Doctoral Project

Knowledge Exchange Format

Dialogue: Andrew Champlin and Prof. Dr. Friederike Lampert + workshop

Zürich University of the Arts

What role does ballet technique play in contemporary dance training, and how is it taught today?

This question is more relevant than ever, prompting dance institutions to rethink not what is taught in ballet, but how. In recent decades, alongside ballet and classical modern techniques, contemporary dance aesthetics have given rise to additional stage dance techniques, expanding the skills required of dancers. Directors and teachers continually reflect on how to integrate this diversity into professional training and reconsider ballet’s role, given its 400-year dominance in European stage dance.

In this exchange, we invite dance experts to explore new approaches to ballet education and its evolving place in contemporary training.

Participants: teachers of BA/MA Dance and taz, MA Teaching students.

October 23, 2024

Research Laboratory

BACKPULVER

Diffractive Dialogues

Inspired by Karen Barad’s concept of diffractive engagement, BACKPULVER developed Diffractive Dialogues—immersive three-day programs fostering in-depth exchanges between local artists and their practices. This format highlights the intersection, overlap, and divergence of artistic ideas and embodied experiences.

At its core are two guiding questions: What if feedback became an act of “reading through,” diffracting artistic material through one’s own practice? How might this shift transform the feedback process?

Over three days, artists Malcolm Manning, Andrew Champlin, and Sebastian Bechinger will lead participants through dialogues shaped by their distinct practices. By examining both shared and divergent perspectives, the program cultivates a collective critical approach, encouraging knowledge exchange, insight-sharing, and the challenging of assumptions.

October 28-30, 2024

Exhibition

Scholar in Residence

Garth Greenan Gallery, New York City

In collaboration with a collective of Janet Panetta’s former students, I contributed to the exhibition Janet Panetta Repertory, which presented archival videos, writings, and photographs honoring the independent ballet teacher Janet Panetta (1948–2023). Additionally, I worked with Panetta’s community of ballet practitioners on a film project, which also serves as a case study in my PhD research on ballet pedagogy.

August 15-29, 2024

Event

Tanzquartier Vienna

In Bad Ballet, three dance artists and a historian challenge ballet’s traditional discipline and hierarchy with pleasure, exchange, and joy. Andrew Champlin, Elizabeth Ward, and Kevin Fay lead a course indifferent to virtuosity, sharing research, embodied ballet histories, and choreography from The Nutcracker. Anna Leon’s lecture explores ballet’s decentralized, often invisible history as an entertainment spectacle.

June 15, 2024

For more info click here

Performance Lecture

The University of Applied Arts Vienna

A meeting-point for artistic and scholarly practices, this event showcased current PhD candidates at the University of Applied Arts Vienna’s research projects in process.

Published Essay

The University of Applied Arts Vienna Research Journal

The essay weaves fragmented perspectives—the movement facilitator, the child, and the academic—to explore the temporality of a dancing subject. It reflects on pedagogy as a site of renewed sensual experience, confronting ballet’s enduring standards, where self-abnegation intertwines with the desire to embody its idealized form.

Published June, 2024

Workshop

This choreographic workshop explores knowledge transfer, queer theory, flea markets, archives, GIFs, and children's books as lenses into “what’s in the world.” Through reflection and shared learning, participants examine their learning styles, deconstruct favorite dances, and transform movement pathways to create choreographies collectively.

September, 2023

Field Research Project // Lenio Kaklea and Andrew Champlin

ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival

How does embodied technical knowledge support dance-making, and how can choreography challenge our assumptions about skill and technique?

This research project explores structuring a process that nurtures both movement vocabulary and choreographic ideas, particularly within the Western canon. We examine when technical knowledge is essential, when it isn't, and how embodied skill can enrich performance. Viewing choreography as a set of tools that shape and challenge embodiment, we share discoveries, reflect on learning, and develop choreographies through collective exploration.

July 31 - August 4, 2023

Published Essay

The University of Applied Arts Vienna Research Journal

For Envelope 5, this exposé explores the notion of squaring-off, a concept emerging in research on ballet technique through both physical and theoretical resonances. It examines the body's alignment with spatial geometries to create a sense of unity while also confronting power structures that may constrain the practitioner. The contribution includes a self-interview on the research topic and a poetic infographic, inviting readers to visualize the layered experience of engaging with a technique from the Western canon.

Published June, 2023

To visit the exposition on the Research Catalogue click here

Performance Lecture

The University of Applied Arts Vienna

As part of the PhD at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, recent findings were presented in multiple formats: a sculpture in a group exhibition and a public lecture performance followed by feedback from the community and guest critic Mariella Greil. The presentation offered a personal narrative on performer training, encouraging researchers to explore alternative ways of engaging with the body, particularly within rigid systems like traditional ballet pedagogy.

Presenting at this early stage provided an opportunity to test methods for communicating embodied research, examining how to bridge art and scholarship. Through practice and risk-taking, the project questions how embodied forms of communication align with conventional academic structures and which insights resonate most effectively.

Dialogue with VK Preston, Macklin Kowal, and Andrew Champlin

Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Through the Junior Research Group of ZHdK, guests VK Preston (Concordia University) and Macklin Kowal (Aristotle University) were invited for a series of discussions on aesthetic training and bodily practices amid epistemic shifts in higher education. What began as an intimate exchange expanded to include fellow artistic researchers, broadening the conversation. Key themes included the relationship between practice and theory, the impact of art market trends on university structures, and the evolving practice of art-making in response to global changes in education and knowledge sharing.

March 30, 2023

Universität der Kunst / Hochschule Zentrum Tanz

BA Dance, Context, Choreography

Summer Semester 2021 & Winter Semester 2021-22

This semester-long practice-based seminar, co-facilitated with jazz pianist Assaf Fleischmann, integrates ballet and music through rhythm and embodiment. Alongside technical studies, participants create sequential choreographies and improvisational scores to apply their learning. Using instruments, voice, and body percussion, we explore complex musical concepts such as changing meters, polyrhythm, and syncopation, while learning about music histories, including African American jazz and minimalism. Acknowledging the histories of oppression tied to these traditions, we engage with texts and films to contextualize our work, reflecting on ballet’s evolution through African-originated skills and aesthetics.

Workshop

Zurich University of the Arts

MA Choreography & MA Dance Pedagogy

Janet Panetta, a renowned ballet teacher, defines technique as "a system of clarifying how your body works for you." This challenges traditional views of technique, which often prioritize achieving a desired image over the body’s function. This workshop is for dancers who are ready to explore technique as a means of connecting with others—whether as teachers, collaborators, or audiences.

The workshop examines how a foundation in embodied aesthetic knowledge can serve as a bridge to contemporary social issues and critical thinking.

October, 2021

Universität der Kunst / Hochschule Zentrum Tanz

BA Dance, Context, Choreography

Summer Semester 2021 & Winter Semester 2021-22

This semester-long course, co-facilitated by Regina Baumgart and myself, is designed for students who wish to develop their own movement practice—whether as a daily routine, a training method, or in relation to a specific choreographic project or performance concept.

Regina and I support students’ independent research by offering guidance and facilitating discussions on key aspects of movement practice and development. We share our own daily practices and encourage students to lead "input sessions" for their peers. The course fosters skills in teaching and providing feedback, helping students engage with others on both aesthetic and methodological levels.

Universität der Kunst / Hochschule Zentrum Tanz

BA Dance, Context, Choreography

Winter Semester 2020

This semester-long workshop, co-facilitated with sound artist and performer Zen Jefferson, explores the relationship between electronic sound and movement. We engage with themes such as popular rhythms, improvised physical expressions, and the intersection of these with the structured technique of classical ballet. Throughout the semester, we hold intimate dialogues about our experiences moving to Zen’s music and within ballet, focusing on the emotional and physical effects of sound and movement.

Universität der Kunst / Hochschule Zentrum Tanz

BA Dance, Context, Choreography

Summer Semester 2020*

This semester-long interdisciplinary course explores routine dance practices from personal and interpersonal perspectives. We examine socio-political and historical views on self-cultivation, grounding our discussions in critical theory to better understand our relationships to manual labor and productivity as dancers. How is our work informed by the ways we measure progress within the paradox of ephemerality?

The course incorporates theoretical frameworks on ephemerality through readings of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress, and Michel Foucault's 1983 lecture The Culture of the Self. We engage in discussions on the religious, economic, political, and philosophical dimensions of technique, bridging our experiences of movement training with the history of capitalism and the constructed self.

*course facilitated online

Universität der Kunst / Hochschule Zentrum Tanz

BA Dance, Context, Choreography

Summer Semester 2019

Borrowing its title from Joan Didion's novel, this workshop provides students with choreographic tools rooted in performative practices of reading bodies and writing space. We explore various ways of perceiving and projecting ephemeral information, structuring it in time. One time structure we examine is the pop song, studying the choreography from a 1970s performance by Ami Stewart. We contrast this with group readings of bell hooks' All About Love. Scores by Lisa Nelson add layers of witnessing to our process. Through these studies, participants develop compositions in small groups, modifying directives, discussing effects, and performing new iterations for one another.