De la Escritura Tradicional a la Escritura Digital

Technique was the first a posteriori theme deemed to be associated with constructive activity. It captures the participants’ basic descriptions of their movement as a visually recognizable style. It refers to basic descriptions given by participants about their movement that would distinguish it as a unique and identifiable procedural activity, technical practice or style.

The contemporary dancers and Middle-eastern performers used stylistic ideas to describe their movement, but were not confined by them. For example, on more than one occasion, when asked to describe their movement, contemporary dancers qualified how they needed to interpret the question before they could answer it. Contemporary performers may all refer to their technique within the label “contemporary dance” or identify the main stylistic influences such as “Martha Graham technique”, but each participant qualified her interpretation of her movement within a personal and developmental history and cultural and stylistic contexts. One contemporary dancer even suggested that her movement could not be classified outside the contexts in which it is performed. Thyra’s description below exemplified the way the contemporary dancers presented their movement as a construction built up from many influences...

It’s not ballet, in that it’s very much about softness, releasing of tension, use of gravity as a tool. A lot of it is low to the ground. A lot of it works off centre, so you’re using weight and gravity as a motivation…It’s post-modern in origin, although it’s probably modern in origin. People like Doris Humphries used the release of weight as a technical structure. And from that perhaps, or in combination with that, things like contact work evolved, which is one of the things I’ve studied. Contact improvisation, which is very much based around weight and shared weight, use of the floor…by definition it’s done with another person but a lot of the techniques you can take into solo movement. Some of the principles are transferable. Other things I’ve studied are Idio-kinesis: ideas of posture and postural alignment through the use of imagery and improvisation. A deep releasing technique for the holding patterns, and you could refer that back to Reichian notions of armoring in the body. Patterns of movement that one can address through numerous avenues and I suppose my style comes, it is post-modern in that it comes from a time and a place that began to acknowledge a “body-story”. The notion that everyone has a history in the musculature and the cellular structure of the body. And so when you move you’re telling something about yourself or your telling something about

what it is to be human. As opposed to ballet which tries to tell something about what it’s like to be mythological and not human. …Certainly the vertical plane is important, the rising and the falling, the ability to rise out of the floor and the ability to sink into the floor, the use of the support of the floor.

As a whole, contemporary dancers tended to similarly identify their dance as an emergent ability.

The Middle-eastern dancers were more likely to describe their movement in terms of very specific technical styles that derive from very local regional communities in the Middle East and along the Silk Road to the east. These styles are not named here, in order to protect the anonymity of the participants. Some performers also noted that they had studied Flamenco to embellish their dance. The Middle-eastern dancers as a whole characterized their dance as a place they had arrived at.

Aerobics instructors described their technique in terms of the way it looked and with respect to the energy level it needed to convey. Viv referred to “wide, big strong moves”. Eloise and Sandra referred to it as exercise to music, while Sara and Stephanie gave the picture of that exercise greater character. Sara referred to it in terms of the kind of effort she experiences…

…fairly intense… I like to be precise. I like to be strong. It has to be motivating...[there needs to be] challenges in moves of strength…and in agility. There are challenges in endurance and repetition

Stephanie described her movement in terms of a proprioceptive aesthetic:

I describe my style as more athletic than dancy… I think visually I like strong square lines… I prefer less complex moves than complicated moves… I think my movements indicate a certain neatness or let’s say an efficiency of movement…

Aerobics instructors identified their movement through the notion of a technical practice.

This theme demonstrated that there were differences in the way participants came to conceptualize their movement. The broader context from which such differences emerged is associated with the purpose each individual attributed to her movement. For example, the contemporary dancers tended to characterize their movement as an artistic medium, the Middle-

eastern dancers described theirs as an expressive medium for femininity, and the aerobics instructors were unambiguous about the role of their movement as an exercise regime demonstrated to others. These differences suggest that the understanding each individual developed about her technique was crystallized not only by the extent of her training, but also by the contexts in which her movement was executed or performed.