Weird imagery leads to an interesting movement vocabulary.
Your arms are spaghetti, you legs are knives.
Your head must move in the opposite direction to your stomach.
Your left hand must always be four inches away from your right elbow.
Your stomach is a washing machine, your arms are hanging out the washing.
Your nose is low, your lower body is higher.
All the cells in your body are having a race.
Now travel.
This tasks allowed imagery as a way of initiating movement. This was a good exercise in terms of deviating away from habitual movements as the imagery given was so abstract, there was no possible way in which I could use my habitual movements whilst still relating movement to imagery. I found in this task that I initiated movement from different body parts more, not sticking to the same arm or leg. This is largely because the imagery given, planted body parts that I would not usually think to use, like the elbow and nose.
The last set of imagery, the race, was perhaps the most interesting to engage with. I have noted in recent weeks that when I am improvising, I tend to move at slow pace. The idea of a ‘race’ immediately screams fast pace. Within this imagery, I performed the whole section at a higher level, my habitual tendency within space would usually be to use both the floor and standing movements equally.
Audience expectation is never the dancers intention.
Our first score included seven dancers, and was ten minutes in duration, and the initial image would be that the head had to be as close the coccyx as possible.
I watched this ‘as an exterior image, what is seen from the audience’s perspective’ (Buckwalter, 91). This is the first time I have done this, so far I have always been a performer in the score.
In previous weeks that majority of movement present in the space has been unison and copying. This week we were to deviate away from that using devices such as retrograde, echoing, diminishing or increasing the size.
Something I found personal to me whilst watching this score was that I did not notice dancers enter and exit the space. I think this was because, as said above, in previous weeks most of the space was occupied copying and unison, so when a dancers entered and exited this was the thing that became noticeable and stood out. Therefore this week, I became more engaged in what was occurring in the space and what devices were being used.
As this was the first time that I have watched a score from the exterior perspective, I was amazed at how many different possibilities there are in the space. But perhaps what is more interesting is how the dancers defy the audience expectation. There was several points in the score where I thought a duet or some form of contact would occur, but it never did.
“Dancers necessarily share experiences and skills during the improvisation practice. This sharing is what gives sense to the dance both for those who dance and forthose who observe it and it requires observation, cooperation, acceptance and adaptation.” (Ribero, M and AGAR, F, 2011, 79)
These words embody my experience in both watching and performing a score.
I see the dancers observations of space, time, movement and dynamics.
I see the cooperation of feeding off and interpreting each others movements.
I see acceptance in the audience, accepting that there expectations will not be met.
I see adaption in ther performers, adapting when something gets in the way of there intention.
The Jam.
In an impulse I have no control over my movement, everything is initiated from someone else. I like this concept. It leads to new and interesting discoveries in movement.
If my partner shoots an impulse backwards through my shoulder, I cannot travel forward.
If my partner passed through a heavy impulse in my back, I cannot move softly.
I cannot control the outcome.
In thick skinning, I trace my partner around the space. There is a connection between us both. I take the essence of my partners movement and follow her round the space. Though we do not touch.
With my partner moving around the space constantly, I found it difficult to track. I need to open my eyes more and become more aware of the space now that contact has come into play, I figure that my focus has been more internal, because most improv’ has been as a soloist.
I don’t like the Tide in, from recent weeks in improvisation I have come to realise that I have issues with attachment. I don’t let things go easy.
Why would I willingly want to wash something away and then forget about it completely?
I can see how it can be interesting to completely abandon something and find something new. I need to learn to relinquish attachment.
Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing While Dancing, An Improviser’s Companion. USA: University of Wisconsin Press.
Ribeiro, M. M. and Fonseca, A. (2011) The empathy and the structuring sharing modes of movement sequences in the improvisation of contemporary dance. Research in Dance Education, 12 (2) 71-85.
