All dance and movement courses given in the SNDO are set up in the perspective of students becoming choreographers. Dance technique is hardly taught as the artistic equation of dance, but to provide students with skills for the organization of the body, research (through) physicality, develop focus, expand thought and movement registers and in general adopt investigative attitude towards the diversity of ways of moving (in and through) the space, (in and through) the concepts, (in and through) own and other’s bodies and (in and through) time.
Different techniques are in the curriculum also to provide the students with relevant references and understanding of the developments in the section of the so-called ‘contemporary dance’ field which the school is in dialogue with and which the school and its graduates actively shape and transform already for more than forty years.
- The Movement Research classes form the base of movement explorations in the first and second study year. The pool of teachers who usually hold MR courses consists of Mami Kang, Keerthi Basavarajaiah, Matej Kejzar, Asther Arribas and Bruno Listopad. These take place for two hours in the morning, three times a week.
- Codified technique classestake place at the end of the morning and are usually structured in the 1 1⁄2 hour classes, two times per week. Ayaovi Kokousse teaches West-African Classical Dance, Maria Ines Villasmil teaches release and improvisation, Tiana Hemlock-Yensen teaches alignment, Uli Naumann holds Alexander Technique courses, Diego Oliveira and the collective Native Moons teache Urban dances and Hip Hop Fundamentals.
- Additional non-structural movement courses: e.g. Yoga, Kung Fu, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Contact Improvisation come to accompany thematic blocks (see chapter Thematic Blocks bellow) or are taking place at the beginning of the semester for all four study groups together.