THE TRAINING OF BODILY PRACTICES OF DANCE: FROM WALL TO WARRIOR, THE WORK WITH IMAGINATION IN THE INSTANT COMPOSITION OF JULYEN HAMILTON

Abstract

Melanie Bales and Rebecca Nettl-Fio, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Dance Department), have established the premise that, in dance, the training of body practices not only would be a place for building skills, but also one of invention, discovery and development of dance. The training of such practices would be therefore a generative place for art and knowledge production. This article aims to discuss how the concept of imagination emerges in the training of dance practices from the instant composition, according to the conception of the British choreographer Julyen Hamilton. For that purpose, an artistic practice of ethnography has been held in which the privileged field was the studio itself during training sessions held in Berlin’s circuits of contemporary dance between January and June 2015. The methodological considerations are based on a research made by the author about her own body dance practices, conceived as a locus of a becoming-choreographic, a path into a process of immersion in the practice itself.