Dance / Reviewing a Pedagogy for the Bodenwieser Technique by James Batchelor, Ruth Osborne and Wesley Lim. At The Street Theatre, Canberra, September 3. Reviewed by MICHELLE POTTER

Canberra’s dance community gathered recently at The Street Theatre for an event in the series Wellspring: Inquiry and Exchange, a regular collaborative endeavour between The Street and the ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics.

This particular Wellspring occasion had the specific name Reviewing a Pedagogy for the Bodenwieser Technique and was part of the ANU Masters degree program being taken by choreographer James Batchelor.

This Wellspring event was part explanation of the dance technique of Gertrud Bodenwieser, Viennese-born artist, whose years in Australia during the mid twentieth century had an enormous effect on many Australians; and part demonstration of that technique.

The evening was introduced by ANU researcher and coordinator of the Wellspring program, Leslie Barnes, and sponsored by the ANU and the team at The Street via Caroline Stacey. The main participants were Batchelor himself; Ruth Osborne, former artistic director of Quantum Leap Australia and teacher of the Bodenwieser technique; and Wesley Lim, senior lecturer at the ANU and supervisor of Batchelor’s research.

The program for the evening consisted of a spoken introduction from Lim on the history of Bodenwieser technique, especially in Australia. It was followed by a further introduction from Osborne of specific aspects of the technique; and then a demonstration, led by Osborne and performed by a small group of dancers, including Batchelor and Lim, of certain elements of the technique. Finally, we watched a solo, created and performed by Batchelor, on aspects of the technique that had been previously discussed. A Q&A session concluded the evening.

While the discussion and performances, especially the group dancing demonstrating Bodenwieser’s use of a figure-of-eight movement by the body, was more than interesting, one aspect of the conversation bothered me somewhat. There was some discussion by Batchelor and Osborne that Bodenwieser is not as well-known in Australia as she should be, given the major influence her technique has created.

Perhaps it is necessary for some kind of teacher training to be introduced that should suggest that Bodenwieser’s name be added to teaching and technique development.

From a personal point of view, I recall often being asked to carry out a particular ballet barre exercise called “Danilova grands battements”, a development of a standard exercise but an evolution invented by well-known Ballets Russes dancer Alexandra Danilova. I also discovered that part of a solo performance I did at a studio performance came from George Balanchine’s famous work Serenade. So, thanks to my teacher at the time, I was well aware I was dancing material created by previous and much-admired artists.

It was a thrill to know this and I suspect the same might occur for Bodenwieser students if teachers were trained to add her name somewhere during a class.

News all day, every day at CityNewsQBN.com.au.