Part 1
Tracking – engaging further with improvisational practice, drawing on in the moment experiences and documenting then in various forms. (De Spain, 2014)
I am improvising in space, and the pace is increasing at an alarming rate. When it peaks, I feel as if I have lost all sense of control of my body and I am finding shapes and positions that I have never found before. But I can’t recall a single one of them. I was suppose to track my movement but there are so many components to keep track of: The movement I am performing, with what body part I am performing it with, the dynamics of the movement, the space the movement is performed in, the space around me, the people in the space around me, and the time of the movement.
It seems that this list will never end…
It is easy to be completely consumed by the now. There is so much going on’ (De Spain, 2014 , 45), I certainly agree with you there.
Think, Imagine, Do.
- Think of a movement
- Imagine yourself doing the movement
- Do the movement
The nature of this task allowed me to consider all possibilities of movement from one single position. Selecting movement using this process allowed me to easily track and document my movement later on. This is because my movement selection was more thought out, there was no urgency for me to choose movement, there was no time restriction, I moved at my own accord, my own pace. This process was interesting for me, I found that it moved me away from my habitual movement; it gave me the time to weigh up all possibilities of movement from any one position.
Swing. Fall. Jump. Curl. Stretch. Upside down. Explore. Push. Invert.
Shouting out these words whilst improvising became an effective way for me to track my movement. I found it much easier to track my movement as it enabled me to connect movement with words, acting as an aide memoir.
The second part of this task meant that our partner would shout out the words we had done so previously, in a randomly selected order, whilst we were improvising. We would then use these words to influence our movement. I found it easy to recall movement from my previous improvisation; meaning that I steered away from what I had already done.
Part 2. The Score. The Jam.
Walk in slow motion around the space for 2 minutes. DING.
Move into one of the thirds. Perform movement. Track your movement. DING
Walk in slow motion around the space for 2 minutes. DING
Track the movement you performed in the first section and translate this into a different body part. DING.
Walk in slow motion around the space for 2 minutes. DING
Document your thoughts.
End.
To develop my skills from the previous lesson, I decided to focus on the ideas of Barbra Dilley, where by she uses the art of meditation to influence her improvisational and tracking methods – “I work with three little disciplines – slowness, stillness and repetition – as a way of slowing down the nervous system to allowing tracking…” (Dilley, 2014, cited in De Spain, 2014, 49)
Using this technique worked particularly well for this score as the entire score was performed in silence. The silence allowed me to fully engage in myself and find in my movement the slowness, stillness and at some points repetition needed to track.
After thought…
It seems in my improvisational practices this week, that the timings and pacing have been rather methodical and very much the same. I now understand the process of tracking and have gained the necessary skills to be able to do it, but I need to apply it further.
Not every improvisation session is going to be the same and I don’t know how I will cope with tracking at a different pace. What happens if I get lost in the movement, like I did earlier on in the week? I need to explore timing and pace further.
De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. New York: Oxford University Press.
