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 training practices in the performing arts, with a particular focus on classical ballet techniques. It examines specific approaches to ballet knowledge-transfer that challenge the Western canon’s association of rigor with virtuosic appearance and strict adherence to hierarchical power structures. Ballet technique is reimagined as a site of feeling, where alignment and an openness to full-body experience generate an epistemological tension with its historical framework.
Whether one has studied ballet for a day or a lifetime, the research prioritizes the contemporary moment of practice, asking how ballet might evolve. Andrew Champlin draws on his own experience teaching ballet to heterogeneous groups of professionally oriented dancers in New York City and Europe. The project explores key questions: How does focusing on sensation transform the dancer’s experience of the form? What impact does this sensorial emphasis have on the history of ballet? Could prioritizing feeling gradually shift entrenched notions of how ballet is embodied?
The hypothesis driving this research is that prioritizing sensation in ballet training creates dissonance with traditional learning structures, which often center technique on image production. How does teaching dancers to “feel well” in their bodies reshape their relationship to the form? In focusing on sensation, we encounter landscapes of desire and vulnerability. What shifts occur when we acknowledge this complex terrain in the process of knowledge transfer?
This artistic research critically reflects on the experience of learning ballet, seeking to illuminate alternative ways of studying traditional forms. The project aims to reveal what becomes possible when the boundaries of a classical art form are pushed through embodied technique, which remains inherently transmissible.
Drawing on Erin Manning’s concept of the anarchive, this research is both self-reflective and collaborative. It engages deeply with the legacy of independent ballet teacher Janet Panetta (1948–2023), whose pedagogy Andrew Champlin studied as her assistant from 2013 until her passing. Panetta theorized technique as “a system of clarifying how your body works for you,” reimagining traditional hierarchies between dancers as well as between teachers and students.
A central component of the project is an experimental art film, conceived as an alternative archive. The film will include reflections from Panetta’s alumni and create performative and discursive spaces to examine what is lost—and what might be gained—when diverging from traditional methods of learning ballet technique.
Research Activities
This section highlights Andrew Champlin’s artistic research and archives his contributions to dance, including performance lectures, talks, workshops, publications, research labs, collaborative teaching, and interdisciplinary courses in academia and the independent scene.
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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
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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
