A Body ThinkingA Mind dAncingDialogue on the Hobart Method®

withGillian Hobart

and Claudio Gasparotto

edited by Lorella Barlaam

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This book is a journey in the footsteps of Gillian Hobart, creator of the “anti-method” Method that bears her name. By suggesting dance movement as a humanistic approach,

the Hobart Method aims at the benefit of everybody’s inner world, in order to bring out its beauty.

This three-person dialogue, led by the journalist Lorella Barlaam, speaks to us about dance as an art for everyone, thereby revealing the purity of mind

of a true Teacher.

Other texts by Alessandro Pontremoli

Alberto TestaAmedeo Amodio

12,00 €

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Libri e-libri

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Translated from the Italian by Sarah Baldiserra

© 2015 by Guaraldi s.r.l.Via Novella 15, 47922 Rimini

Tel. 0541.742974/742497 - Fax 0541.742305www.guaraldi.it - www.guaraldilab.com - shop.guaraldilab.com

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Isbn pdf 978-88-6927-204-2Isbn epub 978-88-6927-205-9

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A body ThInkIng

A MInd dAncIng

Dialogue on the Hobart Method®

byGillian Hobart & Claudio Gasparotto

edited byLorella Barlaam

other texts by Alessandro Pontremoli

Alberto TestaAmedeo Amodio

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conTenTs

InTroducTory noTes

Words and Miracles by Alessandro Pontremoli ..................9Beauty of a Mission by Alberto Testa ................................15

Three VoIces dIAlogue

Part OneMeeting Gillian Hobart and her Method .........................21Dance with your soul, your body’s secret life ...................25

Part TwoThe dance of life between pain and joy ............................47

Part ThreeSimple words are the hardest ............................................55

Part FourMovement is a body thinking, a mind dancing ................67

Part FiveThe Hobart Method® Training Program ..........................75Training trainers. Two photographs .................................78

Part SixOn the way, towards… .....................................................85Valediction .........................................................................87

concludIng reMArks

Two Bodies, One Mind by Amedeo Amodio ....................93Afterword by Gillian Hobart ...........................................105

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Words are divine, the body is a miracleGillian Hobart

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Words And MIrAcles

by Alessandro Pontremoli

«Words are divine, the body is a miracle». These in-spiring and prophetic words were spoken by Gillian Hobart. On the surface, she is one of many women who participated in the American post-war avant-gar-de – one of many foreign, talented dancers who, ap-pearing on television, left a mark in the Italian collec-tive unconscious. By introducing new shapes of the body and forms of movement, she contributed to ed-ucate them on new perspectives, which are not even imaginable for the inattentive audience of our time. Gillian, however, was not anybody. Thanks to her classical training, her body released a powerful pres-ence, whereas her contact with the Anglo-Saxon La-banian tradition gave her an intense magnetism. Her flexuous, lithe body is engaged not only in art – the art she revealed to the audience of the Spoleto Festival in 1967 together with Amedeo Amodio - but also in po-litical and ethical issues. She developed an inclination towards socially engaged dance especially due to her bond with Mary Anthony, the American choreogra-pher and activist of the New Dance Group, a perform-ing arts organisation based in New York City, striv-ing for social change through movement and dance. A turning point in Gillian Hobart’s life was marked when her artistic urge turned into a need to rethink

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A body thinking/A mind dancing

gesture. This brought her to consider, in maturity, the enormous shades and differences of meaning in mul-tiple dance movement languages - therefore, “differ-ence” and “diversity” in life and movement in order to explore beauty wherever it settles. Dance move-ment is capable of rebirthing joy and life. All bodies relate to one another, even if they are maimed, injured or diversely able - and thus “diverse-ly-dancing”. They offer themselves to a representative consciousness, situated in a foreign body. However, in order to meet another body, it is necessary to tran-scend one’s point of view, which implies a shift in per-spective. This allows grasping the event in its various aspects and in its evolution over time.Gestures and sounds last only a moment. When they are no longer present, they are mirrored in the ges-tures and sounds that follow.Imagination and perception interact by referring to an identity, which endures although its appearance may be different and lack control. Gillian has always sought and discovered new identities, in a quest to-wards deep awareness of her inner self. It is necessary to recognise a meaning, which is visi-ble from a number of different perspectives. This very meaning is what binds the various views together and guides the ceaseless transgression1 of perception. Every person’s perspective does not exist in itself, but it refers to forms of non-being.

1. The term transgression is used here in its etymological sense of “going across, going beyond”, and thus with a positive connota-tion. It is not used to mean “violating a rule”, but rather “moving across space and changing perspective”. By not transgressing his or her perspective, one maintains stereotypes in interaction with others.

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Dialogue on the Hobart Method®

Non-being does not merely refer to nothingness, or it would be senseless – it would concern simultaneous-ly the conditioned and unconditioned, thereby pro-ducing a contradiction. As the philosopher Virgilio Melchiorre wrote:

What is made manifest must have a certain meaning, which can be understood as a sign that refers to some-thing, and a sense that guides us towards exploring the intelligible [...]. The hidden result of every per-formance – that is, of every representative occurrence – is to resolve the contradiction of non-being2.

Therefore, dance does not simply cultivate appear-ance and theatre does not simply develop a story - otherwise no contact between them would be possi-ble. If there is any difference, it lies in the degree of semantic density achieved each time by various forms of performance. In theatre and dance, the parameter of presence is what governs the development of a script, which par-adoxically implies absence:

In short, the individual is missing - neither the creator nor the performer are present. Another artificial sub-ject appears on stage in the form of a suggestion, that is, a script3.

2. V. Melchiorre, Essere e parola. Idee per una antropologia metafi-sica [Being and speech. Ideas for a metaphysical anthropology], Vita e Pensiero, Milano 1982, p. 30.

3. U. Volli, Da Aristotele a Pina Bausch [From Aristoteles to Pina Bausch], in Id., Per il politeismo. Esercizi di pluralità dei linguaggi, Feltrinelli, Milano 1992, p. 134.

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A body thinking/A mind dancing

This script, which is created in time and space, guar-antees distance, thereby allowing people to free themselves from their self-image. As a result of other people’s thinking, their self-image is restrictive and limiting. As we have seen, this script in absence is not nothingness. It is rather the result of the individuals’ inherent condition that urges them to transcend their various views to fulfill the very act of creation – the only thing that can change us and make us feel alive. Dance is the very art of the body and the creation of dance corresponds to the body dynamics of its own creator. The body is to be understood both as Leib and as Körper. The former refers to the conscious body ex-pressing itself – the latter, to the merely physical one, a body among bodies, an object among objects. In its inherent ambiguity4, the body reveals itself im-mediately as the means of conscious intentionality and, at the same time, as the proof of our otherness in respect of Being.Our gestures and gazes speak out our intentionality and thus refer to a meaning that is neither ultimately perceivable nor fully comprehensible, if not by con-sidering what Melchiorre defines as «an inner urge and function, which is necessary and intangible in terms of bodily vision»5.Dance reveals the body’s great communicative power, that is, the weighty proof of our being in the world, and an unerasable tool of revelation of our being-there.

4. The term ambiguity is used here in its etymological sense of “double meaning”.

5. V. Melchiorre, Parola e icona. Nota introduttiva [Words and icons. Introductory note], in A. Cascetta (a cura di), Sipario!2, Nuova ERI, Roma 1991, p. 10.

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Dialogue on the Hobart Method®

Every expression, every gesture, even our very exist-ence, unveils an intended movement. This escapes the lack of meaning of the absurd proximity of the body’s games, by virtue of a continuous transgression of per-spectives, of a constant reference from one movement to another. This takes place even without the support of words, which, together with the body, reveal the intentional unity of the senses6.This is why dance is a story, the adjustment of a mean-ing which can never be fully determined but which «offers itself solely as a constant reference and whose value, as such, lies only in being a symbol of a commu-nal root of meaning»7.Therefore, it is in this view that a connection with the notion of language can be made, understood as the moment in which Being is put into words. On this subject, Melchiorre wrote:

As a person, man is language in the various attitudes of his bodily presence: the tension of consciousness is inherent and becomes thus manifest in all its mul-tiplicity; it becomes word in language, in singing, in gestures and gazes. Words, however, are carved out from the very deep unity of logos: the word discovers the womb of its origin and, what is more, by listening to their origin, words can penetrate in other meanings and generate new possibilities of expression8.

In some way, dance always tells a story, may it be about a shattered and distorted “being in the world”,

6. Cfr. ibidem.

7. Ibi, p. 11.

8. V. Melchiorre, Essere e parola [Being and speech], cit., p. 67.

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about existential malaise, or about one’s own real or dreamlike, positive or negative experiences.In some cases, dance is a well-structured story, a di-alectic of function, a thematic explanation of events, a series of major or minor movements. A gesture is never abstract, it is the story of a soul, polysemuous revelation of a centre of intentionality where all gaz-es converge and originate. It is through gestures that Being becomes manifest in the life that we are and in the set of responsibilities we embody - with pain and effort, we must inevitably accept this as the condition of our living.

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beAuTy of A MIssIon

by Alberto Testa

One of the events in that memorable period of the 1960s at the Festival of Spoleto remains impressed on my mind: the work of Amedeo Amodio. Towards the end of those years, I was engaged in organising one of the many forward-looking projects of that period. I approached Amodio, a young, well-known, talent-ed dancer with a fruitful career in the most important Italian theatres, in particular as soloist at the Scala of Milan and premier danseur at the Rome Opera Thea-tre. Amodio was about to embarque on his first major choreography. On this occasion, he introduced me to Gillian Hobart, dancer of rare sensibility. Gillian was born in Great Britain, where she com-pleted her formal training, followed by intense stud-ies in Modern Dance with Mary Anthony and Merce Cunningham in New York City. Anthony became her guide and inspiration. In those years, Mary Anthony had been invited to choreograph the highly successful weekly television shows, in which I knew Gillian took part as lead danc-er. However, I had seen Gillian perform in theatre and realised she would have moved away from popular entertainment, albeit artistic, in due time. I was not proved wrong.

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A body thinking/A mind dancing

In the 1967 edition of the Festival of the Two Worlds, Gillian and Amedeo were to perform at the Caio Melisso Theatre. Their choreography, Excursions, re-vealed a whole new concept of dance for us – in that it was free from classical ballet. Naturally, they were not alone. Throughout those eve-nings, there were many exciting discoveries – many to become world-famous. The germ of experimental dance was fast and unarrestable – Yvonne Rainer, Luis Falco and his dancers Jennifer Muller, Takako Asak-awa, Charles Phipps, Robert Powell – Manuel Alum, Karin Waehner, Susanna Egri and her group of per-formers and some brilliant dancers from the Scala. Pina Bausch, embarking on her role as the innovator of dance in the 20-21st century with her then partner and collaborator Jean Cébron.Although I was at the very hub of this wide mix of dance expressions, I was convinced that dance is “one” and unique, in that it expresses what words cannot. In short, the dancing body reveals a thinking mind and is a true expression of its beauty. The choreographic work Excursions, danced and cho-reographed by both Gillian and Amedeo, struck me profoundly. It was an astonishing work created for the Festival, inspired by Luciano Berio’s already existing score. Amedeo’s intuition brought them on a journey to the very depths of the human psyche, together with the dramatic impact of Berio’s music. Many years pre-viously, Martha Graham had wrought the same trans-formation in glorious works adopting contemporary scores. At that time, our eyes and ears were fixed on incom-ing information from the New World – a transatlantic exchange. So proved the meeting with Mary Anthony

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Dialogue on the Hobart Method®

and Merce Cunningham. It was a turning point for Gillian in life and work.Gillian had a small but interesting book published, Body and mind in modern dance, which summed up many of our views pertinent to those times in Spole-to. The performing years were over, and she turned to teaching, finally finding, in maturity, the generous spirit which drove her to approach the diversely able. The meeting with Claudio Gasparotto, sensitive and intelligent choreographer and convinced follower of Gillian’s artistic approach, left a lasting impression on both. Today he is the recognised voice in pursuing the ideals of the Hobart Method.Through dance, the diversely able people can find re-lief and support to be close to like-minded, like-think-ing people. This is the beauty that will save humankind.

November 2013

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Three VoIces dIAlogue

with Gillian Hobart and Claudio Gasparotto

curated by Lorella Barlaam

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21

Part One

MeeTIng gIllIAn hobArT And her MeThod

(“Luce sul mare”, Rehabilitation centre, November 2011)

It is my first time observing a lesson taught by Gil-lian Hobart, an accomplished dancer and creator of the Hobart Method®. I have already spoken about this «dance training focused on knowing one an-other in their search for inner beauty» with Claudio Gasparotto – the dancer, choreographer and soul of the Movimento Centrale Danza & Teatro School, and Gillian’s partner in the development of the Ho-bart Method.

Driving towards the “Luce sul Mare” Rehabilitation Centre on a surprisingly bright November morning, I think about the life of Gillian Hobart, a dancer in-volved with an inner drive of “soul”. After achieving her diploma at the Royal Academy of Dancing in London and completing her studies in Paris with Olga Preobrajenska, Gillian set sail for the United States to find her way in modern dance under the guide of Mary Anthony, esteemed teach-er and choreographer in New York City. During her successful and rewarding career she crossed paths with luminaries such as Merce Cunningham and John Cage.

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