Motion in Emotion

Taught by Gerald Otte

August 10–16, 2014




Awakening to Anger Exhausted (2008), a work by Gerold Otte, performed at Thomas Hunter Hall, Hunter College, New York City. Dancers pictured: top: George Hirsch, Carla Rey, and Jamie Chandler bottom: Phil Lanzetta, right,

Photos by Chip Tilden
Only by the conscious release of the ego can we as dancers arrive at something greater. In our search to be better dancers, we often turn inward rather than opening up and going out into the world. This workshop will endeavor to release limiting tensions and discover what is already in our evolutionary history that will allow us to be the dancers we can be. Working in the tradition of Wigman, Holm and Nikolais, there will be demanding technique work, improvisational exploration and creative problem solving — all aimed at transcendent motion.

Intensive training followed by
intellectual query of these ideas

Each day will include a thorough warm-up and stretching, followed by a single dance-technique topic translated into choreographic/motional substance. We will follow with further exploration in improvisation of that same idea. The use of peer evaluation will also make the experience more inclusive. The final day will involve bringing these ideas together, which includes making our own sound accompaniment, in a cohesive whole to which the public will be invited.

Motion in emotion ideas day by day
  • Anger — as expressed in body textures, speed, broken gesture
  • Joy — expressed in open gesture, release, timelessness
  • Fear — expressed by inernalizing gesture, lengthening of time, self-centered motion
  • Love — as in touch, unison/mirroring, partnering

Gerald Otte has been part of the international dance world for over forty years. As a member of the Nikolais Dance Theater for eighteen years, rising to soloist and assistant to Mr. Nikolais, he taught as a master teacher in thirty U.S. states and more than twenty countries. He was one of the very first Fulbright Senior Scholars, teaching in Belgium, Portugal and Germany. Gerald also taught in Lon­don, Paris, Rotterdam, Louvain-la-Neuve, and Ghent. He choreographed and de­signed lighting for Gian Carlo Menotti in Nancy, France in a revival of his opera Help! Help! The Globolinks. Having adjudicated dancers and choreographic works in Brussels and in Amsterdam, he was named an Erasmus Professor in Belgium and The Netherlands. In the United States Gerald has been an artist-in-residence in five college and university dance programs. For over ten years Gerald directed his own company, OTTECO INC, choreographing thirty-two works, including five full-evening projects. In the New York area he has served on the faculty of SUNY Purchase and Marymount Manhattan and is currently on faculty at Hunter College. Gerald was elected as the first dancer to become President of The American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), the union of opera singers, soloists and choristers, dancers and staging personnel. He served three terms as president and two as first vice-president. Concurrently, he was also the chairman of the governing board of the AGMA Emergency Relief Fund.