Notes from observing the 3d and last hour of Dieter Heitkamp’s class on Rotation

From Contactencyclopedia

CI36 Berlin, Tanzfabrik
July 12, 2008

Notes from observing the 3d and last hour of Dieter Heitkamp’s class on Rotation.
Keith Hennessy

Dieter has been involved with CI since 1977 and with Tanzfabrik since it was founded in 1978. Tanzfabrik became a primary site for CI classes, jams, and performances, one of the pioneering CI sites in Europe. CI was introduced 1977 by Christine Vilardo, who was one of the founding members of Tanzfabrik Berlin 1978 with  Reinhard Krätzig, Jacalyn Carley, Claudia Feest, Norbert Mauk, Sabine Lemke, Dieter Heitkamp and other artists. Reinhard started to teach CI soon, also Fred Holland and Dieter Heitkamp, workshops with Bob Rease and Ernie Adams, Bruno Stefanoni, Robin Feld and many more.


Dance is physics of the body. Rotations. Inclinations. Loops. Getting stuck in loops.

There are 15 people in solo research - rotating body parts and whole body. Which axis is rotating? Is the room spinning or the body?

Dieter speaks to the class, “Are you rotating limbs or whole body? Are you rotating from organs or rotating 2 organs against each other? Are you rotating from the back of your eyes? When we work anatomically we get analytical focused, but we can also work towards loss of control.”

Meanwhile he DJ’s a Regina Spektor song in which he senses rotations, loops.

Then he reads slowly, pausing between each brief phrase, a German translation of a Dutch poem. I understand only the words turning, contact, blut (blood?).

Dieter interrupts the poem to coach, “You take the information you want. Maybe it goes in one ear and out the other.”

Reading continues, in German and English with brief comments; intentional interventions in focus, practice, the poem, the student’s attention.

I hear, “Curriculum vitae, electricity, glass recycling, a distinct circle, everything one wants, everything one fights against...”

Another Dieter suggestion: “It’s fine to go into contact. Somebody said it’s a contact class. But you can also avoid contact. Greetings to Meg Stuart. (I add, Friederike Plafki)”

Dieter plays an accapella male singer. It’s a sample repeated in some contemporary composition by I don’t know but am immediately attracted to (Gavyn Bryars). Later he tells me that the singer was on the street.
“Jesus blood never failed me yet... falling down.” Orchestration builds under and around the voice. The CD skips. Dieter jumps up to correct but then pauses. Students start to react, laugh, look, stop dancing. Dieter calls out, “Scratching!” then he turns it off.

While the class continues its research, Dieter shares with me the text he read to start the class. Some excerpts:

Rotation.
Looking at rotation
Circulatory systems
Let’s make a circle
Introducing myself
Rotatio, from Latin, turning
Sounds theoretical but also can be perception
Cyclical, changes
Breaking, interrupting
Return to start, to home, to Tanzfabrik, to early CI
Axis - vertical, sagital, horizontal, even diagonal
Central, peripheral, outside the body.

Then the participants reflect on body, life, politics, rotations, returns, cycles.

Again, Dieter directs, “Feel free to sit aside and watch. Or there is pen and paper if you’d like to draw circles, or whatever.”

Students continue to spin, turn, alone, into each other, away.

Dieter to Keith: “I started the class with basic exercises, rolling.” He continues to reference variations on rotations and imagines a Round Robin as a rotational principle.

Keith to Dieter: “I’m interested in how the exercise can be anatomical or theoretical, rotating around an axis or a point (of a sphere).”

Dieter: “Yes we started very physical.”

Again a CD starts to skip. He lets it go on another 20 or 30 seconds. “Live with disturbances,” Dieter calls out.

D to K: “What I like about rotation - it goes on and on, there’s always something new...”

to class: “Are you enjoying yourself? If not can you change it?”

A student asks him to repeat. He does, strongly, almost sarcastically and ends with a forceful, “Please!”

I decide to stop writing and try drawing the rotations I’m watching.

Dieter invites half to continue dancing/experimenting and half to take notes. A minimalist piece for violins is playing. Dieter begins to say, “Look for an end (to the dance) but instead says, “Find a transition - a way to get from dancing to writing, or from writing to dancing. Transition has become a political discussion in Germany.”

More Regina Spektor (Begin to hope).

I draw Dieter spinning on his feet, stepping, arms occasionally whip him into a faster turn while his knees pump up/down in exaggerated steps. He stops, waits, then exits the dancing space. Silence (which means now we hear the driving rock music in another studio. The floor squeaking, quiet laughter as the dance ends.

Dieter: “We started with a circle. Let’s end with a circle. Not necessarily a vicious circle.” He invites the participants to read through their notes.

Adalisa asks, “Is straight movement possible, i.e., doesn’t all movement tend towards rotation?

Jess responds, “Only falling from a height, in relation to gravity, can generate truly “straight” movement?” Then he asks, “What is the relationship in language, in Dieter’s vocabulary, between rotation and spiral.

Dieter responds, “I’m in the middle of this research. No conclusions, few definitions. But at this point I see Rotation as a bigger category, Spiral as a sub-category of Rotation.”

Following more questions and comments on language (and the inconsistencies of translation - there are German, English, Italian, Spanish mother tongues in the class), Dieter says, “I suggest using verbs rather than nouns. Rotating. Twisting. Turning.” And again we circle around to recall an enduring yet always contested principle of the alternative social and political contexts from which CI emerged: to avoid fixing, naming, certifying, creating orthodoxy or institutions. Thanks Dieter.