Throughout my experiences as a dancer and the opportunities I have been given, improvisation was one that I never was able to confidently grasp and I’ve never wanted to be able to grasp it.
So walking into improvisation and reflective practice class on Wednesday afternoon was a nervous experience and I had so many questions going through my head, what is it? What if I’m not good enough? What if I do it wrong? However, now after my first class experience I feel a little silly about working myself up.
However, as Midgelow says “Be open. Learn to maintain a state of continual surrender or of conscious vulnerability; give up expectations of pre-knowledge and, in some senses, control. Listen and trust, for ‘if you forget yourself, you become the universe” (Midgelow Vida L, 2012, 11), This quote really made me just take a deep breath before class and just go along with what was happening, this quote helped me to consciously think I had to go in with an open mind and just let my preconception go.
To start with as a class we stood motionless with our eyes closed, during a relaxation exercise.
We started just trying to understand our bodies and let go of tension and anything else we knew about our bodies, moving down towards the floor and eventually embedding ourselves into the floor, moving our bodies into twisting, pulling, pushing and folding imagery.
As the class went on I realized it was incredibly important to let go of any confidence issues or self insecurities and just focus on how MY body was moving and MY body only, ignoring everyone else around me.
After I realized this, towards the end of the exercise I managed to go with where my body wanted to go and my body became heavier as new movements started to appear. I realized I was no longer thinking about what movement I was going to do, I started thinking ‘oh this is an interesting movement’.
As the class progressed, we started to work more in pairs, using contact to stimulate the movement, at first we started off slowly, and I struggled not to stimulate more movement from a simple touch to the shoulder, I also repeated a lot of the movement, so for example if Hannah touched my knee more than once I’d just repeat the same movement from my knee.
I also realized that every time Hannah touched a part of my body I was subconsciously do a small roll throughout my body, which is something I want to be able to control so I can create original movement.
However as we built up speed on the contact, I managed to get out of the habit of repeating the same movement and I also managed to start using levels and moving across the space more. I believed that this happened because I didn’t have chance to think about my next movement because of the speed, so I managed to let go a little more however I still noticed that I was still thinking about what I was doing next, which is something I’m going to work on. I feel that in improvisation you should be able to completely let go and stop thinking about the movement you are going to do and just go along with what your body wants to do.
Reflecting back on my first improvisation session, I realize it was not what I was expecting, many times I have done improvisation, never professionally taught, and always been told to go into the space and ‘just dance’.
I’m looking forward to be able to expand and widen my knowledge on improvisation and professionally learn that its not all about ‘just dancing’.
As Bucklow mentions, improvisation is “learning how to question and answer things through the body” (Buckwalter, M, 2010, 156) and I am truly excited to explore this within our second session.
Bibliography –
Buckwater, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An improviser’s companion. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press
Midgelow, Vidla L. (2012) Dear Practice… : The experience of improvising. Northampton: Intellect