Meet Linda Gamblin: SYDNEY DANCE COMPANY
Linda Gamblin
What is the core focus of Sydney Dance Company Pre-Professional Year?
“We focus on an experiential way of learning, so you get with a choreographer and you experience everything from technique to creativity, collaboration and performance. From term one, we work with one guest artist a week, so the students spend fifteen to twenty hours with professionals in their field of choreography. Often in contemporary, that means improvisation, and the skills and techniques to understand movement language. Then it would be understanding sophisticated movement within the classical, yoga, and Pilates techniques. Our contemporary classes are a sort of choreographic workshop, as opposed to learning the Horton or Cunningham techniques. We do have dancers from the Cunningham Company in New York come over and do workshops with us, where they can explain the movement language of Cunningham and teach repertoire, but our regular technique classes focus on the biomechanics of ballet, yoga, and Pilates. Then we can perform whichever way the choreographer requires.”
How do the dancers in your course transform?
“I think it’s about taking ownership and having personal autonomy within the creative process. Within our course, it is more of a collaborative teaching experience, so we explore techniques and explore what the body becomes in that particular technique as well. Even before I designed the courses, I felt that showing your brilliance as a dancer is about knowing how to deliberately move the body in a sophisticated way. It’s a mind-body connection. With that, the dancers can feel a little lost at first because they are actually choosing what to do and how to do it, and even with great guidance and support it can be a challenge. They realise that they need to have a clear vision of the movement they want to do rather than what the teacher wants. It is not a specific style; you can actually go on to do any style afterward and a lot of people do that. It is more about finding your authentic voice for the platforms that you wish to explore and telling a story.”
What are the career pathways that your training course creates?
“The career pathways are very broad – we have a whole list of companies and independent productions that the dancers go into. My philosophy is about helping them find their purpose in what they want to do and what they are interested to explore, whether that is dance, or even physiotherapy or writing about dance. I may have some dancers that by the end of the course may want to go back to medicine, or English. It is a really interesting thought, that we need to give young people a broad direction of pathways. What is out there for them? I don’t think we need to train them to get into a specific company. We want to train them to be the best version, or the most interesting version of themselves. That is my philosophy and I live it, breathe it, and teach it.”
What type of student excels in the pre-professional year?
“I think anyone can, if you are interested to develop yourself with an open mind. Someone who wants to find that personal autonomy over what they want to do, and is looking to direct their own career.”
How closely do you work with Sydney Dance Company, the dancers and Rafael?
“Very closely. Rafael and I talk a lot, and the company is very close. We do classes with the company, the company dancers teach, and we always learn Rafael's repertoire. He has a really good mix of company and industry. We’re so lucky to have really interesting choreographers of many different styles, and thoughts and philosophies coming into the course via Sydney Dance Company. The company dancers may teach their repertoire, or the associate artistic director might work with us a little bit, and when Rafael has time he will come and do a workshop as well.”