WEEK 10 The End... almost

Assessment Day

This is it. This is what we've been working towards. I must say, I enjoyed this lesson. I think it was the most fun class I've had all semester.

Following from last week's post, during our lucky dip portion of the class, the audience was in the round and the dancers were to dance around the edge of the space without sight. I was absolutely terrified to perform in this type of setting. I was scared of the judgement as well as hurting myself but my class looked after me and I was reassured. Dancing without sight I thought would be really difficult but to my surprise, I really enjoyed myself! Luckily we used music that helped me with my movements, but I found myself on the floor because that was the only tool I could use to feel the space and also because it is so hard to balance and find my feet without cheating.

Another section of the class was the Functions score that we played around with. Last time, I took the role of an observer more than anything but this time, I experimented with the role of the interpreter. I feel as a group, we introduced more contact work and learnt to trust each other which I think is important in improvisation. I think that our contact work peaked in this section of the class as we played with the idea of resistance and physically stopping and moving each other.

Our group have bonded and opened up to each other in terms of movement and relationships and I feel that this welcoming vibe made it so much easier to bounce ideas off each other and create an improvised piece of work.

Self consciousness played a big part in my journey of dance improvisation. At times, I would push against it and feel as if I have broken my own barrier and other times, I would take my self consciousness as a blessing and use it to step back and simply observe others and look at the space before delving into the situation. This to me, is the definition to being in the moment. Making choices impulsively and deciding whether or not to act upon them.

Being in the moment, in my opinion, can also be when you create new movements and discover the range of ability that your body has. I think dance improvisation as a whole, can benefit any dancer of any training. It allows them to understand their own bodies and have a heightened awareness of space and time.

Initially, even the word of improvising made me on edge. I thought that improvising was just simply dancing with everyone watching you. I thought that moving would come instantly like those videos I've seen. Now, I have discovered that improvisation isnt simple at all, there is so much theory to it and thought behind the movement which makes it look so effortless.

I am now a strong believer that dance improvisation is vital to dance training... and I never thought I'd say that!

WEEK 9 Music to my ears

Musicality- Can it hinder or help your creativity?

For the first time in our improvisation journey, we were able to include music into our work. It came to our attention that music can sometimes be the drive to our movement and act like an invasive director rather than an accompaniment.

We worked a little bit on juxtaposing the music with our improvisations. For example, if the music was made up of tribal drum beats, our opposing movement would be gentle and fluid rather than surrender to the music and follow the heavy sharp beats of the drum and vice versa.

Although we spent such little time on this, I took this from the class and transferred this rebellious skill into the jam session a few days later. Coming from a balletic background, I used my knowledge and habitual fluidity to go against the drum track. On reflection, it sounds strange. To knock out habitual movements associated with sound... with the balletic habitual movement that I have been blocking out for weeks. I must admit, it looked awfully strange.

However, when we used music that we knew I found that we would almost forget about all of our theory and we just moved. We still maintained our knowledge of habitual movements, space, time, relationships etc. but that is what it had become... knowledge! As if it had sunk into our brains that our bodies finally understood without massive amounts of concentration needed.

Have we, as a collective, clicked? Do we understand how to improvise as one?

WEEK 8 A New Look

In this week's blog post, I wanted to take a pitstop and look back at my improvisation journey.

At the beginning of my journey, I said that I hated improvisation and that I would panic every time I was put on the spot. For the past few weeks, I feel that I have somewhat gained knowledge of improvisation at an entry level and maybe in the next years, I might progress into a more advanced level of improvisation. But for 8 weeks practical work, readings and writing I've learnt more that I expected.

Recently, we've moved on from habitual movement being the main focus to scores. What are scores? How they can be used? How can they help or hinder creativity? This week's lesson I found harder to grasp. The assigned reading about RSVP cycles by Anna Halprin was, to me, an introduction but not a clear guide.

RSVP refers to all elements of improvisation. Resources, Score, Valuaction and Performance

In class, we played with this RSVP cycle- like we usually do. We were given instructions on creating a score and drew our interpretations on paper and passed them to each other to perform. This was a lot more difficult than I imagined because although we knew what our score was, other groups would see it differently and we would see something we didn't expect. This made it clear that no matter how clear a score may be, someone will always interpret it differently to what you intended.

WEEK 7 Whats the Score?

Can a score be a helper or a hindrance?

I feel like I've understood the readings by Millard and Husemann and today in class, we put it into perspective in a physical sense. We played with the techniques that were used in both papers. My favourite was from Husemann's paper. A score method called it's better to, which included verbal interactions which triggered a physical response. This method was carried out by a string of statements that had no relevance to each other and each statement would evoke movement that would show the statement. For example, one might start with 'It's better to eat cheese' and the dancers will create movement that links to this and another might follow that with 'It's better to be a bird' and so on. This was a really fun way to let go because we all, as a collective, felt stupid but we were doing it together. To me that's the best way to bond and build confidence in our actions. 

Following that, It's better to became more of a game, similar to what we did with the beanbags in week one. It gave us the opportunity to work as a group with everyone taking part which is something we don't usually do. One of my biggest insecurities when improvising is being judged and watched, so this exercise really helped me loosen up and and have fun with it! Sometimes it's better to be an observer, sometimes it's better to think about yourself instead. 

Bibliography:
Husemann, P. (2005) The Functioning of Thomas Lehman's Funktionen. Dance Theatre Journal, 21 (1) 31-35.

Millard, O. (2015) What's the Score? Using Scores in Dance Improvisation. Brologa 40, pp 45-56. Viewed 12 March 2017

WEEK 6 A Different Type of Mime

"Why do I move?" "What makes me move?" " What does this moving mean to me, if not others?" (Nelson 2003)

The reading assigned was a report by Lisa Nelson, and I found this reading difficult. Not because of the terminology, but the introduction and the concept of a score baffled me. To me, a score has always been present but I have never noticed it. Similar to a constant noise that over time you've gotten used to and forgotten about.

A score, from what I understand, is the idea of motivating movement by inspiration. Like a creative dialogue that includes emotion, imagery, anatomy, etc... the list goes on.  For example, a score could be to show the emotion of happiness or anger or intimidation which could lead to a dynamic value to movement. Another example is to improvise with the idea of movement that leads with a part of the body, like your left knee, or the top of your skull.

This piece of writing by Nelson, made me realise that in ballet terms, this would be miming. I remember when my dance teacher would shout that I've been heartbroken, and I cannot live without the love of my life while I was rehearsing La Sylphide. But in this case, miming just got intense to a whole other level and instead of mimicking a scenario, I am creating my own scenario through the foundations of a score.

Bibliography:

Nelson, L (2001) Seeds of a Dance Practice. Unpublished. Available from https://tuningscoreslog.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/before-your-eyes.pdf  [accessed 6 March 2017]

WEEK 5 Outside the Studio

Reading Week

I was out of the studio this week, so naturally I totally forgot about uni work- including improvisation.

I spent the weekend travelling around Newcastle, which meant going on trains and navigating, etc. I hate travelling with the passion. I get frustrated, stressed and quite frankly, the thought of getting lost made me so nervous and so anxious.. very similar to when I started improv classes.

Part of this weekend included going out to dinner and it was my responsibility to find a suitable restaurant that was cheap, close, and with a menu that suited my very picky partner. I didn't make any reservations and on a Friday night, we were lucky if we could be seated in two hours. So I had all these obstacles in front of me. I defeated and went home with a full tummy.

Once I had access to my books, I found like I related this weekend to how Kent de Spain discusses structure and more specifically the limitations and delimitations that might occur in improvisation. I admired how Steve Paxton mentions the spaces that he uses and the obstacles that he came across. He took what he had and used them to his advantage to create a piece. I then saw the stressful hunt for food as a opportunity to find new places to eat rather than going to the usual restaurants, which in my opinion made the meal a lot more exciting and new.

Bibliography:
De Kent, S. (2012) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press.

WEEK 4 Time flies when you're having fun

A visual version of Chinese Whispers 

Today's lesson I felt was the most successful so far. We experimented with time and space after reading Landscape of the Now (De Spain, K., 2012, 108-119) and Composing while dancing (Buckwalter, M., 2010, 60-90). We worked in groups and pairs, and we looked into copying each other and then finding our own versions of the leader's movement by echoing, using the essence, diminishing and augmenting. Almost like visual Chinese Whispers with our body.

I felt that this week, I finally understood (or attempted) exploring further movements that were outside of my comfort zone. When we were performing our improvisations in the class, I was very aware of what type of movements were seen and I focused on changing the atmosphere by doing different dynamics and using different effort.

It was also interesting to assess when to enter and exit the space and I was doubting myself and second guessing. Like a false start. I think this was because we were all watching those performing in the space and watching each other, anticipating who was going to make their move. At times, I would enter the space with the intention of joining another occupant but by the time I had made my journey, my plans would fall through. I then had to make quick impulsive decisions. Should I keep dancing? Should I leave the space? Should I begin dancing with another? Whichever you choose, you are engaged with yourself and everyone around, and everyone is engaged with you and themselves.


My journey continues...

Bibliography:

De Kent, S. (2012) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press.
Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An improviser's companion. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press.

WEEK 3 Close your eyes and look!

An Outside Eye

Due to an illness, I sat out of class today. This was a very interesting experience. I find that as dancers, we tend to forget to stop and look, to observe what is really happening around us. 

Watching my colleagues experiment without the use of sight, I saw that everyone had developed a fear as they were holding back, perhaps they were scared of bumping into each other or hurting each other. Everyone cares for everyone and this fascinated me, you could see that the movements were small and timid, but once you gave their sight back the movements were a bigger, prouder and less ambiguous and timid. 

Another fascination were this pair of long term best friends dancing together. They were almost in sync with matching and complimentary positions. It looked so natural and effortless! Compare this to a different combination of dancers that didn't know each other that well and you could see the hesitation and sometimes the panic in their minds. 

I think in order to fully experience the world of improvisation, we need to get rid of that fear, hesitation and panic, and learn to adapt quicker in fast moving situations. 

Today I found out that you really need to trust yourself as well as your friends and the environment to truly vibe off each other to create a performance of improvisation. 

WEEK 2 Visiting the Landscape of Now

A Week of Reading

This week I have been reading Landscape of the Now by Kent De Spain and this is what I took from the book. 

As dancers, we know that the initial learning can be difficult but once you have the hang of it, everything is easier. This anecdote also made me see that improvising might be because it's a instinct and it might not always be a choice. (De Spain, K., 2012, 45) Like when you're performing a roll on the floor, it's important to know your own body and the technique to avoid injury.

Linking back to my past, I was always told that get my leg higher, I would need to develop strength and flexibility. But now, while improvising I see that it doesn't matter about the technicality as long as it's safe. A kick can be a low or as high as your body allows in that moment. 

Kent de Spain mentions that focusing purely on movement can be a 'result of limitation in the body/mind' (De Spain, K., 2012, 101) Which I think means I should trust my body and not be so precious in order to free myself and become comfortable with just dancing because I felt like doing so. 

Speaking of the moment, the movements that might occur in that moment can be totally unpredictable and for the first time in my dance journey, I'm starting to understand that's actually fine! It's okay to not know what you are doing and to spontaneously move. 

Bibliography:

De Kent, S. (2012) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press.

WEEK 1 Child's Play- An Introduction

An Introduction to Improvisation 

In preparation of the first class, I had a mix of excitement. A new style and a new skill that I was ready to sink my teeth into. I also felt a wave of dread because of my love/hate relationship with improvisation. From my background, I've been used to a syllabus and strict 'this is what you have to do' sort of teaching so improvisation feels completely alien to me and to be honest, the thought of it terrifies me. 

Today, we used beanbags to experiment. It was so fun and effortless, we compared this to playing games in a playground like we used to when we were children. This relates to Anna Halprin who was largely interested in improvising based on Child's Play rather than monolithic, large choreography. (Banes, 2003) 

When demonstrating, we came up with a strategy to ensure that we performed as an ensemble. This included falling to the floor everytime we heard the beanbag drop, swapping partners and gauging the length of five minutes. We lost count, our perception of time was all over the place and we couldn't hear the dropping of the beanbag so we couldn't stay true to ourselves- following others is a habit!

Today, I learnt that improvisation is in all of us. Whether you're a dancer or not, we all subconsciously live a spontaneous improvised lifestyle, adapting quickly to our surroundings and making impulsive decisions everyday. It's in our instincts, and improvising is nothing to be afraid of!

Bibliography:
Banes, S. (2003) Taken by Surprise. USA: Wesleyan University Press.