Peggy Hackney dances the landscape, Snow Canyon, Uta, USA
As part of the 2007 Dance Therapy Association of Australia’s conference in Melbourne , American dance therapist Peggy Hackney offered two whole day workshops.
What most interested me about her work was her integration of verbal, visual and gestural language, to heighten experience and observation of movement. Uttering pragmatic, descriptive language as we moved, or observed another move, offered an analytical understanding of both our experience and observation. Abstract sounds and drawings were made as both sources and descriptors of motion.
Her work reaffirms the power Laban’s philosophy of balancing practice and analysis of human motion. Through accumulations of simple movement scores, the interleaving layers of temporal, spatial and energetic qualities that make up human movement can be clarified and recognized.
As part of the natural world, we have each evolved an individual movement signature. The accumulation of its qualities reflect what we each needed to negotiate and survive our environment.
Animating with a sense of the human gesture can be a key to connecting people with the changes that are happening both within and beyond our personal spheres of motion. It can be a way to connect us with the landscape and with each other.
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On the first day the focus was on phrasing.
Clarity of phrasing, Peggy demonstrated, allows for clear movement expression, and so enhances the chances of being ‘heard’.
In 2000 Hackney published Making Connections Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff Fundamentals. (2000) Routledge. ISBN 90-5699-592-8