An American in Geneva

During the week of July 20-24th 2015, Dalcroze professionals and students from around the world gathered in Geneva, Switzerland for the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze 2015 Congress to celebrate a double anniversary: The 150th birthday of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, and 100 years of the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze (IJD). The Congress is typically a quadrennial event, but it was canceled in 2011, making this the first Congress since 2007. Over 450 global participants gathered to study with Dalcroze practitioners1 and to connect with each other. The conference theme was “Interactions between pedagogy, art and science and their influence on learning through and for music today and tomorrow.” Though attendees were celebrating 100 years of the IJD, the building itself was under renovation, and all but the improvisation classes and a few special plastique animée performances were held at the Centre Médical Universitaire.

Diplomates and Dalcroze Licentiates working towards a Diplôme were invited to attend three pre-conference “study” days (“Journées d’études”) at the IJD. According to Ruth Alperson, the study days were extremely well-organized, and the participants were sent topics for discussion in advance, including “The Professional development of the Diplômés,” “Starting up a professional training center,” “The creation of a database (videos, lessons, music, e-learning),” “The development of teaching material,” and “Promotion of the method (visibility, recruitment).” Lisa Parker said that “talking in depth to our colleagues as we did in the pre-congress was thrilling,” adding that across cultures they shared the same issues of “recognition, lack of teachers, how to adapt to the ways of the modern internet-dominated world without losing what is essential about our common roots, [and] how to spread this unique and ageless work.” The cultural diversity of the group was especially meaningful to Ruth Alperson: “In our plenary sessions, I looked around: I found the mix of people from so many different countries to be very moving.” On the first day of the Journées d’études her group consisted of Andrew Davidson (England), Liu Kai (China), Sachiko Muranaka (Japan), Bethan Habron-James (England), Adriana Ausch (U.S.), and Hélène Nicolet (Switzerland). On the second day her group included Sandra Nash (Australia), Paul Hille (Austria), Jeremy Dittus (U.S.), Mireille Weber (Switzerland), Cheng-Feng Lin (Canada), Anne-Gabrielle Chatoux-Peter (France), and Malou Hatt-Arnold (Switzerland).

The congress days were broken up into hour long intervals, and unlike previous congresses that had focused primarily on experiential workshops, the IJD decided to equally emphasize lecture presentations, roundtable discussions, and videos alongside the traditional eurhythmics and solfège classes. The latter proved to be the most popular and most difficult to attend: the IJD capped attendance at fifty people per classroom, and scores of students lined up hours in advance of each class with the hope to be allowed entry. The IJD quickly recognized the severity of the situation and sent an email after the first day of the conference encouraging everyone to explore sessions beyond the traditional Dalcroze classes.

Within the Centre Médical Universitaire lecture halls, students could sit and listen to diverse presentations: Karin Greenhead (UK) described her development of “Dynamic Rehearsal,” a way of applying Dalcroze Eurhythmics as performance preparation. Using exercises wherein musicians have to step away from their instruments and show phrases with movement and props, her aim is “to enable performers to connect with their own inner hearing and inner feeling of the music and to focus on conveying how the music begins and the journey that it makes.” Eric Barnhill (US/UK) gave an exciting glimpse into how scientists can study the benefits of Dalcroze Eurhythmics at a research institute in his presentation, “Using Coordination Dynamics movement metrics to quantify the impact of a Dalcroze exercise on a functional dyadic movement,” though he himself concluded that his data was too “noisy” (not in the musical sense of the word!) and his results were inconclusive. Joan Pope (Australia) gave a visually appealing lecture that included photographers taken in the early 1900’s by Fred Boissonnas, and illustrations by Paulet Thevenaz demonstrating Dalcroze’s “Six Skips”. Even though we were seated in rows, Joan couldn’t restrain herself from having us stand up and try out skips with an arched torso versus skips with a curled torso. Bethan Habron-James’s presentation, ‘Reflecting on Reflections,’ left a particularly indelible mark on Jeremy Dittus: “I saw a wonderfully structured discussion regarding the difficulty of this work and how personal reflection on one’s teaching can be valuable. She reminded us of how vulnerability can actually be a sign of strength. Her talk made me more aware of how difficult it can be to balance compassion, empathy, and accountability with objectivity, structure, and authority in the Dalcroze classroom; this is something that we need to address in our pedagogy lessons more.” Some presenters demonstrated that a Dalcroze class is possible in any space. Faced with a lecture hall, former IJD director Madeleine Duret (Switzerland) gave an impressive rhythmic solfège demonstration where a few students participated while hundreds observed, and in a similar space Lisa Parker gave a solfège class that Adriana Ausch acclaimed as the highlight of the conference. Ausch noted Parker’s immaculate musicality and the simplicity of her sequences: “No tricks. It’s hard, but it’s beautiful, because it’s always musical; it comes from the music.”

The large number of participants standing in line for the eurhythmics and solfège classes conveyed a strong collective desire to experience the pedagogy of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. By the second day of the congress, the IJD staff had created a system whereby they would mark each participant’s badge each time they went to an experiential class and would give priority entry to the students who had not participated in a class that day. Many of the Americans were thrilled to be able to participate in an advanced eurhythmics class taught by Ruth Gianadda (Switzerland) with increasingly difficult tasks based on groupings of 2, 3, and 4. After reading all about Dr. Hilda Schuster in the previous issue of the American Dalcroze Journal it was a delight to be able to take Mindy Shieh’s (Taiwan) class featuring recordings made at the New York Dalcroze School of Music in 1993. Students moved to Schuster’s improvisations as if they were happening in real time and Mindy interspersed the lessons with her own memories of studying with Dr. Schuster. Jeremy Dittus loved the eurhythmics class he took with Mireille Weber (Switzerland): “She taught a beautiful lesson on compound meter, and reminded us all how the principles of a Dalcroze Education can be a valuable guide in structuring a musical lesson.” Mireille’s class focused primarily on the Sicilian rhythm. The class used scarves to illustrate every time the dotted-eighth-sixteenth-eighth-note pattern occurred in ‘Greensleeves.’ Though the class was taught completely in French, Mireille’s charming gestures and facial expressions aided in conveying her commands for the students that couldn’t completely understand the language.

Midway through the Congress the scheduled IJD picnic was rained out so the American participants headed to a local restaurant for several hours of eating, drinking, and discussion. “It was so marvelous to have other American Dalcroze teachers and students there in Geneva and the evening we all spent together at dinner was a special delight” said Lisa Parker. While the evening was full of general merriment and camaraderie, it also gave everyone a chance to discuss the happenings of the congress, and, like most issues, the Americans were split: “The organization of the Congrès felt very different from 2007…” said Jeremy Dittus. “For some who were used to thinking of an international Dalcroze symposium as primarily an opportunity for Dalcroze workshops, this new structure came as a surprise. However, I welcomed this new format, and found the overall event stimulating and rewarding.” It was Eiko Ishizuka’s third time attending the congress, and she also welcomed the change: “I would like to applaud the Congress committees. It requires courage to make changes to adopt the needs of twenty-first century learning styles instead of keeping to past and familiar way of organizing the congress.” Others were expecting a training center-like experience and were disappointed by the lack of experiential classes and long lines. Aaron Butler, having attended the 2003 and 2007 congresses, described the shock at seeing “scores of students lining up to get into a class—one, two, even three hours prior—and the resultant disorder and competitiveness upon those classes opening.” Mimi Hsu remarked, “The unexpected experience was that all participants were not informed that the 2015 conference was mainly designed for panel discussions and short talks, and there was only limited space for 450 people to participate in Dalcroze core workshops. This was not the message we received when we registered.” Mimi, “disappointed by not being able to attend most workshops,” instead participated in the congress by watching historic videos, demonstrations, and short talks.

I am compelled to add my voice to the chorus of disappointed attendees. Though it was thrilling to be around so many talented specialists, as a “first-timer” I couldn’t help but feeling frustrated at being denied access to the classes I was expecting to take. Perhaps poor marketing contributed to the confusion and disappointment of so many attendees. As the promotion manager at G. Schirmer, and a marketing consultant for the DSA, I believe the IJD made crucial errors in explaining the new conference format to its potential participants. Dalcroze education is inherently spread by word. Those wanting to know about a teacher, workshop, training center, or congress, will go to our colleagues for information. Since minimal marketing went into the IJD Congress, first timers like myself went to Geneva with expectations solely based on the previous experiences of our trusted colleagues. Very little information was listed on the IJD website and participants didn’t receive any emails about the Congress until a week before it began. If an organization is going to change a tradition, I feel it is their obligation to spread the word effectively. Website updates, emails, social media blasts, and personally spreading the word would have led to far less chaos and confusion during the 2015 congress.

However, despite its logistical challenges, this large gathering left our American practitioners with many happy memories. “To bring our world-wide community together for such meaningful and rich exchanges has both whetted our appetites for more and also set the bar very high!” remarked Lisa Parker, while Aaron Butler found that the gathering of master teachers from around the world was “altogether impressive and instructive.” All of the participants remarked on the wonderful experience of connecting with old friends and meeting new colleagues. Jeremy Dittus was “thrilled to see so many Americans there! We all shared in one community together; several of us were represented in the international teaching community for this year’s Congress. I was humbled to be with such a group of talented and highly respected individuals!” And thus concluded the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze 2015 Congress, with all looking forward to the next global Dalcroze event.

Endnotes

1. The Diplôme Supérieur teachers presenting at the Congress were Jean-Marc Aeschimann, Ruth Alperson, Eugènia Arús, Marie-Laure Bachmann, Barbara Bernacka, Mary Brice, Pablo Cernik, Gabi Chrisman, Irène Corboz-Hausammann, Mira Daniel, Silvia Del Bianco, Jeremy Dittus, Madeleine Duret, Ruth Gianadda, Karin Greenhead, Bethan Habron- James, Paul Hille, Eri Inoue, Ava Loiacono, Akihiko Mabuchi, Louise Mathieu, Sylvie Morgenegg, Sachiko Muranaka, Kayo Nakaaki, Sanfra Nash, Hélène Nicolet, Catherine Oppliger, Lisa Parker, Joan Pope, Pascale Rochat-Martinet, Toru Sakai, Jack Stevenson, Jacqueline Vann, Magdalena von Känel, and Mireille Weber.