Month: March 2016

Poirier to this lesson we received feedback from our previous formal assessment to I worked harder and focused more on this feedback, to not lose focus during movements and play with stillness but still be active within the moments of stillness.

 

We started the lesson of walking around the space creating eye contact with the group and shouting out the name of the person you’ve made eye contact with, we developed this and made it so you held onto the person’s name until you lost eye contact with them, then we moved on to a clapping exercise moving the clap around the circle, this exercise became difficult when we introduced two claps.
We then created a clump of bodies in the centre of the room and had one/two people walking through the centre, all these exercises where hard in parts but became easier the longer we did them. The bodies exercise was in sighting to see all the bodies moving together at once and closing the spaces around and becoming aware and alert to all the other bodies around you focusing on using awareness and looking at the different pathways you could take through such a small space.

We then looked at merging two groups walking at the same time together, to start with this was difficult trying to get into time with each other and being to know when to go and how slow to walk and thinking about being in the right space and the right time, however after doing this a couple of times over we managed to work out that we had to fit between the gaps of each other’s spaces and the bottom group at to walk a little slower than the top group to be able to make this work.
After swapping places within the space we realised that the it worked and looked better when the two groups where in the original spaces.

We then started to look into planes, using a low plane, medium plane, high plane and then mixing all three together. We looked into using different dynamics for example stillness and fast pace etc, this was partially interesting to me because within my feedback it said about exploring dynamics and looking into stillness and taking more risks, so throughout this exercise I focused more on taking risks with my movement and the dynamics than the actual movement itself, in doing this I started to realise that the movement was just coming naturally and it was a lot more original and non-habitual than it was when I thought about what I was doing.
I mixed together the three planes but mostly travelled on a low or medium plane, if we were to do this exercise again I would defiantly focus on taking more risks for a high plane to a low plane and using different dynamics to do this.

We then split into groups of 5 and each wrote a question down to do with improvisation I wrote –

‘How do you continuously improvise without getting stuck on movement?’
As during improvisation I always feel that I can continuously create movement for about 3-4 minutes however after that I get stuck and turn back to habitual movement and repeat the stuff I have created before.
In the end we decided to merge two of the groups questions together to create:

 

Will boarding my movement pallet help boost my confidence? /how do you improvise successfully without thinking time?

 We created a score between the group to help answer the question or to make the answer a little bit more clear. We split the space into 4 and used different items to make the improvisation harder/more interesting.
So we changed the dynamic of the movement using music, we gave them objects to base and use their movements around for example a bean bag and a basketball.
We thought that all these things will help increase the imagination of the improvisation and help them find different ways to ‘boarded their movement pallet’. We also thought with changing the music dynamic and not using a soundtrack they weren’t thinking of the 2.5minutes until they moved on, they were just completely thinking of how to make movement fit with the objects given.

Once the whole group had started to do our score we started to realise especially with the bean bag as the object that they were struggling to keep moving and catching and throwing the bean bag and had to constantly be reminded that they were supposed to be moving as well as throwing.
Thinking back to it now after watching the groups, they didn’t think of keeping the bean bag and moving with the bean bag before throwing it, or traveling along the same pathway as the bean bag did as it went across the space, I think they panicked and just wanted rid of the bean bag, instead of slowing down and thinking about it.

 

Whilst doing the groups scores I found I started to like Josh’s groups, where we were split into three groups and three sections of the room and each section had a different dynamic and plane, they also gave us imagery to think about whilst in these sections.
This help further to think about my feedback and to really take risks with each movement I do and use the different dynamics and planes, that I don’t have to just stick to on dynamic through the whole jam.

I also liked the group who used the moving around the room whilst 5/6 people were in the centre improvising. As to me it took the pressure of people watching of and made me just think about the movements I was creating instead of thinking of other people watching me, so I could create different movement and play around with movement and take risks.

 

I really enjoyed this week’s lesson as I felt I progressed and started to really understand the use of dynamics and taking risks and how I could use the planes to create movement. I am also starting to understand that slowing the movements down just for a second can really help you to develop the movement and using the slowness to create something I wouldn’t normally create.
Throughout this lesson I have also come to realise that the more I relax into the movement and stop thinking about what I’m going to next and start to think purely on the movement I am creating in that moment that I’m creating a lot more non-habitual movement.

We started this lesson by looking at Empathic Choreography, The communication between dancers, however empathy choreography also, occurs not only by means of actions but also of emotions… (Ribero, M and AGAR, F, 2011, 81).

After looking at this through a powerpoint, we started to walk around the space having this idea of empathy in mind and being aware of the other dancers in the space.

We then got into partners and carried out a swiping exercise, the exercise was simple and made me think more into planes and using the whole of my body.
We had little sequences if we matched the same planes as my partner, I found out that I didn’t sync well with most of my partners and mostly went the opposite way to my partners.
I found this exercise woke my body up and I found it physically challenging, especially trying to remember the sequences if we did the same movements as our partner.
During this exercise I was thinking about the questions that we were asking in the power point earlier on in the lesson –

 

• How is it possible to make a shared choice of movements during improvisation between two or more dancers, without previous agreement and without communication through words?
• What generates the sense nexus that is perceived when we watch a dance improvisation?
• Can we call choreography what we see when we watch dance improvisation?

                                    (Ribero, M and AGAR, F, 2011, 72)

These questions to me describe my thought process and feelings towards the exercises perfectly.

 

We then turned the swiping exercise into a travelling exercise, with a person A and a person B, person A using the same planes as the previous swiping exercise and person B creating movement around person A. This exercise was challenging as creating movement around someone was difficult and I mostly used my head, torso and I was mostly grounded for the exercise.
We then developed this exercise, and had the swiping person with their eyes closed, this made the exercise harder and challenged me as I was incredibly nervous to walk with my eyes closed and panicked I would hurt my partner, however being the other person leading the person with their eyes closed was interesting and made me create movement that I wouldn’t of really thought of creating when I was avoiding the swiping arms. Whilst working with my partner guiding them whilst there eyes were closed, I found myself thinking more about helping my partner and slowing all my movements down linking back to the previous discuss about empathy.

 

We then moved on developing the exercise to copying the person in front of us with every movement they did, this in itself was challenging as I started to work with people that I had never worked with before and moved differently to me, so copying the movement was difficult to follow.
Copying other peoples movement also helped me to expand my movement pallet and put myself in someone else’s body, making me see improvisation in different ways.

 

When then developed this exercise further and started to look at backwards blinking, as we started to learn how backwards blinking worked whilst walking around the space I become confident in myself, however when we moved on to doing the previous exercise whilst backwards blinking I lost trust and confidence in myself.
It was challenging and I felt that I didn’t grasp this idea as well as other member’s in my group did, for example I couldn’t keep my eyes closed for as long as I had hoped for.
I also found this exercise challenging because when my partner was down, I was mostly always still standing, I struggled to keep with my partner.
I also struggled to connect the movement together with my eyes closed as I couldn’t image what my partner would be doing next, linking back to last session’s discussion on imagery.

 

The last exercise we did was looking more into implusing and using the idea of imagery to develop this exercise, we got given three different images to explore: Kitten, Seaweed and wrestler’s.
These really helped me to develop my implusing improvisation as It gave me a reason to touch the places I did on Hannah, for example
I picked her up and moved her physically and it changed the way I explored my movement.
I also felt during this exercise that I understood it a lot more than in previous weeks.
I explored working more with Hannah rather than just following and touching and watching the videos back I realized that our impulse started to look more like a duet.
I really enjoyed this exercise and this weeks lesson and I feel a lot more confident within improvisation and I feel I understand a lot more about the ways and how’s improvisation.

We started with a coordination exercise this week, with arms moving on the counts of 1 and 8 whilst jumping, I found this slightly difficult to start with however I managed to get it without getting confused, this exercise woke up my body and made me concentrate a lot more.

 

This week we got set a reading, which spoke a lot about imagery and how different choreographers used imagery in different ways and different exercise they do within imagery with their dancers. I especially like “these movement education techniques, developed by dancers interested in creating ease in movement, use imagery to suggest alternate and more functional pathways of movement in order to release excess effort” from the reading as to me this explains a lot of how many dancers whose imagery and made me start to think about how imagery could influence my dancing and gave me something to think about during the improvisation class.

 

Linking to this reading the next exercise we did was an imagery based, we looked at performing with the images of – Knifes as legs                                                               

Spaghetti as arms

Nose lower than the knee

My cells racing

This was harder than I ever expected it to be and I slowly ran out of ideas and started to loose motivation throughout my movement, this was seen by my peers in the rest of the group as well. I also struggled as my body lost the improvements I made before reading week so coming back was difficult to bring my body back into improvisation.

After discussing with Kirsty about slowing the movements down, and looking more internally and developing more movement from a smaller movement, for example, circling the foot and then developing the circle further. So in the second improvisation jam, I looked more at internally and slowing the movements down, this improved my motivation and stopped the movement from dipping.

I focused a lot on knifes for legs, as I found this interesting to explore, using the sharpness and stiffness to explore all movements.

 

We also looked into thick skinning, looking at ways to staying close to the bodies around us, we used thick skinning in an improvisation jam, and I found this difficult with people that I didn’t know or wasn’t as closed to. For example I found it quite easy with Laura and Hannah, however I still struggled for things to do, as I repeated the same kind of things with each person I partnered with.

After discussing the exercise with my peers, I started to realise that I was going a little to fast so as a pair it was hard to see who was going where.

 

In the second improvisation jam, we looked at using all the improvisation techniques we have learnt in the pass 5 weeks, we had no score apart from using a technique called a ‘tidal wave’ where you have to make eye contact with each other before you move into the space, I found this at first hard as i struggled to connect with other people in the space, however as soon as I first went into the space with a group of people I started to relax and understand it more, and started to connect with other people in the space more. When we got lost the only rule in the score, a lot more people started to join in, in the space and we used thick skinning more than most techniques.

 

This week I found the class easier than the other weeks, I found myself more relaxed and becoming more confident during the class, throwing myself into the improvisation jams instead of backing away.

 

Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An improviser’s companion. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pages. 90-105

We started this week improvisation lesson with another flocking exercise, however this week flocking exercise was in a line with no certain leader, and just using our peripheral vision.
We used slight seconds of stillness to see which member of the group was starting the movement.
As we first started to do this exercise, the movements started out as a ripple effect, as the person at one of end the lines movements wouldn’t fully reach the other end of the line around the same time, and to start with the movements were getting lost at the other end of the line.
We also started out with the problem of having 2 people starting movement so some people were doing movements and weren’t focusing on what the rest of the group was doing around them.
Towards the end of the exercises, the movements started to become more together, however the movement itself started to repeat.
Most of the movement created either with the hands/arms and legs/feet, however it ranged from the floor upwards, and towards the end of the exercises the movement started to get a little more complicated.

I tried to lead this exercise a couple of times, I focused more on doing things with my hands on the floor, making each movement larger than needed so the rest of my group could see the movement out of there peripheral vision.
As we brought this exercise together as a whole group it seemed a lot easier to make the exercise less of a leader/follower, as we were in opposite lines so you could relay on the person opposite you to follow and watch what movement was happening.

 

The next exercise was based around the readings set before this week’s lesson, thinking about using our internal clock rather than external clock, thinking within ourselves when we thought something should be over etc.
the exercise included us laying on the floor and standing up when we thought 2 minutes were up, I managed to get just passed two minutes, however I found it hard not to count and internally think about the time passing.

 

We also looked at Nina Martins Score –

 

1. 3/2 – ensemble relates through levels, movement, facings and distance.
2. Hot spot – How can individuals take focus and how does the ensemble give and individual focus.
3. One idea – How can the ensemble create one simple easily read form.
4. Number score – How many of the ensemble are in the working space.

 

We watched a demonstration of a trio doing a piece following the Nina Martin score as a visual demonstration of the score.
I found this useful to watch because it let me understand them more and I began to see the different areas in the score.
However I disliked the piece as I felt even with the score it was very predictable and not that enjoyable.

 

After we watched this, we tried out the score as a whole group, this score made me want to be in the space a lot more than I have in previous weeks.

It gave me more to think about and ways to work with movement.

Especially ‘one idea’ as I could find one person to copy there movement, which gave me time to think of ways to compliment it and manipulate it.

With the number score, I worked with Hannah as a duet working through movements with our feet, hands and fingers and exploring levels within the floor all the way through to standing.

 

As the weeks have gone through I can see within myself that my confidence is growing and I am able to join in more with group discussions and whole group work without being terrified when joining in with group/smaller group work.