Watch a video of Dana Caspersen dancing. She makes millisecond shifts between efficiency photographs – pedestrian, quixotic and utopian. Simply whenever you assume you’ve gotten pinned her down, she is like quicksilver into the following picture. She may by no means have achieved anything in her profession past that includes in a lot of William Forsythe’s most influential works, and he or she would have had a rare profession. And but, it’s not as an artist that Caspersen practices lately. She has reinvented herself as a battle engagement specialist and simply launched her second e book, Battle Is An Alternative: 20 Basic Choices for Navigating Tough Occasions (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2025).
Caspersen has been working in battle now for 15 years. Initially, she stored battle and dance separate; ultimately, connections between the practices started to emerge. “Formulaic responses don’t work. Not solely does it not work, it irritates folks,” notes Caspersen. “When folks sense you might be coming to somebody with a battle decision technique, they sense it and get irritated. Any instrument can change into a weapon. Particular methods of speaking, concretizes concepts. That could be very linked to bop observe. You go in daily and it’s not like what you probably did yesterday is essentially going to be obtainable to you. The observe is reinvigorating your connection to concepts. It’s an alive course of that acknowledges as a part of the observe of constructing method for brand new issues arising.”
Battle Is An Alternative: 20 Basic Choices for Navigating Tough Occasions clarifies key concepts in battle research, provides observe options for frequent unfolding conflicts and instance statements to elucidate battle conditions and behaviors. The observe options steadily have easy spatial options hooked up. For instance, dealing with instructions to attach or disconnect from totally different concepts or beliefs.
“I used to be a dancer for 35 years,” Caspersen says. “A lot battle can happen within the studio that may get in the way in which of accessing the work strongly. A number of the methods I see that occur is in the way in which suggestions is given and obtained. How the work is described. In the event that they put a query between them and the dancers. Right here’s what I’m noticing. Here’s what I’m interested in. What may help us get there? When that doesn’t occur, when blame will get in the way in which, we lose all types of potentialities.”
She provides, “The work as a performer was to have the ability to be current with all types of data, typically seemingly contradictory info, and to trip that, discover the road between that. Comparable in writing, how do I take all these items and discover a line that an viewers can navigate?”
In addition to writing and publishing her work, Caspersen provides coaching each on-line and in particular person for people and teams. “The following one I’ve arising is all dance artists,” she explains. “It’s a deal with growing your individual capability, to pay attention to the choices you make and pay attention to how you might be focusing your consideration. We work with folks’s precise expertise. We’re working with principle, but in addition with the complexity of actual life.”
Caspersen concludes, “I don’t assume I’ll return to bop. I like it. It was such a robust expertise. My work with chance has taken a distinct kind now.”
For extra info and to order the e book, go to www.danacaspersen.com.
By Tamara Searle of Dance Informa.
