Month: February 2016

In the third week of improvisation, we looked at exploring further by using a method called ‘the flocking method’. We started in a full group, which I found slightly difficult to start with as I struggled to see the persons in front as I was in the middle of the group, so I felt my timing was slightly out to the person ‘leading’ at the front.
However after being a full group, when then split into two groups, which I found easier with less people as I could see the person leading, and the group managed to get the movements in perfect timing.
As there was more people along the sides of the group to lead when we split in to two groups, my group used a split second of stillness to decide who was going to lead, and start the movement off.

Most of the movement we created during the flocking exercise, was small and mostly used the arms, head and torso, as the group was so tight together using complicated movement with our legs would have been difficult.
The movement was also slow and simple, during the end of the exercise we managed to pick the pace up slightly and still managed to stay in time and if we had, had longer on this exercise I feel like we could of made the movements a lot more complicated and made the movements a lot faster.

 

We then split into pairs, and started to do a change, develop and continue exercise, I worked with Hannah and watching her move I started to notice her habitual movements and the movements she constantly went back to, so I started to tell her to change every time I noticed her doing habitual movements and to develop her habitual movements further, after doing this for 5/10 minutes I started to notice her experimenting with different type of movements and starting to leave her habitual movements behind.

When we swapped around, I tried to focus on staying away from habitual movements however I struggled to stay away from them and develop them further I noticed in myself that I was repeating a lot of movement when I was told to develop which is something I aim to work on throughout the improvisation module.

 

After this exercise we split into A and B’s and followed the instructions from Kirsty, however she added more directions, such as ‘no hands, the left hand had to stay to the floor, the movement comes form your nose, the movement comes from the back of the knee’ with this I struggled with, especially ‘the movement comes from the nose’ directions, as I struggled to find ways of doing this, so I ended up repeating a lot of movement again.
However with the directions like ‘the left hand has to stay attached to the floor’ it made me find movement that I would never normally do as it was restricting and I ended up being in positions that I wouldn’t normally be in, making me try and find a way out.

However I noticed that whenever the direction changed I started with hand/arm gestures.

 

We also split the room into different 4 stages, so the right hand top corner of the studio, we were only allowed to run, walk, turn, kneel and fall.
The second stage was the left hand top corner, and the same score applied.

The third stage was half the room, where any movement goes, and we added develop and continue.

The forth stage was the full room, same score as the third stage.

I found this exercise harder than I have found any of the other exercises, I mostly struggled to find the right time to join in and create a duet, trio as when I had finally found a place to join in the movement had already passed and the dancers had moved on.
However I started to feel a lot more comfortable as we got to third and forth stages, and me and Laura managed to find a good connection and worked around each other creating some good movements.

This exercise challenged me to interact with people and start to think about how you could complement another person’s movement.

I would like to try this exercise again and see if I can improve my material and put myself in more of the stages rather than standing and watching.

 

I really enjoyed reading this weeks readings, and I especially enjoyed reading (Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An improviser’s companion) seeing how all the different choreographers that were discussed in the reading and how the each used form and manipulated the movement by using different pathways and different types of form.

Bibliography –

 

Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An improviser’s companion. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pages. 34-59

Week 2 of dance improvisation and reflective practice and after exploring further into improvisation and getting rid of the nerves I was mostly excited for the lesson. After reading this weeks readings before the lecture I felt a little bit more clued in and confident about improvisation, and made me realize a little bit more that the thoughts and feelings I had towards improvisation are common, I especially liked,

 

‘its like learning to ski. At first you are just trying to keep from falling down. Soon you can change directions a little and look up at the horizon instead of down at the tips of your skis. Eventually you can begin to choose where you want to go and notice and adjust the details of how you are getting there. Not everything is a choice because you are also responding to gravity.’ (Spain, K, 2014, 93)

 

I felt like I could connect to this quote because during improvisation I feel like I’m taking baby steps and learning how to build my skills a step at a time and each week I’m stronger and starting to become braver and a lot more confident.

 

We started this weeks session with somatic exercise, connecting the body to the floor and feeling every muscle and body part and reconnecting with the body, we moved our heads from side to side slowly, and after a couple of seconds of doing this I felt like I’d lost the center of my head and couldn’t place it back. I also felt my body relax and become heavier towards the floor as I was no longer concentrating on the rest of my body, this enabled me to fully connect my body to the floor and feel each muscle along the floor. We also looked at trying to tense a single part of the body, for example the thighs, torso, feet etc. I struggled a lot to do this, not being able to isolate my body, it worked a lot better on my right hand side than my left, but even on my right hand side it wasn’t perfect.

 

We then moved into partners, I felt doing this I was connecting fully to Kayleigh, copying her breathing, her posture and every movement she did, like we were becoming one person. We had to mimic each others movements without having direct eye contact. We had most mutual decisions, there was only a couple of times throughout this exercise that it became more lead and follow, and this was only if the actions had stopped and we needed motivation to start the movement again, or if the movement was going to fast and one of us couldn’t keep up.

 

After the somatic practice, we went straight into an improvisation circle.. I can safely say I nearly cried when we got told to go into the middle of the circle and improvise in front of the whole class! When I first went into the circle I started to do movement I knew already and repeated a lot of the movement as I panicked! However my 3^rd/4^th time in the circle I had a lot more confidence to experiment with movement, and started to look at using smaller movement and using different ways to travel along the floor. I never thought I would enjoy anything like that as much as I did and as we moved on and started to copy people, I got copied by a few people and it was really interesting to see how the movement had worked, it looked almost like a choreographed piece with people stopping and swapping the person they were copying!

 

I firmly believe that my confidence is growing rapidly throughout the improvisation module, and I no longer want to cry every time I walk through the studio door!
Bibliography-

 

Spain k. 2014. Landscape of the now: a toptography of movement improvisation. Oxford: Oxford University Press