Teaching

Ken James teaching philosophy.

My dance work is rooted in an exploration of the person as expressed in their movements. I am trying to eliminate the dichotomy of work in manual labor (whether as a dancer or ditch digger) and intellectual labor. I see dance as a series of physical intellectual gestures, derived from the connection and dissonance of the natural world and human nature. I use a weaving of memory, story, and the intersection of performance and technology to approach some of the philosophical and intellectual issues we wrestle with in being human.  

Moving is a way of seeing the world, just as seeing is a way of touching the world. Thinking, seeing, moving –none of these things happen alone. Our minds are wired for cross-modal perception where each sense carries perception to our other senses and sparks another set of understandings. Movement is at once visual, thinking, and sensual. A practice of embodiment delves into a student’s practices, taps into the histories of the body, historical and living, connects to the intellect, and feeds the creative. Utilizing all of the senses more fully helps a person understand how and why one moves and exists in the world allows a deeper understanding of physical range, understanding and expression of self.

In teaching, I encourage a courageous creativity, where students are not afraid to fail or be wrong but are emboldened to explore new processes and ideas. I stress strength and form not as idealized versions of a technique, but as a deepening understanding and incorporation of movement form in the body. Movement intelligence is developed through somatic understanding of self.

I work with improvisational techniques, encouraging body listening, and incorporating Feldenkrais methods in teaching movement to allow students to find their own way to the movement. The physical, historical, intellectual and emotional understanding of self can be accessed through the ideas and trends in dance and in music, technology, physiology, and a vast array of interconnecting fields. I teach technical skills in dance, incorporating conceptual intent, context, emotional introspection to create a more human dance; messy and engaging.

My own dance history and experience is varied.  I am influenced heavily by visual and literary artists (Wangetchi Mutu, Bruce Nauman, Ai Weiei, Yayoi Kusama, James Joyce, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wallace Berman, and many many more) and started moving through labor and endurance sports. I create dance works for stage, installation, site specific locations, and virtual environments. My current research revolves around site specific work, specifically understanding the dynamics of audience interactions and social structures around site and re-establishing the embodied elements in virtual and media installation work. These works are influenced by…everything. Nature, philosophy, poetry, prose, sculpture, paintings, walking, dreaming, physics, beliefs, political events, occasional deep breaths, and an acceptance of the merge of conscious and subconscious thinking that connects disparate thoughts and ideas.

Many years as a dance lighting designer and production manager also inform my work. All dance is seen through a lens of place, light, and technology. Each of these elements offer information layered on and around the movement. Understanding the choices of how much and how little influence these elements have on how movement is seen and understood is part of the puzzle of creating performance work.

Abbreviated Teaching list (full list here)

Technique

Contemporary Techniques I, II

• Technique class creates an environment for students to deepen their somatic awareness, efficient athleticism, and creative voice through the medium of contemporary dance. Through floor work, inversions, classical modern, and improvisation, students are encouraged to a fearless exploration and understanding of their personal alignment, strength, flexibility, coordination, rhythm, dynamics and spatial awareness.

Partnering I, II

• Investigates the visceral information, movement vocabulary and kinesthetic understanding through physical contact and weight-sharing between two or more dancers. This class focuses on partnering skills from rolling, falling, giving and receiving weight, structural systems, training, styles of partnering and use of momentum and weight. The class will examine what information is created and transferred both dancer to dancer and dancer to audience. Special consideration will be paid to creating partnering that is part of a larger kinesthetic/emotional/ intellectual dance over creating exciting moments.

Choreography/ Creating

Choreography

• This class seeks to develop and deepen personal creative exploration of movement and choreographic research. We will be examining time-based practice, performance, and other forms that emphasize process and conceptual rigor for stage, site, and installation dance works. Strategies to develop choreographic compositional choices, movement languages, and conceptual ideas for each individual’s creative projects. Class investigates and supports students’ developing language for addressing, critiquing and comprehending compositional choices and structures through verbal and written feedback practice.

Composition

• This class seeks to develop and deepen personal creative exploration of movement while cultivating a constant curiosity for delving into deepening creative processes and venturing into unknown movement and thematic areas. Partnering somatic awareness and athleticism with improvisational practices, compositional and durational skills to find connections to concepts, intellectual and subconscious links in material. During this process, we will examine the work of historic and current artists creating work that reach across genres in new ways. Students explore the integration of processes and collaboration in creative projects while continuing to engage in an objective critical process of their own work and the work of others.

Improvisation for Performance

• Improvisational performance is a field and skill that requires strategies, practice, and understanding to produce fearless, exciting performances. We will explore performance structures, movement vocabularies, choreographic practices, contemporary and world dance artists whose work is deeply involved in improvisation in performance and creation. Students will work with weight sharing, partnering, listening, and engaging techniques from action theater, contact improvisation, viewpoints and other forms through exploration of structured movement problems.

Dance and Place – site specific work

• We will approach site specific and site adaptive work from a deeper understanding of site and place. We will be researching site from historical, community, political, and emotional aspects, engaging with the physical and architectural aspects of space, and pursuing a rigorous conceptual approach to the creation of work. Attention will be given to historical beginnings, intellectual and artistic approaches to site specific work and contemporary artists in the field.

Interdisciplinary Works

• Introductory seminar/studio course challenging students with projects that incorporate time-based practice, performance, and other forms that emphasize process and conceptual rigor. While working primarily with movement based choreographic artists, projects emphasize content and strategy, focusing on a range of new genres approaches. During this process, we will examine the work of historic and current artists creating work that reach across genres in new ways. Students explore the integration of processes, technology and collaboration in creative projects while continuing to engage in an objective critical process of their own work and the work of others.

Performance Art / Live Art / Action Art

• Performance Art is taught as a European art form and while the roots of the form as we know it are European, live art around the world is informed by older art forms and practices. Regional variations vary by tradition, political realities, and influences of the individual artists. This course covers performance artists from all around the world, exploring how influences inform the resultant work. These explorations will inform the attending artists explorations in time based, interactive performative work.

Production

Dance Lighting

• Lighting Design covers the full range of lighting practices from hanging and focusing to designing, calling and running a show. This course touches each of these skills exploring theoretical, technical and creative work in lighting design as it relates to stage, installation and site-specific work. We will examine historical and contemporary practices in lighting design, writings by choreographers and designers and examine designs of current practitioners. This course is very hands on, so we will be on the stage testing ideas, colors and designs onstage, as well as for installation and sit- specific work. For the final project, lighting a dance work, each student will be required to create a design from concept to performance, with cue sheets, and lighting plots. These pieces will be presented at the end of the semester.

Dance Production

• We discuss the creative process of bringing your dance works from conception to the stage. Budgeting, funding, reading and understanding theater contracts and production basics are all covered as well as providing the dancer with an introduction to the types of performance venues available today, and their technical systems and equipment. It will also establish an awareness of how the full range and scope of technical theater design arts may be utilized by a choreographer.

Stagecraft

• This course trains students to organize, set, run, and breakdown a show. Maintenance, hanging, cabling, and focusing lighting instruments, understanding circuiting, dimmers, lighting and sound boards, and basic electrics, and an understanding of the jobs on stage and front of house. This course culminates running a performance from beginning to end. For dance artists, we can also cover reading theater specifications and equipment lists, and what positions you may need in different theater situations (studio theater, site specific, installation to proscenium stages).

Projections for Stage Design and Installation

• Understanding and working with projections and lighting. We explore projections as set design, lighting sources, and set props. Technical specifications of projection, images, and computer systems will be balanced with experience and experimentation creating and working with projection as environment, sets, and installations using image mapping, still and moving images. Interactivity  systems, historical contexts, and modern enactments (from West Side Story to Bill Viola) will all be covered.

Technology and Site

• Technology expands the possibilities in site work from lighting and soundscapes, to image mapping and augmented reality. We will question when and how to use technology to fully explore and integrate with a site. We will further understand how technology affects the perception of a space, the viewer and your connection to the land and architecture you are working in.

Sound Design for Dance and Installations

• Sound creates a visceral extension of a movement work. This course covers creating sound scores for dance projects, understanding 4 and 6 channel sound systems, integrating soundscapes into installation, learning how to edit, build and modify sounds in software, historical integrations and movements, as well as sources for sound.