WEEK 8
This week we started class differently, I find checking in with our bodies helpful as this class is strenuous and requires my body being in top form. Scanning my body really does highlight all the parts that feel uncomfortable and then in my own time to do what I need to, to fix that tightness. When we focus on breathing I really feel it fill my body and expand my ribcage and then breathing out, really pushes my body making it heavier into the floor. The rocking motion side to side helped loosen my lower back after being laid there a while, I felt grounded into the floor.
INNER RHYTHM
Controlling our movement was a nice stretch for me, the combination between crunching into foetal position and stretching going into the other side really worked my abdominals. As the pace quickened I quickly remembered that dance, no matter how simple the step, would always be challenging. I felt the endurance of the stretch tighten every time but it was a nice pain that I experienced. I counted my timing and tried to keep it throughout whilst executing the movement fully.
We developed this further into the child’s pose and downward dog. This was a great way to do an all body stretch. Finding fluidity between these two positions and exploring these two positions was fun but also hard as I was thinking of being fluid and having internal movement. Keeping the fluidity, we needed to move around the room using all of our bodies. Certain restrictions were hard for example, move without using your legs and no arms. It made me think more personally and think about taking these things for granted and I found it really hard to move fluidly and with control. I felt limited to my movement and resorted to using my lower kinesphere more that getting up and down as I didn’t have the support from my arms or legs in either cases.
We walked around the space which gave me time to relax my body again and check in with myself again. We combined stillness, fixed positions and added short phrases of our own movement within walking to change up the dynamic. I found it easy to change up my movement and followed everyone to stay in sync with everyone too. I always try and cover the space in the studio which people don’t necessarily use, such as the part near the mirrors. I enjoy working in those areas of the studio and enjoy trying new combinations of sequences both controlled and not controlled.
This week’s most important chapter from the reading.
A particular paragraph in this week’s reading really stood out for me and related to me, this section was called ‘Critical Training in the Improvisation Class.’ (Lavender, 2001, 204) Lavender talks about “The improvisational prompt.” (Lavender, 2001, 204), this relates to myself as it talks about the different rules and prompts given to the students to help their creative and critical process, and how the students must spend a lot of time ‘engaging’ to progress more. It also says the prompts may be “exploratory” such as changing the speed or direction or run or walk and adding things in, or “compositional” such as structure, form, deleting, repeating and manipulate, and that we as students need to understand the difference. All of the individual ideas hopefully stimulate everyone in the class and inspire them. (Lavender, 2001, 205). This relates to out practice as I always watch others and feel inspired, but the planned and the spontaneous coincidences. Often in our jams, I will watch others and the combinations that arise are truly mesmerising and definitely inspiring for me. The prompts we get in class help me to think differently and make decisions that could dynamically change the whole piece or that particular section. I enjoy the continuous change in the prompts and cues that determine what I do in the jams or in phrases. I look at movement and treat movement differently every week, and I am always inspired by my class mates to do more.
Nancy Stark-Smith, The Underscore.
These are all of the symbols in the underscore in which we had to choose form. Our group wanted to chose a wide variety of symbols to test the habitual movement.
SCORE
-8 minutes.
-following the R.S.V.P. rules from last week.
-also using the symbols from Nancy Stark-Smith, The Underscore.
Our score
– All start in the space
– Start with 1 minute of stillness, but this will be self-taught time
– After the dancers thought one minute was up, they move on the spot in their own kinesphere
– At 2 minutes, they use the ‘expanding and travelling’ tool from the underscore for 2 minutes
– At 4 minutes the dancer picks someone to ‘contrast’ to, for example in the levels, the dynamic or the direction of their movement for 2 minutes
– At 6 minutes the dancers use the ‘touch and connections’ tool for 2 minutes, this could be contact and non-contact
– We time it form the start and prompt each rule throughout, when 8 minutes is up we tell the dancers to come to an ending position without just stopping and that will be the score finished
Some things I noticed was some intentional synchronisation when in the ‘touch and connections’ section, lots of level contrasting and a contrast in the speed. The self-taught time was executed to 1 minute exactly and the rest of the class went up to 1 minute and 12 seconds, so the timing there was really good to start the score off. The purpose of our score was to test habitual movement, to see when it occurred the most and when people strayed away from it. Our question and answer session at the end was great for the feedback as we see things differently to how it will feel to the dancers performing it.
Q1- How was it starting the score with the self-taught time?
– There was more focus and got into the zone more
– They could think about the next step in the score and plan ahead
– Some people focused on the time more rather than movement
– Keeping the eyes closed after the self-taught time for a little while longer kept the participants more relaxed
Q2- How did you find your habitual movement? When was it more or less present?
– The traveling sequence was more habitual for some people
– Whereas the contact was more habitual as everyone played it safe and didn’t want o make it contact improvisation
– It was easy to predict what the others was going to do, so as a whole class the habitual thoughts
– People tended to stay low for most of the movement as they felt more comfortable in the lower kinesphere
Q3- How did you find the instructions in that they varied rather than being all very similar?
– It was good to change up the instructions rather than having the same ones or similar ones to usual
– The second instruction to stick to your kinesphere, most people found that restricting (which shocked me as I thought they would feel more comfortable being in their own space)
Q4- Any other good and bad comments about the score?
– The found the own kinesphere the hardest section
– The contact and connections section the most comfortable
Overall, I enjoyed this session in creating the score using the underscore and Lavenders reading to inspire my starting points and how my movement developed. The feedback from the score was amazing and helpful to know the though process of people performing your score.
Bibliography:
Lavender, L. (2001) From Improvisation to choreography: the critical bridge. Research in dance education, 195-209.