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.