Where: Greenwich Dance Academy
When: 15th-19th August 2011
Teacher: Renaud Wiser
Born and trained in Switzerland, Renaud started his dancing career in France with the National Ballet of Marseille. After working with the Gothenburg Ballet, he joined Rambert Dance Company in 2004 where he developed his interest for teaching and choreographing. Now a freelance dance artist, Renaud teaches classes for companies including Rambert Dance Company, Bonachela Dance Company and Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures.
The class: In this physical class, the focus is on mobilising the back, building up core strength and travelling through space.
Renaud Wiser integrates the Cunningham training he received with Rambert Dance Company in the warm up and slowly bring the dancers to take the space through a set of traveling exercises and floor work. At the end of class, the dancers will learn a long phrase that uses change of dynamics and most of the principles taught during the class.
My verdict: A Cunningham class brought me right back to my university days, with one of my main teacher’s inspired and taught through a Cunningham system. Revisiting it now, I discovered my attitude has changed somewhat, and I appreciate different things in a class now to what I did back then.
A few years ago, routine, phrases and fundamentally stricter techniques worked really well for me. I found that the structure of exercises allowed me to model my expectations of myself, and feel like I had paid attention to each part of my body sufficiently enough to feel that I had “worked”.
My, how things change. Wiser gave a wonderful class. He was friendly, his own technique was amazing, and there were stationary phrases as well as ones that were spacious and lush. It was the fastest I’ve seen someone move in a long time! (Wiser really does have an amazing ability to move in and out of the floor!). Foot articulation phrases, side bends and curves – we did it all. I was sweating by the end of each class, and I found that I felt well mobilized. Curve-wise, those flattened spinal curves still don’t serve me well, and such a structured class doesn’t seem to be what I’m looking for at the moment.
Still, this is a good discipline-building tool, something all dancers know about.