Shared Levitation — The Online Catalogue

The Philosophy behind Shared Levitation Partnering

Why the catalogue?

In the age of digitization, I would like to share our experiences with our founded platform Shared Levitation Partnering with all interested parties and invite them to dialogue. Through the Corona period and the social-distancing measurements associated with it, I notice how important touch and physical contact are for us as human beings and dancers.

There was a great lack of physical interaction is during this long period of not meeting people nor teaching partnering workshops. More and more we lose access to each other, do not have to open ourselves up to others the same way we did before the pandemic and can communicate quickly and impersonally with distance through social media. But what about direct communication? Body with body, inner life with inner life?

Partnering, however, is a danced relationship based on communication. This is not always harmonious and fluid. But especially from the difficult situations we learn to act as a team, to adapt and to communicate our own needs better and understand the universe of the other. A true enrichment – not only as a form of dance, but also as a social event. When we succeed together it fills us with joy, positive energy and happiness and shows us, that we are social creatures.

In this many years of our trajectory, we have worked with dancers of different backgrounds and levels, with professional dancers in companies, students in dance educations as well as open level workshops. Each time we adapted the material to the target group, but again and again we discover that especially the movement games were well received by all groups and could be implemented without much effort.

Shared Levitation Partnering is based on the principles of action – reaction wants to liberate us from aesthetics of dance and enhances playfulness and functionality instead: an easy way to get excited again and again and to lure the inner child out.

In addition, we try to eliminate prejudices regarding gender, body type, weight, and age. Anyone can be lifted and lift! I firmly believe in the positive effects of this platform.

Get an impression of one of our Workshops

The online catalogue helps me to bring our specific way of the Shared Levitation Partnering into a structured form in order to use it in the coming years, as well as serves to inform and document our concepts and acts as inspiration for dancers and choreographers to nourish their own research and creative work.

Alan Fuentes Guerra and me have been working as a choreographers, dancers and dance teachers for over fifteen years. Since 2018 we have focused on developing a training and working method that combines our needs as artists and a human beings. Together we founded Shared Levitation, a platform that explores partnering techniques from our own perspective and physicality and deepens them through long-lasting practice and exchange.

We have also used these new insights as choreographers and contributed them to the development of numerous pieces.

In this online catalogue we have prepared and documented the information we have been able to collect over the years in order to share our approach with numerous different groups. It is intended to illustrate our experiences and make some aspects of them publicly accessible as video and image material from the workshops and creations, interviews with the dancers, as well as literary material, game specifications, exercises and movement ideas.

About the workshop

We start the class by opening our channels of awareness and connect to our partner by manipulating, testing, and speculating with his/her structure and weight. A special focus in this phase is the use of our whole body doing the task, not only being limited to our hands and arms. In this first part the use of playfulness allows us to connect to our instinctive and primitive side, tuning into a shared natural flow of breath.

Our goal is to be awake and present, as well as engage with our whole body, connect to ourselves, the space, the partner and to all the partners inside the space. Throughout the sessions we will build trust and awareness as well as technique and strength which give us a better understanding of dancing in a couple.

With the help of exercises in different constellations, every time changing and adapting to a new partner and universe - we listen, follow, and direct the movement as one functioning organism through space. We get ready to jump, cross, push, pull, avoid, embrace, and suspend each other.

In the Shared Levitation class, we like to focus on an organic way of partnering, based on action/reaction principles inspired by Contact Improvisation, fighting styles, acrobatic dance, acro-yoga as well as social dances such as Salsa and Tango. We like to access the movement from a perspective of a deeper connection and try to avoid the superficial habit of copying shapes. Instead, we motivate every couple to find a unique way of communicating with the partner and look for individual solutions and variations of the material.

Another important aspect of our class is the constant change of the level of activity for both roles. We learn how much resistance, power and direction is needed to reach our maximum together by investigating with the given tools, and finally learning fixed partnering material at the end of each class. The choreography the participants learn are extracts of our duet “Porzellan-Haus” and “Ohne Zwei”.

Each couple will be coached by us in the technical execution of the material as well as the creative part of their personal interpretation.

This workshop is thought to help experienced dancers in their process as movers as well as in the creation of partnering-choreography. It aims to inspire to use dancing with a partner as a tool for communication in class and on stage.

Partnering as direct feedback

Dancing with one or more partners, we learn a lot about ourselves. Similar in floorwork we receive the direct feedback immediately, but in partnering it is coming from a living person. We are confronted with another body, mind, emotions, background, experience and can ask ourselves numerous questions as we work with a partner:

Are we clear with our impulses, directions, and motivation?
Can we let go of fears and trust-issues?
Can people handle our full weight, and can they rely on us receiving theirs?
How do we negotiate in moments the elements don´t work out and grow on them?
Is our way of communicating with the partner constructive and are we open for their vision?
Can we achieve the goal of understanding, supporting, and working together and acknowledge that we must work as a team instead of blaming the other?

These questions are a constantly travelling with us when we meet people and teach, dance together and choreograph and also share a common space.

Alan and me are very excited to be sharing our research and are happy for your feedback and suggestions.