dance improvisation and reflective practise

At the start of this session we began with the underscore by Nancy Stark Smith. This again warmed me up physically and mentally ready for the last lesson of this module. We then did a partner exercise in which I was paired up with Indre. Kayla then asked us to keep in contact with our partners pelvis whilst they were improvising. This was a challenge as I did not know where Indre was going to move next or what direction she was going to go in. This meant I had to be fully concentrating on her movements to make sure my hand kept as close to her pelvis at all times. This was a new exercise that we had never done before in this module so it was difficult at first to get used to but as we continued to do this exercise it was more interesting to see how I had to move quickly in order to make sure I was in contact with her. Kayla then asked us to just hold the skull. I found this one harder as the head is a precious part of the body and I felt the responsibility to be as careful as possible. I felt this restricted Indre’s movement as she felt that too, so her movements were more simplistic and not travelling as much. We then went on to hold the skull and the pelvis at the same time -which meant both hands were in contact with her body. This was even harder to maintain as Indre picked up her pace and therefore it was harder to keep up. We then swapped roles. It was interesting to have someone constantly in contact with you whilst improvising. As I was improvising it came clear to me that I did not like this way of improvising as I felt like it restricted my movement and direction as I didn’t want to make it hard for Indre to always be in contact with me.

We then performed our own group scores again adding all the improvements we thought of last lesson and applied them. I believe it was the best we had ever performed the score and I think we pulled of the intention of the score which was to make it ‘visually interesting for the audience’. It was exciting to perform our score for the last time as it was the last time we would perform in this module.

We then got the chance to dance in ‘pop up scores’. Kayla made different piles of cards. The categories were how many minutes the score will be, how many dancers in the score, the disc and track number for the music and how the audience would view the score. I was involved in the first score that had five dancers and lasted four minutes. The audience viewed the score in the round, which meant that they circled the performance. I had never performed a score with the audience positioned in this way. It was interesting because you could never have your back to someone because you were always in someone’s view. I then watched a score which involved only three dancers and the audience were allowed to enter the space when they were dancing. This was the first time I have ever experienced being allowed in the space whilst watching a performance, it made me feel more involved in the performance and have a different perspective on the score.

Throughout this module, I feel like I have learnt a lot about my body and the way my body moves. I feel like I have progressed and started to learn to get rid of my habitual movements. Not only that but I feel like my confidence has improved through this module. I have learnt to be more confident in performing moves out of my habitual range in front of my peers. I feel like the fright of doing it ‘wrong’ has now gone out of my head, which therefore makes me have a better mindset on improvisation.

For this session we warmed up as a class by using the underscore from Nancy Stark Smith. I felt like I had to keep full concentration as I was always in the score even if I was in the wings. I enjoyed warming up to this score as I felt like I physically warmed up and mentally warmed up as I was continuing to think whilst dancing. I did however find it hard to sometimes come into the score. I had doubt to whether or not my movements would contribute to the movement already in the space or whether or not I would ruin it. Because of this I went into the space with the purpose to thick skin someone so I felt like I was still contributing to the score and also changing the dynamic of the piece by adding more relationships into it.

We then went onto working on our scores that we made up last lesson in our groups. My group then discussed what we felt went well and what didn’t look as effective than we hoped when we performed it last lesson. We decided to firstly half the length of the score from ten minutes to five minutes. I thought this would be more effective because we would not run out of strong material and therefore reduce the chance of the score dragging. We then talked about having two dancers in the group who would be given the job of movement material makers. I was chosen and so was Zoe. Our job was to create the movement and to add new dynamics which then the other dancers would interpret us and develop our movement ideas. I enjoyed the responsibility of this role as it challenged me to keep creating the movement that was the stimulus for our score. After thinking about the score from last lesson we didn’t add any faster movements so we decided to have a wider variety of dynamics that included faster and more out of control movements. I knew this would therefore challenge me as my habitual movements always had a soft and balletic dynamic, so this would faster dynamic would make me break away from the slower ones.

When we performed the new score in front of the class Kayla videoed us. We then got the chance to watch our scores on the screen. I found this very interesting as I had never watched myself improvise before and it was exciting to see what movements I actually danced, because I normally find it hard to think what movements I actually danced in scores. From watching the score we did incorporate faster dynamics into it, which I was pleased with as it was mine and Zoe’s responsibility to do that. The sections where we did stillness as a group looked effective on camera and gave a sense of unity within the group. I was pleased how the score looked however knew there were some more ideas we could incorporate into it for the next time we performed the score. For example, a more exciting starting position and ending position.

In tonight’s jam we continued to work on our group score. After thinking about how our score went on Monday we decided to change a few things. Instead of having two movement makers we decided to have one and then another person whose job was to create contact relationships with everyone in the group which was charlotte. This time I did not have a specific role so instead this gave me more time to think about the movement I was doing and to make it more visually interesting for the audience. Another new idea we came up when everytime charlotte came in contact with you, you had to change your intention. The intentions I did within the score were, performing with my eyes closed, performing with just the lower kinesphere, performing with just the upper kinesphere, leading every movement with just the elbow, performing every movement coming from my arms and skinning. I found this interesting to do and made me have more ideas when doing my movements as I always had an intention behind them.

 

In today’s session we started off looking at the reading of Anna Halprin’s explanation of her RSVP cycles. We then discussed what each letter in the RSVP cycles stood for. It was interesting to know how Halprin broke up the creative process and what she thought was important to making a creative score. This is apparent as she describes it as the “essential tool in the collective process” (Worth and Poynor, 2004, 111-112). From looking at this reading I became aware of the progression of her Circle to earth scores and how each one had a completely different intention. I also liked how the latter scores included relaxing intentions, for example ‘Peace Wheel – to create a wheel of harmony’. This gave the scores a more established ending. Libby Worth and Helen Poyner wrote “RSVP cycles allow even large groups to retain clarity in what is potentially a chaotic process” (Worth and Poynor, 2004, 111-112). This made it noticeable that we as a class could try these scores out without it looking too messy.

 

We then went on to do an exercise, which involved five people. We were told that two people always had to be in front and the other three people had to be behind. This sounded easy until Kayla told us that we could not physically turn our head and had to rely on our peripheral vision. I found it harder to see the people if I was at the front, and found it easier to see everyone when I was at the back. I believe trust was necessary in this exercise, as I found it hard to see the people when I was at the front, and I had to trust the people behind me to come forwards when I moved backwards. This was a team task and was exciting to heavily rely on other people whilst moving. We then did the exercise again, but this time only three people could squat and the other two people had to remain standing. But again we were not allowed to look around, so I was using my peripheral vision.

 

We then moved onto doing a score with five people, but had to include two solos and one trio. This made the score more structured and therefore clearer to the audience. I found it exciting how I could swap from a trio to a solo whenever it felt right, but I had to trust the other dancers to see this, and then they could swap roles with me. It then turned into an even more open score as Kayla said there was not to be a clear structure, and anyone could walk in. Throughout this score it became apparent to me that the use of habitual movements were coming back slightly. I’m not sure why I went back to my old habits from the beginning of the course.

 

A question that I wanted to ask myself was how I could make my movements more visually interesting. In the class, six people had a similar question to me and then we teamed up to create our own score. We then decided to base our score on ‘to make a performance and movement more visually interesting to an audience’. We thought of ideas that we thought made a piece look more interesting and united them together. We thought that it was rare for open scores to have unison, as it was difficult to know exactly what other people were going to do. Because of this, I had to be more aware of what my fellow dancers in the space were doing and then my peripheral came into use. We decided to maintain the score for nine minutes and thirty seconds to enable us to fully get the motive across to the audience. Another aspect we decided was to keep all six of us dancers in the space for the full duration so we all had to time to establish our movements.

 

In our jam this week we performed our own versions of Nancy Stark-Smith’s score, which included pre-ambulation, acknowledging my skinesphere, agitating the mass and demonstrating the low and high kinesphere within my body. Nancy Stark-Smith’s score featured pre-ambulation, acknowledging my skinesphere, agitating the mass, and demonstrating both a low and high kinesphere among others. I really enjoyed this score by going through the different sections. It made me more focused on my body and enabled me to think more deeply into every movement, and why I was moving my body in this particular way. I also found it interesting that others in the space influenced my movements. When I was looking around the space I picked up specific movements that others were doing and tried to develop these. For example, I picked up on Becca doing a sideways tilt motion whilst standing, and then I tried to develop this whilst kneeling and using my legs to create different shapes. I really enjoyed this score because of the different sections and how each section made me have a different focus in ways to move my body.

We started the session focussing on different body parts in detail. We did this by lying on the floor while Kayla was talking through the different body parts. For example, thinking about the ball of the foot, each different toe, and the top of the foot, instead of just the foot in general. This enabled me to start thinking about how many different body parts we all have and also made me more focused to start the lesson.

We then started to improvise with a partner. There were three different stimuli that we had to experiment our movement with, involving thick skinning and impulses. The first one was to embody kittens, so Georgie and I did playful movements and soft contact work to portray playful animals. The next theme was wrestling, so we did stronger movements with sharper dynamics and stronger contact work. The last theme was seaweed, so for this I did movements, which had a soft and natural dynamic to them, and let my body move more freely. I believe the wrestling movements were more effective and exciting, as I really put myself more into the movement and was not afraid to move in a sharp and aggressive way.

Afterwards I then participated in a score. Before the score, Becca was on my back as I was giving her a piggy back, but after I put her down Kayla liked the idea and wanted us to start the score with the idea of piggyback. I thought this was an interesting start to the score because we have never started the score with a comical movement before. Near the end of the score I tried to recreate the movement again, however as a solo, so I did movements such as deep plies in second and wrapping my arms round in a circular movement from front to back. This represented me holding Becca’s legs into place in the piggyback position. Because of the score, I feel like I have improved my improvisation, in the sense of getting rid of habitual movement week by week. I also feel like I am getting more confident when thick skinning someone, because I feel like the movements are beginning to feel more natural. I believe this is because I am beginning to get out of the mind set that partner contact work is unnatural and sometimes awkward.

 

We then went onto a different score, which was based on Thomas Lehman theory. This involved five different roles, which were; creating new material, interpreting, manipulation, observer and the mediator. At first I thought all of these roles were overwhelming and would confuse me whilst doing the score. However I started to understand and get used to the idea of having roles within the score, and it made it more exciting, opening up new thought patterns. The first role I played was the creator of material, which I found thrilling as I started the score with my own material. I then went on to play the observer role. This enabled me to ask questions to the dancers to find out why they were doing certain movements or why they were choosing to do the decisions they were doing. For example “Why are you manipulating the dancer in that way?” I found this interesting to understand the background thoughts on why each role was doing the particular action they were doing at the time.

In this weeks jam, the main topic was to look back on our life and to create maps on a piece of paper, showing the journey and the ups and downs. I therefore drew a plan on my piece of paper, which involved shapes and lines representing the experiences in my life so far. I found this interesting to look back on my life and to establish what I could remember. I performed movements to fit the certain events of my life, however I found it hard to interpret the experiences into movements and to make them clear to an outside audience. This being said, I enjoyed how this score had a personal background behind it, as I felt more connected to the score.

In this week’s improvisation session we started with an exercise that was purposely made with the intention to loose our habitual movements. This is the aspect of mine that has started to slowly improve, however I still found it challenging, because Kayla told us to incorporate these specific themes into our improvisation.

Firstly we had to move whilst imagining our legs were knives. I did this by moving my legs in a sharp motion and always keeping them straight whilst moving. Secondly we had to move whilst imagining our arms were like spaghetti then moved on to making the back of the head opposite to our belly button. Afterwards we had to move in the position of which the nose was in contact with the floor whilst the bum was in the air. Finally we moved on with the idea of all the cells in the body having a race with each other. These mini exercises helped me to think about moving my body in different ways, which therefore helped me to forget about habitual movement.

The exercise that I thought helped me to shake off habitual movement was the one that made me imagine that every cell in my body was having a race. This was because I was moving my body in a very fast way, which therefore gave me less time to think about what movements to do next. This meant that I would just move my body without over-thinking it, which made me create more interesting shapes with my body.

We then moved on to create a score, which involved seven dancers, lasting for ten minutes. I was one of the dancers and I had to start off the score with the idea of my head touching my sit bones. This challenged me as I had to think of improvising movements whilst always trying to complete this challenge and movement shape. However the main purpose of this score was having the idea of developing or echoing movements that other dancers in the space were doing. This could mean making the movement bigger or smaller or developing current movements already happening in the space. We also had to focus on exiting the space, whether this was to exit the space or exit the wing to move into the space. I feel that there was a lot of rules to this score which made it more challenging to try and remember it all and then apply them.

Buckwalter says “orchestra of senses” (Buckwalter, 2010, 91). This implies that Buckwalter believes improvisation is not all the visual side but can be kinesthetic to the dancers as well. This then links into the scores we do in our lesson because I have to be aware of the other dancers in the space.

In the jam we experienced two new experiments whilst improvising which were called thick skinning and impulses. These experiments involved partner work. Thick skinning was interesting because this was the first time we did intimate partner work. I found this interesting as I had to think on the spot, but not only from my body, as I also had to work with what material my partner was dancing. Impulses involved us to physically touch our partner, with my decision on how to touch my partner impacting the decision in which my partner moved. This was interesting to see Millie performing movements based on what decisions I made.

We then completed a score in which the people in the wings impacted what was happening in the space. This was because there were dancers moving in the space and if the rest of the dancers in the wings thought that the movement was established they would walk across the stage in a straight line, which then made all of the dancers exit the stage. This motion looked like a wave and made the dancers as a group have more of an impact on the structure of the score. I thought this was interesting and different because we had never done a score like this.