“Form is always present – it’s just a matter of perceiving it from inside the dancing” (Campbell in Buckwalter, 2010, 49).
This week’s focus was on Form, Attention and Intention. The readings I read prior to the lesson helped me to gain understanding in these areas. I found that many practitioners disagree with the use of intentionality in improvisation, as Deborah Hay says “There’s no time for intention, only time for what’s happening now” (Hay in De Spain, 2010, 70). Whereas for example, Barbara Dilley believes that there are different levels of intention “There’s the personal journey intention of each individual dancer/mover/being, and there’s the intention of the teacher/director” (Dilley in De Spain, 2010, 71). In this instance I agree with both ideas about intention, as I feel that if you are improvising then you shouldn’t intend to move your body in a certain way, you should feel the body and let it take you on a journey. However, I also agree with Dilley as each different role has different intentions, like Dilley stated; the director or teacher will most likely have a different intention to the dancer.
My favourite part of the class was when we had to continue, develop then change our improvisation. This started off in solos, which I felt was easier because I found myself using more habitual moves, as we had as much time as we wanted to develop and change the moves. The next stage of this exercise led to a partner analysing the decisions I chose and then feeding back to us what they saw. The feedback I received showed me that I found it easier to develop a move, rather than change it completely. This meant that the final stage was a huge struggle for me, as this time we had to improvise, then our partner could shout ‘Change’ whenever they felt was necessary. This meant, we then had to completely change the move. I found this hard because it was difficult to think of a completely different move on the spot, this led me to use simpler more playful and pedestrian moves, for example: skipping, walking and using gestures. This task reminded me of something Steve Paxton implies; he relates improvisation to sport, saying that it has set rules but you don’t know how it will play out. This relates to me, as at the start of the task, I didn’t know exactly how it was going to end, I only knew what was being asked of me.
Towards the end of the lesson I observed an improvisation, which we then made into a score in this week’s jam. During this myself as the observer had to pay close attention to what was happening. As well as myself as a dancer, I also had to pay attention to what was going on, so that I could form an idea of when to join in. Basically, one dancer would start an improvisation and then another person could join in forming a duet and so on. Then any dancer could join in or leave at any time they felt was acceptable. Watching this task, at first it was hard to tell who was doing what, as each different dancer had different intentions. However, once the dancers became familiar with the task set, I felt it was a lot clearer from the audience’s perspective to see what was going on. This made me ponder over something De Spain said, if each dancer has their own intentions and something doesn’t go the way you intended it to, “do you ignore what happened and go on with what you were doing?” or “do you try again until you succeed?” (De Spain, 2014, 69). Whilst dancing in the score, I found that it was a lot of fun because you could enter and leave whenever you wanted. Also I enjoyed the fact that you had to pay close attention to what was going on, so that you could try to predict someone’s intention of what they would do next in order for you to join in. If someone’s intention changed before you got there, then I found that the easiest thing to do was to completely change your own intention as well. This task involved a lot of focus and attention, and as Ruth Zaporah says “A lot of the practice is to pay attention. Bring yourself back. Pay attention. You find yourself going away. Pay attention” (Zaporah in De Spain, 2014, 170).
De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press, pages 68-72 and 167-172.
Buckwalter, M. (2010) composing while dancing AN IMPROVISER’S COMPANION. USA: University Wisconsin Press, pages 34-59.