Neutrality, Specificity and Choice: a contextual discussion of Studio Matejka and key themes
for practical exploration and pedagogic dialogue
Sarie Mairs Slee
Introduction
Studio Matejka is a performance laboratory ensemble working in residence at the Grotowski
Institute. The Studio first formed in October 2010 to embark on a two-year pedagogic research
project on physical processes of the human/body in 21st century performance. The laboratory
project involved thirteen actors, dancers, martial artists, academics and film makers from nine
countries and explored infrastructures for 21st century performance training that specifically
work across borders:
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borders between performance genres,
borders between training techniques, and
borders between individual expression and ensemble work.
Through practical investigation, the collective worked to develop the strength, agility and
dexterity to physically ‘speak’ through a diverse range of ideas, images and vocabularies. In
total, Studio Matejka did not work to create something ‘other’ to existing training systems.
Instead, it used established methods as a starting point or ‘trampoline’ for pedagogic and
creative exploration, charting individual discoveries, drawing out patterns and/or
contradictions and integrating these findings into the emergent work.
During this two year project, the Studio developed a number of ‘crucial exercises’: exercises that
could dually service opposing aspects (i.e. the technical and the creative, the individual and the
ensemble, etc) within this work across borders. This workshop explores a developed variation
of one ‘crucial exercise’ in relation to the session’s theme of ‘the neutral body’. This paper
contextualizes the workshop’s practical explorations with information about Studio Matejka’s
2010-2012 laboratory project and key theoretical considerations for both the research and
discussion at the January 2014 International Platform for Performance Training (IPPT).
Studio Matejka- aims, expectations and approaches to pedagogic exploration
Studio Matejka’s initial practical research project commenced in October 2010 and ran through
March 2012, followed by a dissemination period from April-June 2012, in which work was
shared in Poland, the US, and the UK. This initial laboratory research fed into a number of
creative projects in 2012 and 2013, including eight short films and three internationally touring
performances. However, this paper will focus on the activities and explorations of the initial
laboratory project.
The two-year project was divided into ‘seasons’ in which the group worked collectively in
intensive periods ranging from two weeks to three months in length. While the working
processes remained flexible, patterns emerged in the Studio’s practice. Days began with yoga1,
followed by two-three hours with physical ‘fragment exercises’ focusing on skill development
1
In periods when Studio Matejka was working in the Grotowski Institute’s rural base in Brzezinka, a group run
would also take place in the morning before yoga. Running in unison footfall and with a number of
complimentary actions/activities sought to both support individual stamina and ‘group tuning’.
under the leadership of the director, Studio members or guest artists. There was often a
common meal and long break in the afternoon. Practical work resumed in the mid-afternoon,
often working on ‘group tuning’ exercises before breaking into individual work. The evening
was often devoted to the development of etudes- solos, duets or trios- or group improvisations
that grew from tasks negotiated with the director. The etude tasks usually address both a skillbased challenge for that individual or group and a creative question. Individual etudes would
often develop and change over weeks and months, often in response to dialogue with the
director and each other, and serve as core material for improvisation as well.
During the project. the academic and documentary team played a complimentary role: mapping
the work, contextualising challenges or discoveries, and working reflectively with the artistic
team in planning the ‘next steps’ of the laboratory work. Guest practitioners from the theatre,
contemporary dance, contact improvisation, experiential anatomy, Feldenkreis and
physiotherapy offered new materials to expand the scope and depth of the Studio’s
explorations.
The diverse performance backgrounds of the Studio members brought a range of skill bases,
personal aesthetics, creative and pedagogic experiences, and preferences to the practical
explorations. However, even within this diversity, some recognition of common ‘key’ problems
unresolved in current performance pedagogies surrounding movement and the body. First, the
dominance of the servant-performer/master-director dichotomy in traditional 20th century
training models (from dance and theatre) was a point chosen to be challenged. The ‘studio’
tradition and laboratory model for performative exploration were strong tools, but in taking an
eclectic approach to sampling’ training methods, some issues emerged. While instilling
discipline and expanding physical/vocal dexterity, training methods reward a performer’s
conformity to carefully defined methods/aesthetics. They individually sought to develop
physical or creative ‘reflex’ in the performers’ bodies, but in the diverse range of approaches
explored negated this possibility of ingrained, embodied action.
In many ways, the participants’ diverse backgrounds shone a light on how biased, partial, and
prejudiced (i.e. ‘non-neutral’) our bodies are when approaching physical performance training.
Through the project, this variety of pre-existing aesthetics, values and practices of a person's
background- cultural, genre-based, prior training, prior viewing as an audience member- played
a strong role in both the trajectory of the individual’s development, but also in the collective
capacity of the group. The performance laboratory explorations did not attempt to neutralize
their bodies or ways of moving, but instead created a common space for work neutral to a
hierarchy of defined aesthetics and neutral to preferred content or creative style. This common
space was often sought via specificity in relation to choice: allowing each individual to 'start
where they are' and grow a more specific, finer-detailed and better controlled physicality. By
focusing on specificity and creating frameworks for feedback to inform physical action
alongside choice, it allowed for different practical concepts and approaches to physical
performance training to operate alongside one another. This is not to say that creative work was
without judgment or positive/negative feedback: creative etudes were directed with strong
input and opinion from both the director and fellow colleagues in the Studio. However, in the
training aspects of the project, the work to build individual capacity for embodied specificity
allowed individual actors/dancers to develop of dexterity, strength, awareness, and range in
the ‘flavour’ of their own movement patterns and aesthetics.
Questions on Eclecticism, Neutrality and Specificity in Contemporary Performance Training2
Studio Matejka’s approach to ‘sampling’ a range of movement practices was not innovative or
unique; since the mid-to-late 20th century, an approach of ‘sampling’ physical training methods
has become the norm in both dance and theatre performance pedagogy. Citing pedagogic shifts
in post-modern dance, Bales (2008) declares that “...the fact of eclectic training emerged fully
exposed… the dancer’s view of training was shifted, echoing the postmodernist admission that...
there was ‘no there there,’ no center or central technique that could do it all” (31). Evans (2009)
cites that “as the nature of theatre has changed, so have the physical challenges faced by the
actor, and new training methods have found opportunities to contribute to the pool of expertise
required by the professional theatre industry” (4). He eludes that the academic and training
institutions in different Western countries and cultures take different stances of preferred
practice in the spectrum between staunch traditionalism and easy eclecticism, but the lack of a
‘central technique’ for movement training seems parallel. Although the eclectic approach is now
commonplace in performance pedagogy, little exists to formally bridge the gaps, contradictions
or ambiguities between distinct approaches. The aim of physical training may be to aid the
translation of a director’s, writer’s or choreographer’s instructions into movements which
performers feel they can “inhabit or justify” (Evans, 5), but there can become a tendency for
emerging performers to physically ‘speak’ in many voices, but without clarity on what is being
‘said’.
Drawing in on the topic of the January 2014 IPPT, I turn to the question of the ‘neutral body’ as a
potential, central focus for performance training: with the “…aim, through improved physical
alignment, to open up the body to respond as directly, physically, spontaneously, and ‘naively’ as
possible to emotion” (Evans, 2009: 86). In Studio Matejka’s work the phrase ‘zero point’ was
used as the term for the moment of clarity and intention that precedes action, in which
neutrality was a key aim and resonance. This process of stripping to neutrality, the choice for
via negativa as an “eradication of blocks” (as opposed to a “collection of skills”) is also shared in
areas of dance training (Grotowski in Schechner, 2001: 31). The approaches emergent in the
Judson Church Dance Theatre in the 1960s aimed to remove hierarchy within the judgement of
movement, to “detrain the body of the dancer’s habitual structures and patterns of movement”
(Dempster in Bales, 2008: 15). An example draws from a recollection by Elaine Summers on
feedback sessions in Judson, in which constructive criticism was given to a colleague, Judith
Dunn:
Another point is that we weren’t saying to her ‘You shouldn’t point your toes.’
We wanted to know whether she really wanted to, or whether she shared the
struggle many of us were having about training and mannerisms. I personally
had a lot to shed to get down to what I wanted in movement” (Banes, 1993: 81).
While the purist aesthetic around ‘neutral’ and pedestrian movement of the Judson Movement
has faded within late 20c and early 21c dance practice, this paradigm left a lasting mark and
2
In discussing contemporary performance training, I draw from my experience as a Physical and Dance
Theatre lecturer: working with both dancers and actors whose educational interest and curricular focus is the
body in performance. While I fully recognise that the IPPT’s early emphasis is on actor training, I also draw in
perspectives from postmodern dance training, especially in the UK where the vernacular of dance theatre
draws on traditional dance technique but towards creative ends working far beyond ‘pure movement’.
perspective. “The idea [in contemporary dance training] is often to pare down, not build up
(muscle, habits); to get out of the way (of nature’s better decision), to allow rather than to make
something happen; to ‘listen’ to movement impulse rather than acting” (Bales: 15).
However, working from a dance background, elements of ‘neutrality’ as an aim or focus of
training raises some concerns.3 In traditional dance training institutions, early work to
neutralize the body of bad habits is an important first step Once the ‘dirt’ is cleaned, the dancer’s
body can absorb and embody a range of physical languages and movement styles within
performance settings and projects. Transformations (of a different sort) can occur. But this
process risks several elements and questions emerge. One question is around the negative
connotations of all non-neutral movement within training. Terminology such as “parasites”,
“contamination”, “dirt” area featured in the examples given by Evans when discussing abstract
expressive (“pure”) movement in working toward the neutral body (2008: 94). Yet, the
importance of self, personal experience, memory and heritage as source material for creative
work in contemporary performance practice makes some physical habits and patterns the very
embodiment of identity needed (as long it is harnessed and controlled in through kinesthetic
awareness to use or withdraw). Evans reflects on this tension as well: “ the theatre economy
values such values only in respect to such participation in the efficient production of marketable
performance, yet at the same time it tacitly gives value to the non-‘neutral’ qualities of
personality, originality, excess and virtuosity (as and when it sees fit)” (95).
Another question arises around the ‘perception’ of neutrality, but realities that silently embed a
new, codified norm. An addicted ‘people watcher’, I think of the moments in a studio before a
practical class or workshop begins. During my own warm-up, I take in the woman working
through yoga postures as a physical and meditative awakening, another woman rolling up and
down the spine, incorporating a series of plies and extended ‘flat backs’ commonly used in
contemporary dance techniques, and the energized slashes/swings of the limbs and twists of
the torso by another woman trained in martial arts. We stand to begin, all ‘in neutral’ and the
residue of our past embodied practice and training evident in this posture. The careful
placement of the feet and relaxed shoulders may be evident from yoga practice or the long
vertical spine from dance training, or the strong, kinetic energy held in the sternum is visible
from years of martial arts combat. Yet all stand aligned, energized and ready to move in
‘neutral’ positions. Of course, this example pulls from experiences where fellow participants
have undergone movement training and the ‘residue’ has already gathered from years of work
in various forms, from creative choices made, from preferences and performance experiences.
But when translating this to the training of young performers, I think it is worth considering
what patterns and reflexes replace the ticks or “parasites” that come before. I do not judge
whether one training is better than another, that one ‘neutral’ better prepares a performer for
clear, articulate, fully-embodied movement that ‘speaks’ the images or ideas intended. I simply
pose the question: is a genuine embodied ‘neutrality’ possible? Are we (and our students) fully
aware what the body and movement should be neutral to? And is should it serve as a central
aim for all performance training regarding the body?
3
It is worth highlighting that dance training, as a whole, does not follow the structure and procedure
recognised in ballet training, the most common example often taken when making comparisons in dance.
There is indeed a strong emphasis on form, but often alongside improvisation, other non-dance movement
forms, holistic or somatic practices, as alluded to earlier in the paragraph.
Working from the experience with Studio Matejka, I propose a triad of alternative foci for
movement performance training: awareness, specificity and potential. While much of this will be
explored practically in the workshop, the three foci involve the following concepts or loose
definitions. Awareness speaks to a performer’s kinesthetic awareness of what is happening in
their body: in stillness, in motion and in detail. With millions of nerve endings in the body,
experiences and tools are needed to draw on the information they give us, process it and
decipher the experienced sensation in relation to inner intention and outward appearance.
Specificity denotes the ability to physically do what one intends the body to do in fine detail. If
the main aim of movement training is to enable performers to perform with their “whole body”,
then an additional focus on specificity turns attention to the range and particularity of
movement: (for example) the physicality needed to leap into the air like fireworks, to slowly
stroke an invisible cat with the bottom of the left shoulder blade, to find the curvature of the
spine revealing the fatigue of long-term pain, and (dream up your own imagined or preferred
image). Specificity expands awareness to add detail in both the awareness itself and the capacity
to articulate choice on both macro- and micro- scales. Potential links this kinesthetic awareness
and control to the ability to explore or apply them creatively. It links to the “communicative
potential of the student actor’s movement” Evans discusses in relation to the body as a signifier
in performance (2009:101). It begins to integrate a focus of creative practice within the training
of the body on a fundamental level. By posing these three complimentary foci as a potential (and
possibly wider-reaching) focus for physical performance training, the aim is to set aside the
specific needs of genres, aesthetics or tribes within the wide arena of performance training and
search for more universal aims for student performers’ kinesthetic development.
Bibliography
Bales, M. ‘Training as a Medium Through Which’ in Bales, M. & Nettl-Fiol, R. (2008) The Body
Eclectic: evolving practices in dance training, University of Illinois Press, Chicago.
Banes, S. (1993) Democracy’s Body: Judson Dance Theatre, 1962-1964, Duke University Press,
Durham, USA.
Evans, M (2009) Movement Training for the Modern Actor, Routledge, London.
Grotowski, J. Towards a Poor Theatre in Schechner, R. & Wolford, L. (2001) The Grotowski
Sourcebook, 2nd ed., Routledge, London.