Photo source: https://mcachicago.org/Publications/Blog/2017/03/Notes-On-Interning-For-A-Legend
Merce Cunningham with dancers at Westbeth, 1971
Photo: James Klosty, courtesy of the photographer
“Technique is a way to facilitate how to move……The body can only move in certain ways, but within those limits, there is an endless variety.”
技巧就是關乎怎麼動作。
康寧漢（Merce Cunningham）的技巧在下肢的部分很芭蕾，在軀幹上肢的部分很現代，但更大的關注在於骨盆脊椎的串連運作，因為人體活動必須將背與腿連接起來，既要輕盈流暢又要有重量感，同時不失pose的線條和精準度。
photo source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/arts/dance/merce-cunningham-technique.html
所以，雖然在某些舞作中的身體結構線條外觀上與葛蘭姆（Martha Graham）的身體有些相似，但動作執行的方式和質地可能有顯著差異的。
關於康寧漢技巧（Cunningham Technique），網路有許多資訊可以查詢了解。不過，聽聽本尊怎麼談他的技巧是最直接的。
MERCE CUNNINGHAM: MONDAYS WITH MERCE #1:TECHNIQUE
https://youtu.be/q318rHkDDHo
康寧漢技巧課通常有一套相對固定的暖身單元，從背/脊椎的活動開始，接著是下肢的活動，是為身體做好準備的基本步驟。接著會有一些tendue加方位變化的練習，“stretch the foot, don’t kick it.” ，為腿部的延伸動作做好準備。
（約略6:30開始到9:30的兩段組合，大概就是屬於會很容易讓人（或我這種人）很崩潰的那種。身體和頭腦很容易搞成一團漿糊，核心和內側在手忙腳亂之中就不見啦！一旦被自己的情緒影響『可惡，為什麼記不起來？可惡，做錯了！可惡，又慢掉了！』，一定是越練越糟的。冷靜、理性和復原力，是與身體技巧能力同等重要的訓練......）
接下的訓練內容沒有一定，因為康寧漢認為千規一律的練習無法為舞者提供挖掘培養個人風格的機會。基本上，康寧漢喜歡變化技巧練習的內容，去刺激舞者的覺察和專注力。他也鼓勵每位舞者找到自己表現動作的方式、探測自己的極限。
“I train them and then I give them the movements and actions to do in the dances, but I don’t expect them to do those actions exactly in the way I do them. What I look for is a way to have the dancer move in the way he would move with the best amplification of that.” (From the writing《Characteristics of dancers》)
不過，他的基本要求異常嚴格，要控制、要專注、要精準、要將動作輪廓做清楚、要掌握節奏和斷句（rhythms & phrasing）。他的組合在直覺和實質上有種集合混亂和邏輯的矛盾，不斷在變化和失控中找尋平衡和秩序。只要舞者有意識地知道自己在做什麼，並且全神去執行到最好，在日以繼夜持續的練習之下，即便感覺「不舒服」、「不習慣」、「不自然」的姿勢動作組合，都會變得自然開始信任自身，最終身體動作與舞者本身將合而為ㄧ。
但不管你練的是哪種技巧，甚至不限於練舞的人，只要你有在動身體，追求動作（movement）的精進，都值得咀嚼康寧漢對「技巧」這件事的看法，這是種成長心態、身心修煉、甚至人生哲學了。
The Function of a Technique for Dance
“Technique is the disciplining of one’s energies through physical action in order to free that energy at any desired instant in its highest possible physical and spiritual form. For the disciplined energy of a dancer is the life-energy magnified and focused for whatever brief fraction of time it lasts. . .
The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to be moments of dancing too. And not in any sense the feeling that each class gives an eager opportunity for willful and rhapsodic self-expression, but that each class allows in itself, and further the dancer towards, the synthesis of the physical and spiritual energies.
The final and wished-for transparency of the body as an instrument and as a channel to the source of energy becomes possible under the discipline the dancer sets for himself – the rigid limitations he works within, in order to arrive at freedom.
An art process is not essentially a natural process; it is an invented one. It can take actions of organization from the way nature functions, but essentially man invents the process. And from or for that process he derives a discipline to make and keep the process functioning. That discipline too is not a natural process. The daily discipline, the continued keeping of the elasticity of the muscles, the continued control of the mind over the body’s actions, the constant hoped-for flow of the spirit into physical movement, both new and renewed, is not a natural way. It is unnatural in its demands on all the sources of energy. But the final synthesis can be a natural result, natural in the sense that the mind, body and spirit function as one. The technical aim is not to do a few or many things spectacularly, but to do whatever is done well, whether a smaller or greater amount of actual physical skill is required, and approaching as a goal, the flawless. To walk magnificently and thereby evoke the spirit of a god seems surpassingly more marvelous than to leap and squirm in the air in some incredible fashion, and leave only the image of oneself. And for that very reason, the dancer strives for complete and tempered body-skill, for complete identification with the movement in as devastatingly impersonal a fashion as possible. Not to show off, but to show; not to exhibit, but to transmit the tenderness of the human spirit through the disciplined action of a human body.”
--Merce Cunningham, from The Function of a Technique for Dance (1951), as published in Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. Aperture, 1997 (p.60) David Vaughan, Editor.
以上幾乎是句句格言，礙於本人翻譯能力，僅簡短摘譯幾項重點：
- 技巧簡言之是透過身體動作來訓練駕馭自身的能量，以期以身心最高狀態、隨心所欲地來釋放能量。
- 舞蹈最基本的一件事全然投入，這超乎上課訓練1.5小時的流汗用力，所謂投入是讓課堂中的練習即是舞蹈。
- 舞者為了獲得自由，在嚴苛的紀律和訓練中努力，讓身體成為他/她的工具和通往能量的管道。
- 藝術創作的過程是不自然的，自律和訓練的過程也是不自然的，然而當這一切在最終能夠整合之時，將是個身心靈合一的自然結果。
- 技巧的目的不是為了成就大事，而是讓不管大事小事，都可以做到它潛力可及的盡善無暇。
- 舞者對身體自律的修煉，不是為了炫耀，也不是為了展示，而是要將人類精神的慈愛展現傳遞出來。（這裡tenderness翻作慈愛，大概是感受到舞者在追求完美過程中，更需要「愛自己、接納自己」來尋求突破、獲得堅持下去的力量）
康寧漢認為，身體本身就有意義，動作本身就是語言。身體和動作都是由人而來，所以動作中，人就在裡面。
（其實，不論哪位舞蹈大師，他們思想和看法的主軸大多殊途同歸；老師們也都透過自身的經驗把這些思想信念轉化成自己的教學中心思想，我們耳濡目染在其身教言教中，以某種形式在這條道路上努力著。）
身體人，筆記筆記，銘記銘記。
回歸基本，與自己的身體工作，是值得持續ㄧ生去體驗投入的過程。
P.S. 不知道在台灣是否有老師在教康寧漢技巧？
參考資料：
https://www.mercecunningham.org/the-work/cunningham-technique/
https://www.mercecunningham.org/the-work/writings/the-function-of-a-technique-for-dance/
https://www.mercecunningham.org/the-work/writings/characteristics-of-dancers/
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