Improvisation and Reflective Practise

BillMoyers.com (2012) Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers.  [Online Video] Available from https://vimeo.com/33288787 [Accessed March 9 2015].

Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An improvisor’s companion. Madison, Wis:: The University of Wisconsin Press.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now: A Topography of Movement Improvisation. New York: Oxford University Press.

DV8 (2008) The Cost of Living – David Toole. [online video] Available from: http://youtu.be/VcpcujComks [Accessed 21st February 2015].

Husemann, P. (2005) The Functioning of Thomas Lehman’s Funktionen. Dance Theatre Journal. 21(1)31-35.

Lavender, L. and Predock-Linnell, J. (2001) From Improvisation to Choreography: the critical bridge. Research in Dance Education, 2 (2) 195-210.

Little, S. (2010) Creating the Reflective Student-Practitioner. Australasian Drama Studies, 57, 38-53.

Midgelow, V. (2012) Dear Practice…: The experience of improvisation. Choreographic Practices, 2(1)9-24.

Ribeiro, M, Fonseca, A. (2011) The empathy and the structuring sharing modes of movement sequences in the improvisation of contemporary dance. Research in Dance Education. 12(2)71-85.

Worth, L. and Poynor, H. (2004) Anna Halprin (Routledge Performance Practitioners). London: Routledge.

Although it is now time to say goodbye to improvisation as a module, it is nowhere near time to say goodbye to it as a practise. Over the course of the past nine weeks I have learnt so much and my eyes have been opened to just how much is available to me. I have grown in confidence, but not just with improvisation, but with my ability to dance in general; I am much more comfortable within myself, knowing that everything is accepted, nothing is right or wrong as long as its personal to you.

A big challenge for everyone was reducing their habitual movement, and looking back now I can’t quite remember what my habitual movements were? And by watching other performers, I find myself wondering what makes them perform those particular movements? I discovered that, unless there is a clear identified strategy, there is nothing making the dancers move in that way, they are completely free in what they want to do. I have never fully appreciated this freedom before and used it to its full potential until now.

Alongside this, involving different strategies has also allowed me to discover how key imagery is when creating new work. It makes you realise how the body can move and articulate in several unusual ways, that may or may not be pleasing to the eye but still not right or wrong. There are infinite amounts of strategies you can behold and to list a few we used such as:

• The left side of your body is crumbling, the right side is stretching.
• Your feet are moving in the opposite direction of your eyes.
• Try to touch your head to your sit bones.
• Your upper kinesphere is spaghetti, your lower kinesphere is knives.

New strategies were introduced each week and provided new challenges. For instance this week, we had to remain in contact with our partner by placing a hand on their pelvis or their hand or both whilst they improvised. Partnered with Zoe, we both liked to challenge each other. Zoe would suddenly dart away from me or drop to the floor, making it difficult to remain in contact. When it was my turn to improvise, I reacted by challenging Zoe back by keeping low to the floor, close to her legs and occasionally sliding between them, making it difficult for her to keep track of me. This was an interesting new exercise to demonstrate how aware we were of each other, whether we were able to predict each other’s movements. It was tempting to use simpler movements in order keep the contact, however this would mean almost falling into habitual movements, and so we were keen to maintain the challenge.

New strategies was something we were keen to include in our group score, in order to maintain our aim of creating an interesting and challenging score. Each performer had to chose 5 or so strategies to use, this provided me with a great opportunity to go back to early challenges I had struggled with in the previous weeks. In week five, I injured my hamstrings and Kayla wanted me to continue with the strategy that I can’t use my legs, this at the time threw me off so much as I arrived at the studio, in normal clothing expecting to sit out after having emailed Kayla, and suddenly being instructed to dance regardless of dance attire or injury. I was determined to come back to this idea of limitations and I did. I limited myself to having legs, yet I am not allowed to use them and ironically, I did not feel limited at all, I was still able to create movement. Perhaps this was because I had given myself time to process the idea but regardless, I felt like this was a small achievement and I even went on to limit myself further to having no arms.

This week we also introduced pop-up scores, using different piles of cards to determine different elements of what we have played with over the past 9 weeks; time, space, form, music, number of performers and audience space. This was the final challenge of the module, combining all that we have learnt, yet it was exciting to finally have everything come together. What was interesting was the introduction of music, looking back at what I said in week one, it used to be easy for anyone to put on a song and dance to it, but now because we see improvisation differently, it actually felt more of a restriction. The music wanted to draw us in to a particular beat, rather than following our own body and pulse and what made this more difficult was if it was a song we already knew being played, (for instance, improvising with Bob Marley playing in the background was unique and quite surreal) as if it was a song we didn’t know, it was easier to ignore it’s beat and follow our own. This made me realise, that as we have practised with the different elements separately, we don’t really see their full influence until they are all put together and affecting each other.

What I have most importantly learnt from this experience, is the amount of responsibility one has in an improvisation. You have a responsibility to be aware of yourself and others in the space, which can sometimes include the audience if they are in close proximity. I know myself that in open group scores I like to contrast with what is happening in the space, such as different dynamics or levels and in the jam this week I discovered I have a responsibility to not cause too much contrast, as I may distract the audience from a performer’s solo which is meant to be the main current focus. Seen as I am now braver to enter the space, I have a responsibility to try not to control the space, as sometimes I like to do almost too much without being aware of everyone else and so I end up crashing into people. I still come out of the space thinking I could of done more, but it is now reassuring knowing that I can re-enter the space with something different when it is appropriate, rather than trying to do everything by remaining in the space. I have also discovered the responsibility of the audience, whether I am an audience member or not. It is important if the audience are also in the space to be aware of them when performing and vice versa, if I am an audience member in the space I have to be aware of the performers around me. This has also helped me realise the power behind the placing of the audience; there are so many places available that in turn affect the overall form of the score, such as performing in the round or having the audience viewing from behind or even viewing upside down.

Similar to what I said in the previous weeks when speaking of how surprisingly quickly time passes when performing a score, it is also surprising how quickly nine weeks of studying improvisation passes. From bean bags to fully fleshed out scores I feel as though I have gone through some sort of transformation in how I feel about dance improvisation. I was just as surprised in each class when I discovered more of what I can do as to when we were told to throw and catch a bean bag in week one and I hope to continue this journey outside of the module to further explore the endless opportunities available to me.

I cannot even count how many times I put my foot forward this week to enter the space, only to swiftly take it back. This week we returned to Nancy Stark-Smith’s Underscore, however as it came to the end, the score opened up and we were allowed to leave the space if we wanted, as long as we still remained in the score. However, once I left the space, it was again very difficult to get back in. I tried returning to elements of Underscore but didn’t want to use the obvious stages such as agitating the mass or skinesphere. I had the idea of returning to lower or upper kinesphere but I wasn’t sure if people would pick up on it and join me or chose not to. There were several moments where only two people were in the space, and I wanted to enter in order to bring in something different, yet I am always hesitating for too long and another person will enter the space before me.

There was a moment in the score which I particularly enjoyed. The movement became quite animalistic and in space it felt like us dancers were fighting over our territory, it became like a cause and effect sequence; one dancer running to one area to force another dancer out. It was interesting because obviously it was not planned at all and yet became an exciting example of self expression and self exploration. The content of the improvisation immediately changed without thinking or feeling, and caused a huge shift in everyone’s movement.

We took the time to revisit our RSVP scores from the previous week. In our groups we sat down to again go over the valuaction of the score to make any further improvements after performing it. We discovered that it was easy to lose the compositional elements with all of us on stage, yet we didn’t want to lose the limitation of not being able to leave the space. In order to solve this, we created the idea of having two ‘movement makers’ in the space using what we have learnt in previous weeks from Thomas Lehman scores, this would therefore create the overall tone of the piece for others to follow whilst making it easier to come to moments of stillness and unison. We also allowed each dancer to enter the space whenever they felt at the beginning, yet still not being able to leave once they have entered, this allowed us to not rush into our improvisation, and instead having the first ‘movement maker’ enter first, followed by the other dancers entering steadily, leaving the second ‘movement maker’ until last. This allowed the material to develop for a while before the last person enters and changing the overall tone. We added the intention that when we come to moments of stillness, we would break off as a group, yet when we come together in unison, we would break off separately, further including more compositional elements. This allowed the moments of stillness/unison to become predictable but the duration to be unpredictable from an audience’s perspective. We also decided to shorten the score to 6 minutes, as our main intention from last week was to create an interesting piece for the audience and we concluded that 10 minutes was indeed too long to maintain an audiences attention within an experimental score.

It was interesting yet nerve-racking being able to watch our score after we had performed it, yet I was able to pick up certain positives from the changes we had just made. The moments of stillness were more profound and more frequent yet other element of moving in unison had been lost to some extent. The dynamics changed together instead of one person leading, demonstrating how we were really in tune with one another and the compositional spacings were more defined, showing our awareness. One point I wasn’t so sure about was our ending; all the dancers coming together centre stage in a clump, it seemed out of place and I couldn’t identify a real explanation behind it.

Unfortunately I missed the jam due to performing in a show, however I have since caught up with my group and what happened. They were able to make further developments to the score, such as; introducing a ‘contact maker’, starting together as a clump, and having personal strategies and limitations, this should therefore make our intention of the score clearer and in turn our awareness of the audience by creating a visually interesting and stimulating score, by also making the movement itself more distinct. I am intrigued by the changes they have made and hope to expand and develop these changes further next lesson.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.

Lavender, L. and Predock-Linnell, J. (2001) From Improvisation to Choreography: the critical bridge. Research in Dance Education, 2 (2) 195-210.

Anne Halprin’s RSVP cycles was a difficult concept to grasp. From what I understand of Halprin, she is an activist choreographer who promotes social gains. She is against the constraints and concerns of society; issues such as environment, health or discrimination. I discovered that her main aim through these cycles was to “retain clarity in what is potentially a chaotic process” (Worth and Poynor, 2004, 112) and so RSVP provides structure to the creative process.

• R – the resources, the basic materials required for your score, such as how many people or how long the improvisation is.
• S – the score itself, whether it is open or closed, the strategies, all the elements that delineate time, space, place and people.
• V – “the value of the action”, giving analysis or feedback before the performance instead of after, reaffirming what it is you are trying to show through the improvisation.
• P – the performance.

Through analysing The Vortex, it was still difficult to see where the cycles fitted in. I understood how it was the most open score with the idea to create a group identity by the dancer’s gathering strength off one another, whilst maintaining a collective pulse. What I gained from the overall description was that throughout the performance, you first have to identify who you are in the context of the improvisation, to then discover who you are in relation to everyone else. From this I also discovered how an open score such as this makes it more difficult as there is more responsibility on the dancers, however in a closed score there is a clearer frame provided. The Vortex as defined in its simplest terms seemed much easier on paper than in performance, as it may become quite disorganised, therefore the RSVP cycles adds more structure to a very open score.

When creating our own piece using the RSVP cycles, we intended to create a structure that was visually interesting through dynamics and spatial awareness. Our resources were six people in the space at all times for 9 and a half minutes with 15-30 seconds at the end to find an ending. Our score was open, with strategies to find unison as many times as possible, no thick skinning, (as that has since become almost habitual movement), and not leaving the space. Through valuaction, we wanted to show its possible to do a score without thick skinning and to remain in the space. When demonstrating to the class, it was intriguing to perform a score we had created ourselves, yet it managed to somehow work. Because I was focusing so hard on finding moments in unison I found myself sticking in the space I started in, and because there was no thick skinning, I perhaps didn’t feel a strong connection with my fellow dancers. However we did succeed in challenging ourselves to connect in other ways to then find unison. Indeed, there were nice moments, such as a brief moment we all were on our knees, sitting on our heels, with our torso bent towards our knees and arms by our sides, facing a diagonal downstage left, for example.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the jam, we looked at a reduced version of Nancy Stark Smith’s Underscore. Usually this improvisation can last for several hours, however we compressed it down to 35 minutes. The overall piece felt like a warmup, I was able to go through each stage tuning in to what my body needed, for example during the skinesphere and agitating the mass sections, I had a lot of tension in my upper legs and lower back and so I focused my energy on those points to loosen them up. I felt I could have remained in those sections for a lot longer, but it seemed we moved on to the next stage very quickly, so I maybe didn’t indulge in them as much as I felt I needed. The overlapping kinesphere, grazing and connection sections were more intriguing, I felt as though I was making connections with people and acknowledging them around me, however this may not have been as easily perceived by the audience. I felt, due to the nature of the score, it was very relaxed and therapeutic, I didn’t actually want it to end.

This week I sense as though I felt more in tune with my body and really honed in on myself. However, also at the same time I believe that I am becoming more aware of others in the space, I may not have got to the stage of making clear connections yet, without thickskinning or interpreting their movementxs but over time I think that will become more apparent, as similarly to Halprin’s The Vortex, you have become more aware of yourself to become more aware of others around you in the space.

Worth, L. and Poynor, H. (2004) Anna Halprin (Routledge Performance Practitioners). London: Routledge.

This week was focused on the use of Thomas Lehman’s functions within a score. The beginning warm up allowed me to settle back in to improvisation despite having two weeks off and I actually found myself enjoying it. Working with Indre at the start, I found I was not thinking about the movement at all, I wasn’t using habitual movement and together we found interesting positions and combinations. This felt like a real step forward, I was not afraid to give the impulses and was keen to use other body parts, rather than just the hands or feet, such as my head, hip or knee. The only time I remember being afraid was when instructed to wrestle with one another as I didn’t want to just throw Indre to the floor and push her around.

When it came to the group ensemble, using Lehman’s functions of:

1. Material
2. Interpreter
3. Manipulator
4. Observer
5. Mediator

I was aware of Lehman’s intentions, that Funktionen “demontrates and reflects the processes of communication on stage while it presents itself to the audience” (Husemann, 2005, 32), and so tried to maintain this idea. However, I found myself reluctant to enter the space, mostly because I didn’t fully understand the score, but also because I felt like by going in the space, I would ruin what was already being explored. Then when the piece ended I regretted my hesitations and wanted to try again. When watching the other half of the group, it was interesting to see how different their improvisation was to ours, they seemed to challenge each other a lot more, even fight over one another. With regards to the specific functions, I found it hard to interpret the material as I was worried that I would interpret it wrong, and you have to be more aware incase your material disappears and you have to switch to something else.

In the jam this week, we were given the chance to play with Lehman’s score again. This time I was determined to not be labelled as a “wing hogger” and so I entered the space as soon as I recognised the score needed something, for instance if there were several different materials and interpreters, I entered as the manipulator to throw them off guard and challenge them. The role I avoided the most was the observer, as I didn’t just want to stand in the space getting in the way.

I found it useful and interesting using the idea of Bill T. Jones in his production of Still/Here and encouraging the terminally-ill people to draw a map of their lives on paper and then show their journey within the space. I enjoyed the fact this provided us with our own material that we could explore and develop it however you wanted, it allowed me to explore the whole space more, rather than remaining in a certain space for a long period of time. 

In terms of my actual movement, I discovered how my movement vocabulary has changed, I seemed to have lost the instinct to include my arms, and I focus more on my legs, fortunately I realised this half way through the jam and made it another intention to use my body as a whole unless working with specific body parts as a limitation. When interpreting the material, I again found this difficult and perhaps slightly intimidating, this time it was because it wasn’t just improvised movement I was interpreting, it was someones life story, which may contain delicate subject matter and so I was careful when interpreting.

With regards to timing, I still seem to be surprised with how quickly time passes when improvising. For instance in the jam session, I started on stage and didn’t exit the space for what I knew was a considerable amount of time, I just didn’t know exactly how long. And so when I did exit and the chime went off signalling 10 minutes left, I realised I had actually been improvising for 20-30 minutes! I’m not sure whether this is because I’m forgetting to track, or whether I’m doing the right thing and completely losing myself in the improvisation. I suppose unless I haven’t been asked to track time specifically, there is no need to, so I am allowed to just lose myself.

Overall, I began to enjoy this particular score and the idea of having actual roles in the space rather than just being there. I liked the prospect of perhaps engaging with the audience more by broadening the means of communication and in turn, widening their understanding. And next week I will continue to push myself by entering the space and not hesitating, trying to let the movement flow.

BillMoyers.com (2012) Bill T. Jones: Still/Here with Bill Moyers.  [Online Video] Available from https://vimeo.com/33288787 [Accessed March 9 2015].

Husemann, P. (2005) The Functioning of Thomas Lehman’s Funktionen. Dance Theatre Journal. 21(1)31-35.