Contemporary dance demands more than versatility—it requires a sophisticated command of multiple methodologies, a refined somatic awareness, and the ability to move between technical precision and raw expressivity. For dancers who have already built substantial technical foundations, advancing in contemporary work means deepening your relationship with established techniques, integrating somatic practices, and developing your artistic voice through rigorous exploration.
This guide addresses the trained dancer ready to move beyond generic advice into the nuanced, technical territory that defines advanced contemporary practice.
1. Refine Your Ballet Foundation Through Contemporary Applications
Advanced contemporary dancers do not simply "take ballet classes"—they interrogate how classical technique serves and constrains contemporary movement. Rather than maintaining ballet as a separate training modality, integrate its principles into your contemporary practice through specific applications:
- Temps lié sequences with release: Practice your connected movements, then allow the final position to dissolve into a fall-and-recovery pattern, maintaining the spiral alignment of the torso as you descend and rebound
- Turnout maintenance in parallel lines: Execute contemporary sequences in parallel while consciously engaging the deep external rotators, creating the length and opposition that ballet develops without the aesthetic constraint of rotated positions
- Épaulement as dynamic architecture: Apply the three-dimensional shoulder positioning of ballet to contemporary floor work, using counter-rotation of the upper and lower body to create tension and release
Try this: Stand in first position. Execute a développé devant, then release the standing leg's turnout as you fold the working leg into a parallel contemporary attitude, allowing the spine to respond with a sequential curve. Return to vertical through a Graham-style contraction. Notice how the ballet line informs—and resists—the contemporary transformation.
2. Master Sequential Initiation Through Release Technique
"Fluidity" in advanced contemporary dance is not absence of tension but sophisticated management of it. Release Technique, developed through the work of Joan Skinner and others, provides specific tools for this mastery.
The core principle is sequential initiation: movement begins at a distal point and travels through the body like a wave, or initiates from the core and radiates outward. Advanced practice requires conscious choice of initiation points and direction of flow.
Try this: Standing, initiate a spiral from your coccyx, allowing it to travel sequentially through each lumbar vertebra, then thoracic, cervical, until the crown of your head completes the rotation. Reverse the direction. Now repeat, initiating from your right fingertips instead—observe how the quality shifts from grounded to reaching, from internal to external.
Expand this exploration through:
- Task-based improvisation: Set specific initiation tasks ("right sit bone leads the descent to floor") rather than aesthetic goals
- Gravity negotiation: Practice falling as technique—controlled disorientation that recovers through momentum rather than muscular force
- Flying Low: Incorporate David Zambrano's floor work sequences that treat the floor as a partner, moving through spirals, slides, and weight transfers that demand precise sequential organization
3. Integrate Breath Through Specific Somatic Scores
Advanced dancers move beyond "using breath" to employing breath as a compositional and technical tool with specific methodologies:
| Method | Application |
|---|---|
| Cunningham torso | Maintain rhythmic breath independent of movement phrase; torso operates as "instrument" with breath supporting core stability without dictating dynamics |
| Gaga "float" | Ohad Naharin's approach uses continuous, available breath to maintain sensation of expansion even in compression; practice maintaining float while executing explosive movements |
| Iyengar-influenced technique | Precise inhalation on expansion, exhalation on contraction; explore breath suspension during stillness to heighten dramatic tension |
Try this: Perform a familiar phrase twice. First, allow breath to follow movement naturally. Second, impose a breath score: inhale for four counts during a traveling sequence, hold for two counts of stillness, exhale through six counts of descending floor work. Notice how the imposed structure reveals new dynamic possibilities and technical challenges.
4. Develop Polyrhythmic Intelligence
Advanced contemporary work frequently operates against, across, or independently of musical pulse. Develop your capacity for rhythmic complexity through:
- Dancing against the beat: Maintain your phrase in triple meter while music moves in duple, or accent the "and" counts against a strong downbeat
- Internal rhythm: Practice phrases in silence, then add music that conflicts with your established timing; maintain your internal pulse against external pressure
- Syncopated weight shifts: Coordinate landing and takeoff with rhythmic displacement—arriving late, leaving early, suspending across the expected moment
Study the work of William Forsythe, whose Improvisation Technologies provide specific tools for rhythmic manipulation, and Pina Bausch, whose Tanztheater demonstrates how rhythmic fragmentation serves narrative and emotional ends.
