WEEK 7
Starting off the lesson with walking helps me check in with my body and flag up any areas of tightness and discomfort. It helps to warm up my feet and helps me to think about my spatial awareness and cover all the space in the studio that I would not usually normally cover. Adding little focus points and holding focus with others helps me to practice switching focus to and from the task and my inner-body focus. Collectively starting and stopping is great for me as I really think about checking in with the other dancers and think about working as a team.
Clumping together covering a small space as a group was interesting, as I don’t think we have all been in a small space with a small connective force. Opening and closing the bodies as people walked through was difficult as you could never see where the body was coming form. It was as though the people in the middle was an orange and we had to peel around the person moving through the space, closing the gap as soon as possible to keep that small space element.
Crossing the room in two groups was difficult to keep in time with each other and stay in line, as everyone had their own version of 20 and 10 seconds. The idea was to merge between each other and cross neatly. I wanted to tell people and take the lead however we wasn’t allowed to make conversation or discuss beforehand.
The next task I found very exposing and uncomfortable to start. In turn using our low, middle and high kinesphere to create movement to travel across the space. Often I wanted to resort to habitual movement, however I took small pauses to really think about new movement and originating my movement from new places to open up the range of movement possibilities. I preferred the low kinesphere as I used the floor as a tool to help with movement and felt all my body using the floor. High and middle kinesphere movement was harder for me because even though I was thinking of new movement, I felt as though I had done that movement before, so I was overthinking instead of just moving. We focused on stillness, slow motion, burst of energy and combining them with all 3 kinesphere levels. Moving slowly was easier as I could track the movement and develop each movement as we went along. Paying attention to detail was the hardest as I wasn’t too sure on what we had to do. I wasn’t sure if it was making my movement more clear or adding detail to my extremities such as fingers and feet, I resorted in going slowly to ensure I was trying to do all aspects. I found this hard and strange, still very exposing.
In groups we spoke about what we thought about improvisation and what our feelings towards it was. In a question or statement, these came up in our group…
“IMPROVISATION COMES AND GOES IN WAVES IN TERMS OF MY CONFIDENCE” – this was my statement. The previous task influenced my statement as I wasn’t feeling very confident with myself or the movement after that. I didn’t think I had done good or shown to others that I was good enough.
“WHT ARE WE ACHIEVING?”
“IS THERE REALLY NO RIGHT OR WRONG?”
R.S.V.P. SCORES
R – Resources at our disposal
S – Sources
V – Valuaction of something that accompanies the process
P – Performance which includes the practical side of the dance and movement
Anna Halprin says “each part had its own internal significance”. (Halprin, p. 112) I kept this mind when deciding some of the rules for our own score. Trying to keep it interesting so that it would meet the time requirement of 8 minutes. It was hard to think ahead and see if it would last 8 minutes and keep people engaged and creating new movement.
Our resources-
A drum- the sounds would change the people going in and out. A maximum of 6 people would be in at a time and can do any movement.
A wooden instrument – this was to signal the people in the centre to choose a body part and keep it on the floor, making the range of movement harder and limited.
A clap – this signalled stillness within the people in the centre, leading them to collectively decide when to start moving again just like our warmups. Sensing the bodies in the space to know when to start moving without having a set leader.
Our source of music was a random song that was on in the background. But it didn’t have an impact on the music.
Overall our score went well, the instructions I think could have had a little more explaining as we had to explain them after every time we signalled a sound. Maybe we had too many sound instructions and not instructions that they controlled, such as eye contact with others to enter or when you see a certain movement then you have to entre with the same movement, or even only using one of the 3 kinesphere, something that makes them think more and them be in control, so we wasn’t just determine the movement. There was a lot of habitual movement however, I think that was because they was unsure and not confident and fully understood the rules and tasks we set.