Someone wrote in the fb dance group:
Technique. What does it mean to you? What does it mean to be strong in technique?
And this is what I wrote:
What does ‘technique’ mean to me?
The ability to make choices about what you will do with your body in real time, and then do them with accuracy, and consistent results.
In application, this may mean hearing a rhythm, recognising it as a rhythm (not just noise), and then being able to reproduce that rhythm. And reproduce it with the same parts of the body (eg the same parts of the foot in tap shoes).
It might also mean having the strength in the right parts of the body to reproduce something a number of times, consistently, at any tempo.
It might also mean being able to use the right parts of the body (eg the right muscles) to do these tasks, not over-working or using the body inefficiently.
It’s about knowing how to read symptoms of fatigue in your own body, and knowing when to stop before injury, and how to prevent injury. ie knowing when you are doing something ‘correctly’ or ‘safely’ rather than just ‘pushing through’.
Understanding what you’re doing is an important tool for knowing how to change what you’re doing in small ways to get predictable results, or to experiment and take risks. So the technique isn’t an end in itself, it’s a vehicle for experimenting and doing creative work.
Technique involves the ability to stay focussed on a particular task for a particular amount of time – ie how to stay mindful and engaged with a task for as long as necessary.
Having good technique means making something look effortless in execution, but having put hundreds of hours into that work.
It means knowing what you are doing with your body, and making a conscious choice to do that thing.
Good technique is essential for being able to dance a lot, strenuously, and avoiding injury or strain.
Technique can be applied in lots of different ways:
– recreating historic routines from footage (ie reading, transcribing, and reproducing movement from film);
– the ability to learn from watching and participating (rather than having teachers spoon feed);
– understanding how to use classes as an important learning and practice tool, and knowing how to participate in a class and maintain focus and work hard;
– knowing how to take technical elements and apply them to another task. eg knowing how to watch, learn, and memorise a tap routine (rhythm, shape, melody) and apply those learning skills to learning a lindy hop routine from demonstrations (eg the ‘i’ll do it three times then you try it’ teaching/learning tool).
If your body is a tool, then technique is knowing not only how to use that tool, but when to use which tool to complete which task. ie knowing when to use a hammer vs when to use a screw driver when you’re building a house.
I like Ramona’s approach to this stuff: work really hard in practice sessions, then go out there on the social floor and just have fun.
So technique, to me, also means knowing when to work, and when to stop working.
I think a lot of people use ‘technique’ as a term to box in knowledge and learning (ie ‘do it the RIGHT way’), when technique is just ‘how you do something’. And having ‘good technique’, to my mind, is about knowing how to be flexible and take up or let go of ideas and experiment.
It can be physical technique, but it can also be mental technique, which I think we neglect in dance. eg the ability to learn new things in new ways is often difficult for modern lindy hoppers who are used to very structured classes with teacher-centred lessons. The ability to take instruction, to work with others constructively, to work alone, to learn by watching, to learn by listening, to learn by doing, the ability to watch and memorise a sequence of movements, the ability to take a movement and then experiment with it…. All these techniques are learnable and teachable.
Lindy hoppers are very good at working with a partner, but I have noticed that dancers who are used to being told exactly what to do by a teacher (particularly in classes that are billed as ‘technique’ classes with lots of talking) don’t have the ability to learn by watching and trying. They really need affirmation all the time (so they ask a lot of questions or ask to record footage or ask to be shown something again and again).
