As far as dance goes Heggen is interested in the person that the dancer is, who he really is. Her teaching therefore is focused on the opening up of the dancer, as the person and as the artist, by working on the integration of his personality and his dancing.

WORKSHOP MOVEMENT RESEARCH
This workshop aims at a student’s development of a clear and individual/personal movement vocabulary.
A student needs to have clear idiosyncratic movement, meaning clear choices in personal, and for him typical movement. That means the movement itself can be vague but the student’s choice for that vague movement has to be clear. This way any movement or non-movement explains itself why at the same time, the movement communicates the choice, therefore the student is clear.
The workshop is further focused on building body awareness, a student’s ability of not just sensing/feeling the body but also knowing what to do with it at the same time.
Awareness is the key word here because apart form his body a student needs an awareness of how his mind works while moving, he needs to develop his own so-called outside-eye so that he ‘sees’, and not only feels, what he is doing in any moment.
The student has to become aware of his own choice making for movements.
This is necessary for him to be able to recognize the unavoidable patterns or habits of movement that every dancer has, patterns that block the development of his vocabulary. Patterns and habits weaken the student’s expressiveness and they are there to be broken and changed. In order to do this he needs awareness of his body AND of his mind. Maybe a more correct term would be Body-Mind Awareness.

WORKSHOP GENDER AND DANCE
Gender defines part of one’s identity. While most people are born with a gender that belongs to either male or female it turns out that daily life in actual fact is not that black-and-white. What does male mean apart from having male sex organs? What does female mean and what is androgyny?
Apart from existing gender variations often enough people struggle with their respective gender role.

Through improvisation and physical acting Heggen investigates with the students what gender means for them apart from their biological sex. Also how the focus on gender can contribute to the development of their body awareness and movement vocabulary. Everybody has a male and a female side but what does that mean in movement? And is there anything in between, does androgyny in movement exist? Improvisation requires opennness and alertness in every moment, with body and mind in balance, meaning going beyond what the head thinks and what the body dictates to do (habits). This way the two opposing categories M/F can be surpassed and with that the labels, fixed ideas, and judgments, so that instead people can become more who they really are.

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