GAGA Movement Practice

What is GAGA?

Gaga is a new way of gaining knowledge and self-awareness through your body. Gaga provides a framework for discovering and strengthening your body and adding flexibility, stamina, and agility while lightening the senses and imagination. Gaga raises awareness of physical weaknesses, awakens numb areas, exposes physical fixations, and offers ways for their elimination. The work improves instinctive movement and connects conscious and unconscious movement, and it allows for an experience of freedom and pleasure in a simple way, in a pleasant space, in comfortable clothes, accompanied by music, each person with himself and others.

Gaga is the movement research developed by Ohad Naharin throughout many years, parallel to his work as a choreographer and the artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company. Gaga originated from Naharin’s need to communicate with his dancers and his curiosity in the ongoing research of movement.

Gaga classes are predicated on a deep listening to the body and to physical sensations. The instructions are deployed to increase awareness of and further amplify sensation, and rather than turning from one prompt to another, information is layered, building into a multisensory, physically challenging experience. While many instructions are imbued with rich imagery, the research of Gaga is fundamentally physical, insisting on a specific process of embodiment. Inside this shared research, the improvisational nature of the exploration enables each participant’s deeply personal connection with Gaga.

Gaga provides a framework for discovering and strengthening the body and adding flexibility, stamina, agility, and skills including coordination and efficiency while stimulating the senses and imagination. The classes offer a workout that investigates form, speed, and effort while traversing additional spectrums such as those between soft and thick textures, delicacy and explosive power, and understatement and exaggeration. Participants awaken numb areas, increase their awareness of habits, and improve their efficiency of movement inside multilayered tasks, and they are encouraged to connect to pleasure inside moments of effort. The research of Gaga is in a continual process of evolution, and the classes vary and develop accordingly.

Methodology

A Gaga class is given as a procession of instructions that give access to bodily sensations. Each instruction is meant to help the dancer use mental approaches to create physical research. Because of the dependence of Gaga on the actual setting and people involved, there is no uniform class structure, however there are specific methodologies employed.

Float

Float is maintained through the entirety of a gaga class. Float does not ignore the existence of gravity. However rather than giving into gravity and adhering to heaviness, the body uses gravity as a force of energy and even elevation of the limbs. As Naharin states, “we sense the weight of our body parts, yet, our form is not shaped by gravity”. Additionally, float ignites a constant awareness and activeness. The dancers are never completely released, even when they are doing nothing. Instead they are “available” for movement.

Vocabulary

Naharin created Gaga terminology specific to bodily functions that activated throughout a dancer’s Gaga practice. “Biba” means to pull the body away from the seat bones. It is meant to create more space and freedom in the lower spine. “Tashi” means to move with feet glued to the floor. “Pika” is the activation of the spot right beneath the pubic bone.

Focus on Pleasure

Naharin emphasizes the return to pleasure, especially within moments of exaggeration and bodily effort. His belief is that pleasure is always good for the body. Gaga often requests demanding actions, such as running and shaking, but the effort of “burning muscles” must be tied to pleasure in order to keep it healthy. In fact, Gaga has been taught in centers for patients with Parkinson’s disease as a form of healing.

Release of Aesthetic Ambitions

The Gaga language focuses on the internal sensations. Due to this, classes are run without mirrors. Naharin emphasizes the release of ambitions or inhibitions. He states “we might be silly, we can laugh at ourselves”. This kind of instruction is an effort for exploratory research without limits or tensions.

Connection to Groove

With or without music, dancers are asked to connect to the musicality of their movement. Naharin emphasizes the attention to groove, as groove is a universal experience regardless of technique levels.

My First Experience

I will provide brief notes from my first class, given the large experience with other somatic moving practices, like 5 Rhythms, Open Floor, Contact Improvisation, and my own TanQi Dance Therapy practice.

1. No written instructions provided in the class, but teacher gives you constant ongoing guidance on your moves, like guided moving meditation.

2. One of the main points of the GAGA technique: “Never stop: The class is one session, no pauses or exercises, but a continuity of instructions one on top of the other. Each instruction does not cancel the previous one, but is added to it, layer upon layer. It is, therefore, important not to stop in the middle of the session”.

3. As with any free form approaches, the class is suitable for all physical levels, and you can follow the instructor’s guidance to any extent or depth, as your soul and body permit.

4. Movement is offered on all levels, starting from standing position at the beginning of the class, getting in and out of the floor several times through the class. There is a constant patterns switching, pushing the participants out of their familiar movement range and comfortable zone. Still, the main idea that it should be painless and fun.

5. No dance experience is necessary.

6. No partner is needed. In fact, there were no partner exercises through the class.

7. Floor: carpet. Dancing barefoot preferred.

8. Length of the class: about an hour.

9. Class is a closed container, and the doors are locked when the class starts. Please do not come late as you may not be admitted to the class.

10. (After talking to James Graham). Each class may have a different set of exercises, but the general approach remains the same.
11. Cost: $15 Online; $20 At the Door

GAGA Teacher

James Graham is teaching ongoing GAGA classes in Palo Alto and San Francisco

James Graham is a San Francisco based choreographer, performer, and teacher. James Graham Dance Theatre, presents the work of James Graham while also curating the work of others, namely in Dance Lovers…duets by couples, crushes, and comrades, an annual show of duets around Valentine’s day in San Francisco. JGDT has recently been presented at ODC Theatre, Micadanses in Paris, France, UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse, in the Daegu International Dance Festival in South Korea, The Nourse Theatre and Davies Symphony Hall (commissioned by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus), at the University of Calgary, Canada, Dominican University, National Queer Arts Festival, Kunst-Stoff Arts, Too Much! Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, Joe Goode Annex, Kennesaw State Univeristy, The Ohio State University, HeART of Market Festival, San Francisco City Hall Rotunda, and in the Golden Gate Park National A.I.D.S. Memorial Grove.

In 2007, Graham first went to Israel to study Gaga, made possible by the Kathryn Karipides Scholarship in Modern Dance. He was chosen by Ohad Naharin (Batsheva Dance Company) to be a Certified Gaga Instructor and to take part in his pilot training program of international Gaga teachers. He has taught Gaga extensively on the West Coast, in the Midwest, as well as in France, Canada, South Korea, Germany, Sweden, Thailand, Greece, and Israel. He has been invited to teach at Oberlin College, Denison University, Kenyon College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Reed College, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Ohio State University, University of San Francisco, California State University East Bay, College of Marin, and at the SF Clown Conservatory. He is currently on faculty at the University of California, Berkeley and Dominican University of California/LINES BFA Program, and teaches open Gaga classes in the Bay Area. Graham teaches Choreography, Performance, and Gaga Workshops around the world throughout the year.