Bodies lay splayed and stretching in the noon sun, as choreographer Alan Sener looked around the warm studio a bit panicked. "My translator isn't here," he said. "This might be a bit difficult."

Sener, an associate professor and chair of the dance department at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, the United States, was meant to be a guest artist at the Beijing Dance Academy, but without his interpreter, instructing the class would be a challenge.

As the clock struck 12:00, the pliable dancers shot up and stood shoulder to shoulder like rigid soldiers preparing to march. The class monitor greeted Sener and the students were ready to begin.

Sener's objective for the day was to teach the students contact improvisation, a form of dance and theatrical training that allows performing artists to act on impulse and to physically and naturally interact.

Much like an accomplished pianist practises their scales every day, contact improvisation is a form of acting or dance technique most often done in duets during rehearsals.

But unlike the pianist precisely running through their scales as solely a means of practice, contact improvisation has evolved into a performance in its own right and is gaining an audience.

"Contact improvisation is a wonderful thing to indulge in, as well as a great way to work.

"I use it as a means to an end for choreography as well,"said Sener in an interview following the class.

With no one available to communicate his complex and abstract ideas Sener was unsure how he would be able to teach the studio full of choreography students.

But his eager students had no reservations, and were totally focused on Sener's every gesture and movement. And the only slight interruptions to the class were students' snatched exchanges over whether they had grasped his meaning.

With demonstrations and many hand gesticulations the dancers nodded and said "OK."

"This is bit frustrating, I'm not sure if they understand me," said Sener.

The students spread out across the studio and he motioned for them to lie on the floor, moving in whatever way they wished and how the mood took them.

"The floor is your partner," said, and gesticulated Sener. After a bit of exploring their own weight and its interaction with the floor, the dance master guided the class to move on to interact not only with the floor, but with one another.

"Take your time, move slowly," Sener mimed as the dancers slid across the scuffed vinyl floor. A few embarrassed giggles squeaked out as dancers rolled over each other.

Like some sort of saviour, the translator arrived, scurrying into the studio. A wave of relief washed across Sener's face as the petite woman atop platform tennis shoes apologized for being late and got down to work.

Sener briefed her on his concept, but even as she reiterated the directions in Chinese, the dancers already seemed to have grasped the maestro's meaning. Perhaps language itself is an impediment to a form of artistic expression for which there are no precise words.

More exploration

Sener then told the dancers to take the improvisation up a level, they could now raise their bodies off the floor. When their bodies made contact the dancers were encouraged to move as one, taking and giving their weight to their partners.

After allowing this exploration, which is very much at odds with anything this group of students had done before, Sener took them on further.

Almost standing, the dancers were guided to lift one another and balance in each other's arms or stretched across each other's backs. The improvisation looked like a balletic round of Greco-Roman wrestling, played in slow motion.

That is until Sener placed a CD into a boom box in the corner of the studio and the improvisation took on an entirely different feel. The students' interactions almost expressed a story. The melancholy ambient music made some interactions look like a painful separation - lovers saying their last farewell.

In a University of Iowa T-shirt and tattered New York Yankees baseball cap, Sener, with his long white hair fastened in a pony-tail, moved around the studio scrutinizing the dancers and encouraging them to lose themselves in the almost primal movement.

Dancing career

Sener's attire seemed all too appropriate for a professor who divides his time between the bustling dance capital of New York and the quiet cornfields of rural Iowa.

He continues to keep an apartment in each location.

"I need to get a break from the hectic New York life," he said, "I think I've found a balance."

He first visited the University of Iowa as a guest artist, much like his week-long visit to the Beijing Dance Academy. The one-year invitation soon turned into two, and 14 years on Sener is now the department chair. "I never planned on staying there, it just kind of happened," he said.

Born into a working class family outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania, Sener did not seem destined for such an artistic life.

He can almost be seen as a "Billy Elliot," growing up amongst the blue-collar families and chocolate factories in the area, much like the young character in the film where the son of a miner falls in love with dance, despite his inartistic surroundings.

Sener first discovered his love of dance as a college freshman at Penn State University in College Station, Pennsylvania. After exploring dance in a jazz, modern, and ballet class, he decided school was not the place for him.

So he dropped out and moved to New York City in 1976. "I was 20 years old and showed up in New York with just US$300 in my hip pocket," he said.

In 1978 Sener became a principle dancer with the Louis Falco Company, a role he held until 1983.

He served as Falco's choreographic assistant for 15 years on projects varying from ballet to feature films to music videos.

Impressive visit

Sener was entrusted with the post of Creative Director of the Falco Company in 1993, and continues to stage Falco's work worldwide.

Sener's visit to Beijing was part of an ongoing exchange programme between the University of Iowa faculty and their Chinese counterparts. David Berkey, Sener's predecessor, visited the Beijing Dance Academy in 2002 and one of the academy's professors visited Iowa.

Sener was truly impressed with the academy and its more than 1,000 dancers. On a tour of the school, he saw students rehearsing ballet, modern, folk and ballroom dances. "I even heard hip-hop coming from one hall," he said.

Sener felt the dancers were very talented and disciplined. The class of eight men and 11 women varied in age from 18 to 32. The students told Sener that some of them had tried something like contact improvisation in another course, but not quite the way Sener thought.

"I only have limited time here, so I am working nearly a month's worth of exploration into one class," Sener said. "It would be nice to have more time with them."

The students were very receptive to the new exercise and asked Sener if they could continue the exploration after class in another studio.

Due to Sener's schedule the after-class session was not possible, but he encouraged the dancers to use contact improvisation in their own warm-ups, as the exercise does not require music or even that much space.

"With a technique class we can work together more, we canuse our breathing, impulses and rhythm. But choreography is more about concepts. Even counting in Chinese is beyond me," he laughed. "I would love to learn the language, I speak French and Italian, but Chinese is just so different," Sener said.

With a better grasp of the language he believes he could have made some serious progress in his week at the academy.

(China Daily 03/29/2005 page14)