Month: January 2015

For our warm up in todays lesson we improvised in the space, however our movements had to be in slow motion. This made me more aware of which way my body was moving and how it was moving through the space. It made me think about what shapes my body was making, which therefore made me think about more interesting shapes I could make with it. For example, instead of just circling my wrist, I thought about additional actions and shapes I could create with my fingers and elbow to make the movement more visually and dynamically interesting.

We then progressed to another exercise, which was called ‘think, imagine, move’. The first stage of this exercise was doing exactly what the exercise was called, thinking of a movement, imagining us doing it and then lastly performing the movement. The second development was doing all these three things at the same time, which then created more flow within our improvised phrase. In the third development we had to think of movements that are challenging or movements that we had never tried before. This made me have more of a ‘go for it’ approach, so instead of doing movements that I was comfortable with I tried to challenge myself more and not be afraid to try new things. Barbara Dilley suggests ‘The body is a great playground’ (De Spain, 2014, 95). I believe this quote sums up this activity very well because I was experimenting with new movements and playing around with more familiar movements, while developing them at the same time. This then links in with the quote because there are endless shapes and movements the body can do if you have a more open mind and have fun with the possibilities.

Lisa Nelson says “if I’m not tracking, I’m not improvising. I’m dancing”, showing how important tracking is to dancing. Tracking is a big concept of dance improvisation because it is a skill to reflect and remember what movements you have just improvised in the phrase and score.

We then did a partner exercise, which revolved around the theme of tracking. One of us started improvising and whilst we were doing so we would say different actions we were performing aloud. For example, ‘fall, jump, stillness’ and then perform these movements, while our partner was noting down what movements we were doing and the words we were saying out loud. I then did the same for my partner. This made us both more aware of any movement patterns or any specific movements we repeated a lot. In the next development we both performed in the space together, taking it in turns to shout out movements and then us both doing those movements. Nancy Stark Smith says “which things do you synchronize? Which things do you let be very diverse?” I believe this quote relates to the tracking exercise Lizzie and myself did because it was interesting to see how differently we both performed the movements and how we both differently interpreted it.

 

This week we had our first jam session, it was an exciting new experience and I was uncertain as to what it entailed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dance Improvisation to me is a very exciting yet challenging style. The freedom to improvise movements in your own space and time is interesting to me, as I have never had that opportunity in my previous dance training before. Because of this I will find it hard at first to approach the style just because of the minimal background knowledge I have on the dance style. I am looking forward to learning about the concept of this dance styles and the different choreographers/theorists and see their views and thoughts on the different aspects dance improvisation includes.

In todays lessons I completed a partner exercise which involved Millie and myself throwing a beanie bag to each other, which then progressed through different stages for example the first development was when we heard any bean bag drop to the floor within our class we all had to fall to the floor, the second development was after throwing the bag we had to shout a random sound. Lastly the third development was after throwing the bag then freezing your position until you have the beanie bag again. I believe this challenged by thought process because I always had to be thinking which development we were doing aswell as concentrating on catching and throwing the bean bag accurately to my partner. I learnt that I had to concentrate on a few different aspects within the environment. This then progressed into a group activity in which we created a score.

Our score was finite which means we created it to have an ending. The choices we were having to make within our score was having to decide what sounds we were going to make whilst throwing the beanie bag at our partner. This decision was therefore unfixed as throughout the different pairs within the group it gave us freedom on which sounds to say when doing so. I believe the score had a slight sense of structure as the pairs went into the space one pair at a time and the next pair which was due to go in after counting twenty catches and then that group went into the space to start the throwing and catching and so on until all pairs were in the space. Each level of throwing the beanie bag made the score more visually interesting for the audience as we as dancers incorporated the stages we did previously in the lesson into this score. I believe the function was clear if the audience had some sort of background knowledge on techniques of dance improvisation however if a complete outsider member of audience watched they could be more confused on the concept of the score and they could be unsure on how it relates to dance.

After the dancing the score my group watched the other group’s score and then thought of two questions we had that we wanted clarifying or were unsure about. The other group then asked questions on our score and it was interesting to see how they interpreted our score. ‘Learn to maintain a state of continual surrender of conscious vulnerability, give up expectations of pre knowledge and control’ (Mideglow, 2012, 11) I believe this quote sums up todays class for me because I will have let go on all my habitual movements and start having a more open mind on dance improvisation. This will be my main challenge throughout these classes to completely let go and not to keep thinking does these movements look ‘pretty’ or ‘right’ but instead learn to trust my gut instinct and go through with the movements.