Shannon Murphy shares with us some thoughts about the newest series in idioSomatics: POST-JAZZ. idioSomatics is idiosynCrazy productions’ free community class, geared toward providing free training for professional dancers. The class is offered as a part of idiosynCrazy productions’ training initiative, The Physical Laboratory. You can keep up-to-date with the latest series by adding The Physical Laboratory to your Google Calendar. idioSomatics is Fridays from 10am – noon at the Community Education Center.
*also, check out our One-Year Vlog Project
POST-JAZZ
– Shannon Murphy
Feeling awkward and a little unsure of how things would go, I arrived at the CEC the morning of our first of 5 classes in the idioSomatics: POST-JAZZ series. I usually don’t voice my knowledge in jazz dance in the Philadelphia dance community, although I’m sure that it slips out into my movement all the time. It took a bit of coaxing from Juma, who proposed that I teach a Jazz dance series to kick off 2012’s idioSomatics return. Generally surrounded by the post-modern dance community, I voice my other interests – in Franklin Method, anatomy, and imagery – loud and clear, and it never crosses my mind whether the class will be on board or not, or if my interests are valid. But this, to me, feels different. I am questioning how well I anticipated handling the duality of having a body-mind-centered / jazz class. I wonder how far-fetched my desires were to facilitate exploration of both gentle, aware preparedness AND the spark of accent and fierceness that the persona of Jazz dance usually brings to the studio. This duality haunts me as a teacher. I want class participants to know that this duality is possible.
I’ve been spending much of 2012 soul-searching. So, revisiting my ghosts about Jazz dance seemed to fit right in. After our first class, I chatted with participants Gabrielle Revlock, Marcie Mamura and Ellie Goudie-Averill and found myself finally asking aloud what had been playing over and over again in my head. What are the differences between the persona of a dance style and it’s technique? Does the selling, or the sexiness that is connected to jazz dance facilitate more than just the look? Does it give us more options as performers? And if we take that away, is it another dance style? We begin talking about how “playing the part” is often a part of the culture of dance class. I acknowledge dressing a certain way for ballet class tends to produce a different outcome than wearing the same attire for a release technique class would. I consider if it is just the clothes, or if they facilitate a shift in my state of being. If the latter is true, then I wonder if I take on a different persona as a teacher to facilitate different agendas. I’ve been asking myself how the teacher-student culture differs from jazz to more contemporary dance practices, and if adapting to either will actually help me lead a class where I’m looking to share a balance between mindful embodied movement and a highly energetic and technical practice.
I’ve taken the last three weeks to whole-heartedly dive into teaching my peers contemporary jazz class with clarity of anatomical, and qualitative awareness. I am having fun, rediscovering why I love Jazz, and how I can make it useful to myself and to my dance community. We’ve been focusing on how to hit an accent, completing a line inside the down-beat in a way that won’t give us tennis elbow. We’re talking about moving energy on the inside of our bodies and finding continual pathways of movement in what is commonly known as a hip roll. To be honest, my language about movement is not that different than what I would offer if I were to be teaching a contemporary movement class, but I find I’m exploring physical vocabulary that has been put on the back burner for a bit now. I know that, for quite some time, I have purposefully neglected my jazz dance roots to find new options. Now after spending so much time digging into new territory I feel confident to welcome back this style of dance in a new light. POST-JAZZ is reminding me that I have something to offer that I, up until this point, have not allowed myself to give. Fusing jazz, and Franklin Method brings together two ways of looking at my body in motion. I ask myself, “why can’t I let my hair down and know that my clavicle is spiraling into my sternum creating potential energy?” I know this is just the beginning of leaning how these two worlds can collide, and am looking forward to seeing what can develop for me as a teacher, an artist and for the future of POST-JAZZ.
photo by Lindsay Browning
