Saarinen has made an international career as both a dancer and choreographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Embodied cognition</span> Interdisciplinary theory

Embodied cognition is the concept suggesting that many features of cognition are shaped by the state and capacities of the organism. The cognitive features include a wide spectrum of cognitive functions, such as perception biases, memory recall, comprehension and high-level mental constructs and performance on various cognitive tasks. The bodily aspects involve the motor system, the perceptual system, the bodily interactions with the environment (situatedness), and the assumptions about the world built the functional structure of organism's brain and body.

The psychology of dance is the set of mental states associated with dancing and watching others dance. The term names the interdisciplinary academic field that studies those who do. Areas of research include interventions to increase health for older adults, programs for stimulating children’s creativity, dance movement therapy, mate selection and emotional responses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Somatics</span> Field of bodywork emphasizing internal sensation

Somatics is a field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience. The term is used in movement therapy to signify approaches based on the soma, or "the body as perceived from within", including Skinner Releasing Technique, Alexander technique, the Feldenkrais Method, Eutony, Rolfing Structural Integration, among others. In dance, the term refers to techniques based on the dancer's internal sensation, in contrast with "performative techniques", such as ballet or modern dance, which emphasize the external observation of movement by an audience. Somatic techniques may be used in bodywork, psychotherapy, dance, or spiritual practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graham technique</span> Style of modern dance

Graham technique is a modern dance movement style and pedagogy created by American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991). Graham technique has been called the "cornerstone" of American modern dance, and has been taught worldwide. It is widely regarded as the first codified modern dance technique, and strongly influenced the later techniques of Merce Cunningham, Lester Horton, and Paul Taylor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doron Medalie</span> Musical artist

Doron Medalie is an Israeli songwriter, composer and artistic director. He co-wrote the song "Toy", which was performed by Netta Barzilai and won the Eurovision Song Contest 2018.

Danielle Agami is an Israeli-born dancer and choreographer. She is a teacher of the Gaga style of dance, invented by the director of the Batsheva Dance Company, Ohad Naharin. In Israel, Agami danced with the Batsheva Dance Company from 2002 to 2010. From 2008 to 2010, she was the company's rehearsal director.

Shamel Pitts is an American artist, choreographer, performer and teacher. He is the Founder and artistic director at TRIBE which is a New York-based multidisciplinary arts collective.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Building Bodies with a Soft Spine. Gaga | PDF | Dances | Ballet". fr.scribd.com. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  2. ↑ "Batsheva Dance Company: Gaga" . Retrieved 2017-03-18.
  3. ↑ dE_uWz1hH1ZMkZlj "Ohad Naharin Discusses Gaga Movement", Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  4. ↑ Galili, Deborah (27 August 2009). "Gaga for Dancers: From the Gaga Intensive to New Open Classes". Dance in Israel. Retrieved October 30, 2017.
  5. ↑ Martha Schabas, Choreographer Ohad Naharin on developing the dance language Gaga The Globe and Mail
  6. 1 2 Batsheva.co.il, Gaga Batsheva Dance Company Website
  7. ↑ Ohad Interview, Interview Ohad Naharin on the Language of Gaga
  8. 1 2 3 KATAN-SCHMID, EINAV. EMBODIED PHILOSOPHY IN DANCE: Gaga and Ohad Naharin's Movement Research. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2018.
  9. 1 2 3 Gaga People, Gaga Gaga People website
  10. ↑ KATAN-SCHMID, EINAV. EMBODIED PHILOSOPHY IN DANCE: Gaga and Ohad Naharin's Movement Research. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2018. Page 123.
  11. ↑ 'Dancing with Parkinson's '
  12. ↑ KATAN-SCHMID, EINAV. EMBODIED PHILOSOPHY IN DANCE: Gaga and Ohad Naharin's Movement Research. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2018. Page 156.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.