There is always space for more.
On the implicit nature of dancing at any age

Peter Pleyer 

In the first year of my dance training at the European Dance Development Center (EDDC) at the University of the Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands, my teacher Eva Karczag shared a picture of three x-rays of hands: a child’s hand, an adult hand and the hand of an elderly woman. The significant differences in the gaps between the individual bones were clearly visible. In the child’s hand, these spaces were still considerable; in the adult hand, the bones were closer together, but with still recognizable gaps in the many joints. In the senior’s hand, however, the joint gaps had almost completely disappeared. This image became a defining moment for me and laid the foundation of my conviction and my desire to maintain the naturalness of staying mobile – and dancing – into old age.

I turned 60 in 2024 – and I was immediately asked to write a text about my experiences with dance as a profession in old age. At first, I started thinking about why I still dance – not just as a hobby, but above all as a profession: What drives me?

The answer for me lies in the obvious: of course I will continue to dance – as long as I can and want to. Like many other artists, I see dance as a lifelong process. Quitting is only an option if I make a conscious decision to do so, not because it meets social expectations.

Another aspect for me is the history of dance, in which I am involved. As a result of my training at the EDDC, I am part of a thread in the development of dance traditions shaped by Anna Halprin and Simone Forti, among others. My teachers Eva Karczag, Yoshiko Chuma, Nancy Stark Smith, Mary Overlie, Steve Paxton and many others also danced until they died or, of course, are still dancing.

So where does this implicit quality come from?

It is rooted in principles of contemporary dance that have developed over the last century and were at the heart of my training in the 1990s: Release techniques such as “Anatomical Release”, as taught by Eva Karczag, as well as various forms of improvisation – above all Contact Improvisation – not only as a dance technique, but also as a method of community building. Improvisation is always about variations, peculiarities and deviations from a norm, i.e. also from normative young bodies, which often predominate in a classical image of dance.¹

During my four years of training, my body (and mind and soul) was deconstructed several times during my daily training and continuous creative work in the dance studio, literally taken apart until the rug was pulled out from under me, only to be reconstructed, reassembled and realigned back on my feet.

The release technique is based on working with images, as developed in the tradition of Mable E. Todd and her book “The Thinking Body” from 1936 .² This resulted in approaches such as “Anatomical Release Technique” or “Ideokinesis”, which were taught at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (by John Roland) and at the European Dance Development Center in Arnhem (by Eva Karczag), among others.

Eva’s mantra “There is always space for more” – the invitation to repeatedly imagine space between the bones that form the joints: “space for sensation”, “space for the possibility of movement” – became a constant companion. And it wasn’t just about the power of imagination.

What happens in the body when we begin to understand muscular actions not only as contraction, as tightening? What happens when we realize that each muscle contraction causes an extension of the antagonist, i.e. the opposite muscle? Is it possible to experience and feel every movement with a focus on this extension of the antagonist?

This change in perception has far-reaching consequences: The spaces between the joints remain open longer and mobility is maintained, even in old age. A simple principle, but one that requires continuous and concentrated practice. Although the breakdown of cartilage and degeneration of the joints progresses with age, we can counteract these processes – even in the face of persistent fitness trends that tend to unilaterally push building up muscles through contraction.

Another feature of my dance training that has enabled me to dance sustainably for a living is practicing movement from a resting position. I’m a member of the generation of dancers who often practiced lying on the floor in the constructive rest position – sometimes even to the point of falling asleep – so often, in fact, that it gained us a rather negative reputation. “This is supposed to be dance?” or “Is this really supposed to be the best way to prepare your body for dancing?” were some of the typical, skeptical comments. And yet this practice was an important antithesis to the prevailing warm-up of the time, which consisted mainly of action, action and more action.

Using contact improvisation, this resting on the floor became a rolling on the floor and finally a flowing in and out of the floor. This created a dynamic that ranged from the resting position to contralateral walking, running and jumping.

To this day, a major misunderstanding about the release technique is the assumption that it involves complete muscle relaxation. With that in mind, the name for this technique may have been poorly chosen. In reality, however, one of the aims is to recognize and release unnecessary tension so that the moving muscular balance between protagonist and antagonist can be rebalanced effectively at any moment.

A perfect exercise from contact improvisation is Steve Paxton’s “Stand” or “Small Dance”. I stand upright on my feet with my eyes closed and perceive the many small muscular changes that occur in different parts of my body as a result of the interplay of holding and releasing – movements that are necessary to balance upright without straining your posture purely through muscle strength.

Contact Improvisation – nothing has had such an enduring impact on me personally as this dance technique and its relevance to my understanding of my existence in the world: the physical experience of gravity, the sharing of my weight with a partner or with the pillars and walls of the studio, the resulting balance in an asymmetrical and constantly changing form – a tangible interdependence. Learning falling skills, allowing reflexes and overcoming gravity by means of jumps and lifts and shoulder spins.

Another significant change compared to traditional dance with its frontal orientation is the three-dimensional understanding of the body in contact improvisation: movement in 360°, spherical and improvised – free from predetermined forms, fixed movement sequences or rigid parameters such as time, speed and duration. The open formats and jams in which contact improvisation is practiced still allow me to dance with other people physically and energetically – with self-selected rest breaks – even at my age.

Jamming as an open group structure also forms the basis of my work as a choreographer with Cranky Bodies a/company, which I founded in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, together with my partner, stage and costume designer Michiel Keuper. The intergenerational company unites dancers of different backgrounds and ages and utilizes gentle methods such as release technique and body-mind centering, which we have further developed for ourselves, in addition to open group scores.

This cross-generational approach ensures that the most diverse experiences and bodies are brought together, constantly learning from each other and thus enriching the wealth of experience of all those involved – and hopefully that of the audience, too.

Another important aspect of my work is teaching. This is not only a way for me to pass on my embodied knowledge, my and our methods and scores, but is also a practice of creating a living archive. By passing these on, I am creating an archive that is not fixed, but rather remains processual and changeable – a dynamic, embodied form of knowledge transfer that evolves critically through overlapping and oscillating between different scores with each encounter.

This also includes the important aspect of inclusion and the role that contact improvisation and release techniques play in the process. In 2023, I was one of the oldest participants in the DanceAbility Teacher Certification Training at the Impulstanz Festival in Vienna. Developed by Alito Alessi, this method integrates people with disabilities by means of dance and is strongly based on contact improvisation.³

I became painfully aware of the growing connection between contact improvisation and mixed-ability dance in March 2024, when Jess Curtis suddenly died at the age of 62. With his company Gravity, he had further developed these inclusive approaches to contact improvisation, especially in collaboration with Claire Cunningham. At a memorial for Jess, she recounted how Jess playfully and calmly integrated and simply continued to dance, choreograph and teach many aspects of his aging body – his injuries after bicycle accidents, walking with a cane.

I by no means want to claim that aging is a type of disability –  on the contrary. But if we take inclusion in contemporary dance and the idea that any body can dance seriously, then an old or aging body should also be on stage. While body/mind practices in contemporary dance might encourage this, older dancers are still an exception in the classical and modern dance world. That needs to change.

From this perspective, I take a critical view of the fact that it takes a federally funded ensemble that is exclusively dedicated to older dancers (in which the dancers are between 40 and 50 years old) to draw attention to this grievance. The groundbreaking works of Florentina Holzinger, on the other hand, seem much more inspiring to me. Her cross-generational ensemble impressively demonstrates how dancers of all ages – including her teachers at the School for New Dance Development – are part of her rather challenging productions. Often until old age, and, as in the case of Ria Higler, even until her death.

In the end, it’s not only about who dances, but also about which understanding of dance is articulated and promoted. Dance is thus not simply a question of age, but is also a practice of perception – an experience and creation of movement that can continue to develop throughout a lifetime and whose stories are far from over. The future of dance remains uncertain – especially in Berlin right now – but what remains is my love of dance and the curiosity about what’s to come: There is always space for more!

Translation: Mark Kanak