ARTISTIC

RESEARCH

doctoral project + research activities

Doctoral Project

Technique Concerns: Ballet Practices Against the Western Archive

The University of Applied Arts Vienna

Supervisor: Bouchra Khalili

Special thanks to Zürich University of the Arts, Ruth Anderwald, Friederike Lampert & Leonhard Grond

Research area: dance/dance studies/performance studies

Topic: embodied technique/pedagogy

This PhD project investigates classical ballet techniques from the perspective of a dancer and teacher. It examines experimental approaches to the transmission of ballet knowledge, and the traces these pedagogies leave behind. One such trace is a mentorship that evolved from apprentice-teacher into a passing of the torch. In the midst of mourning, certain questions about the legacy of Janet Panetta persisted. How can we document her teaching practice and its impact? For now, we are the ones who knew Janet. But perhaps more important than documenting ballet pedagogy is inviting practitioners to speak to the artistic and technical influence of an independent teacher. And also to her claim, Ballet for Contemporary Dancers.

This project interviews twenty seven people who studied with Janet Panetta at some point in her fifty year teaching career. The main questions explore impressions of her teaching, and how it shaped their lives and sense of self. The material is imbued with emotion, memory, questions, and recursive gestures in the body. For me, Andrew Champlin, in the background I am busy with mourning. The interviews also invite the dancers to reflect on the situation that brought them to value Janet. What did she impress upon you? Some dialogues unfold through movement; others will be compiled into a book—an archive against the archive.

The research is positioned within dance studies, performance, and critical pedagogy. It challenges dominant archives by foregrounding lived experience, affect, and intergenerational transmission.

Research Activities

This section highlights Andrew Champlin’s artistic research over the past years, including performance lectures, talks, workshops, publications, research labs, collaborative teaching, and interdisciplinary courses in academia and the independent scene.

LET'S TALK ABOUT BALLET

Knowledge Exchange Format
Conversation between 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
Photo © Friederike Lampert
DIFFRACTIVE DIALOGUES

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
Photo © Sebastian Bechinger
JANET PANETTA REPERTORY

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
BAD BALLET

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
PUBLIC COLLOQUIUM 2024

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.
ENVELOPE 6

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
EMBODIED BRICOLEUR

Workshop
Stockholm University of the Arts
BA Contemporary Dance
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
CERTAIN DANCE CIRCUMSTANCE

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
ENVELOPE 5

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
PUBLIC COLLOQUIUM 2023

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.
JUNIOR RESEARCH GROUP

Dialogue with VK Preston, Macjlin 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
RHYTHMS COLORS PATTERNS

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.
BALLET FOR CONTEMPORARY DANCERS

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
YESTERDAY TODAY TOMORROW, MY MOVEMENT PRACTICE

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.
BALLET IN TIMES OF CHANGE OR Why the Pleasant Face?

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.
TRY IT AGAIN

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
PLAY IT AS IT LAYS

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.

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ARTISTIC

RESEARCH

Doctoral Project

LET'S TALK ABOUT BALLET

DIFFRACTIVE DIALOGUES