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.