Watch a video of Dana Caspersen dancing. She makes millisecond shifts between efficiency photos – pedestrian, quixotic and utopian. Simply whenever you suppose you could have pinned her down, she is like quicksilver into the subsequent picture. She would possibly by no means have achieved the rest in her profession past that includes in lots of William Forsythe’s most influential works, and he or she would have had a unprecedented profession. And but, it’s not as an artist that Caspersen practices as of late. 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 Troublesome 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 grow to be a weapon. Particular methods of speaking, concretizes concepts. That may be very linked to bop follow. You go in every single day and it’s not like what you probably did yesterday is essentially going to be obtainable to you. The follow is reinvigorating your connection to concepts. It’s an alive course of that acknowledges as a part of the follow of creating manner for brand new issues arising.”
Battle Is An Alternative: 20 Basic Choices for Navigating Troublesome Occasions clarifies key concepts in battle research, presents follow recommendations for widespread unfolding conflicts and instance statements to elucidate battle conditions and behaviors. The follow recommendations often have easy spatial recommendations connected. 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 few of the methods I see that occur is in the way in which suggestions is given and acquired. 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 inquisitive about. What can assist 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 knowledge, generally seemingly contradictory info, and to journey that, discover the road between that. Comparable in writing, how do I take all these things and discover a line that an viewers can navigate?”
In addition to writing and publishing her work, Caspersen presents coaching each on-line and in individual for people and teams. “The subsequent one I’ve developing is all dance artists,” she explains. “It’s a give attention to growing your personal capability, to concentrate on the choices you’re making and concentrate on how you might be focusing your consideration. We work with folks’s precise expertise. We’re working with idea, but additionally with the complexity of actual life.”
Caspersen concludes, “I don’t suppose I’ll return to bop. I find it irresistible. It was such a robust expertise. My work with risk has taken a distinct type now.”
For extra info and to order the e book, go to www.danacaspersen.com.
By Tamara Searle of Dance Informa.
