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.