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
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