Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T21:40:27.852Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gaga as Metatechnique: Negotiating Choreography, Improvisation, and Technique in a Neoliberal Dance Market

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2017

Meghan Quinlan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Gaga, a practice developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, is one of the most popular training methods on the global dance market. Structured as a metatechnique, or a system for negotiating techniques within one's body, Gaga teaches students to both draw on and reject multiple movement techniques to create their own movement. I consider how the paradigms of choreography, technique, and improvisation are blurred together in the pedagogical model of a metatechnique and how training dancers to shift between choreographer, dancer, and improviser has significant ramifications for understanding their agency. The metatechnique model of Gaga falls in line with neoliberal values of efficiency and a wide range of skills and knowledge; this analysis provides an understanding of recent trends in dance training in relation to contemporary political and socioeconomic structures.

Keywords

choreographycontemporary danceGagaimprovisationmetatechniqueneoliberalismOhad Naharinpedagogytechnique
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , August 2017 , pp. 26 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Albright, Ann Cooper. 1997. Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Bales, Melanie, and Nettl-Fiol, Rebecca, eds. 2008. The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. (1993) 2011. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1997. “Dancing Bodies” In Meaning in Motion, edited by Desmond, Jane C., 235–58. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2009. “Choreographies and Choreographers.” In Worlding Dance, edited by Leigh Foster, Susan, 98–118. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2010. “Dancing Bodies: An Addendum, 2009.” Theater 40 (1): 25–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2011. Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. (1977) 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Sheriden, Alan. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Gaga Movement Ltd. 2016. Gaga People. Dancers. Accessed June 28, 2016. http://gagapeople.com/english/.Google Scholar
Galili, Deborah Friedes. 2015. “Moving Beyond Technique with Ohad Naharin in the Twenty-First Century.” Dance Chronicle 32 (3): 360–92.Google Scholar
Gere, David. 2003. “Introduction.” In Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, edited by Albright, Ann Cooper and Gere, David, xiii–xxi. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, Danielle. 2010. I Want to Be Ready: Improvisation as a Practice of Freedom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio. 2012. Declaration. Argo-Navis. Kindle edition.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, Jonathan David. 2001. “Improvisation in African-American Vernacular Dancing.” Dance Research Journal 33 (2): 40–53.Google Scholar
Kedhar, Anusha. 2014. “Flexibility and Its Bodily Limits: Transnational South Asian Dancers in an Age of Neoliberalism.” Dance Research Journal 46 (1): 23–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraut, Anthea. 2015. Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marks, Victoria. 2003. “Against Improvisation: A Postmodernist Makes the Case for Choreography.” In Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, edited by Albright, Ann Cooper and Gere, David, 135–40. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Randy. 1998. Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Randy. 2012. “A Precarious Dance, a Derivative Sociality.” TDR 56 (4): 62–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauss, Marcel. (1935) 1992. “Techniques of the Body.” In Incorporations, edited by Crary, Jonathan and Kwinter, Sanford, 455–77. New York: Zone.Google Scholar
Monroe, Raquel. 2011. “‘I Don't Want to do African … What About My Technique?’: Transforming Dancing Places into Spaces in the Academy.” The Journal of Pan African Studies 4 (6): 38–55.Google Scholar
Morris, Gay, and Giersdorf, Jens Richard. 2016. “Introduction.” In Choreographies of 21st Century Wars, edited by Morris, Gay and Giersdorf, Jens Richard, 1–24. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Novack, Cynthia J. 1990. Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Quinlan, Meghan. 2016. “Gaga as Politics: A Case Study of Contemporary Dance Training.” PhD diss., University of California, Riverside.Google Scholar
Rowe, Nicholas. 2009. “Post-Salvagism: Choreography and Its Discontents in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Dance Research Journal 41 (1): 45–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savigliano, Marta. 2009. “Worlding Dance and Dancing Out There in the World.” In Worlding Dance, edited by Foster, Susan Leigh, 163–90. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar