improvisation

“You are not an object in space. You are part of the space” (Halprin in De Spain, 2014, 109). This quote stands out to me because it makes me remember that you should use all of the space around you, as you are the one wanting to be seen and you shouldn’t have to stay in the background. The space is yours, use it.

 

This week made me realise, I am more attracted to quiet spaces, which I find are usually in the corners around the edge of the room. During the first exercise, we had to focus on our hearing and when we heard a sound we had to move around the room accordingly. I found this task quite difficult because I wasn’t sure if I was moving because I heard an actual sound or just because other people moved. I also found interesting, the fact that different people had similar intentions to each other, for example when I intended to move to a space, another person may have had the same idea, meaning my intentions would have had to change.

 

This next exercise seemed so simple, but who would have thought it would be so difficult to guess when two minutes had gone by? I found it very interesting that when I was sitting down, time seemed to creep by, but whilst I was walking around the room, time flew past; reminding me of something I have previously read – “Time slips through our fingers” (Buckwalter, 2010, 60) which I can definitely relate to.

 

The next task we did, made me realise a few of my own bad habits. Such as for some reason when improvising, I always seemed to stick to the same pattern. The beginning and end section of my improvisation was always longer and slower than my middle section. I think that the reason for this is because I always feel more comfortable starting off slow as this gives me time to settle into my movements, once I feel confident with the pace I am doing, I can then move onto the middle or the ‘climax’ as some might say, ending with slower movements which allows me to bring my improvisation to a graceful finish. Whereas in the future, I need to play around with my movements more in order to make them more interesting.

 

In the final exercise, the first score was structured making it seem far too organised, which made it quite dull to watch. However in the second score the dancers had more freedom, this made it a lot more enjoyable from an observer’s point of view because it was clear that people took more risks. This in my opinion was even funnier to watch because you could see the panic on people’s faces as a person entered another’s space, meaning the other dancer had to decide straight away to leave the space. For this, it needed quick thinking which I think contributed to the overall flow of the score, as the movements looked a lot more natural for the dancers. This contributed to my overall enjoyment of observing this final exercise.

 

Buckwalter, M. (2010) composing while dancing AN IMPROVISER’S COMPANION. USA: University Wisconsin Press, pages 60-90.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press, pages 109-113

“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.

After attending my first lesson of improvisation last week, I walked in today feeling fairly confident and enthusiastic to learn some new improvisation techniques.

 

This week the lesson started with a slow improvisation exercise, this allowed me to warm up my body. I enjoyed this as it enabled me to move in any way I wanted, which I feel helped my body to relax and become loose. This then developed into different stages. The first stage involved increasing the speed of the movements we were doing. This went on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the fastest you could move. I found the stage challenging because as the speed increased it made me panic because I couldn’t relax my body and let it move how it needed to in the short amount of time we had, so this led me to do more habitual moves which I then repeated throughout.

 

Think, Imagine, Move was the next stage. Obviously, this involved thinking of a move, imagining it and then moving your body into this position. This was a slower exercise which I found easier, as I had time to think about what new positions I could use. However after a while it was difficult to think of where I could move my body to next without repeating moves I had already done. Although, this makes me reflect back to something that Ruth Zaporah says “Everything is a movement even if it doesn’t feel like it” (De Spain 2014 p46). This comforts me in a way because I now understand that it wasn’t important where I moved my body to, as long as it moved somewhere.

 

Luckily as we progressed into the next stage which involved increasing the speed, I felt it was a lot easier, as I didn’t have chance to think about where my body was moving to, so this allowed me to go with the flow of my body and move to wherever it took me.

 

Towards the end of the lesson, we moved on to a tracking exercise which involved partner work. As Zaporah suggests that “Tracking involves mental activity however that means that you are not in the improvisation” (De Spain 2014 p46) I bared in mind the fact that tracking involves reflecting back on movements you may had already done as it “tracks the story of improvisation” (De Spain 2014 p46). During this exercise one person had to be the ‘Director’ and the other was the ‘Dancer’. The exercise progressed in stages as follows:

Stage one:

• Dancer improvised movements in a given amount of time, speaking words which related to the moves they were doing.
• The partner wrote down words they heard and movements they saw.

Stage two:

• The partner spoke the words they had wrote down in the format of a story.
• Reflecting back to stage one, the dancer improvised with the words being spoken.

Stage three:

• Progressed into a duet.
• Both dancing.
• Both spoke words they could remember from previous stages.
• Both had to improvise with them.

I found that the hardest part of the exercise for me was the duet, purely because I couldn’t predict what my partner was going to do or say next, which I found very challenging. However, as a whole the exercise really benefited me in order for me to experience tracking, because as a dancer, it is important that you have the skills in order to track and reflect back on previous movements, also to gain more spacial awareness in order to use the full space in a performance.

 

This week was also our first ‘jam’ session. I was feeling quite nervous for this as I was afraid that we would have to improvise movements for the full hour and that my body would run out of new things to do. However, surprisingly I really enjoyed the session.

 

As it was our first ever jam, our aim for the lesson was to create a score. For this the studio was set into three imaginary corridors, which we had to enter three times during a certain time point in the score. This exercise involved a lot of tracking, as we had to remember a movement sequence and then change which body part was moving each time. Sounds confusing yet it made sense at the time!

 

After taking part in my first jam I am feeling very optimistic for the next.

 

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press, pages 45-52.

 

Buckwalter, M. (2010) composing while dancing AN IMPROVISER’S COMPANION. USA: University Wisconsin Press, pages 34-59.

Buckwalter, M. (2010) composing while dancing AN IMPROVISER’S COMPANION. USA: University Wisconsin Press, pages 60-90.

Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An improviser’s companion. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pages. 90-105

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press, pages 45-52.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press, pages 68-72.

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press, pages 109-113

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press, pages 114-119

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. USA: Oxford University Press, pages 167-172

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

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

Ribeiro, Monica m.; Fonseca, Agar. Research in Dance Education, Jul2011, Vol. 12 Issue 2, p71-85

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

Prior to the lesson I was feeling quite nervous, as I haven’t experienced a lot of improvisation before and this is not something that has ever appealed to me, so I didn’t think I would enjoy it. Previous to looking at the reading set for this week, which was called ‘Dear Practice…:The experience of improvising’ (Midgelou, 2012), I thought improvisation would be where you get thrown on the spot and have to create a dance, which scared me a little to say the least! However, I found this article very interesting as it highlighted and broke down someone’s personal concerns about improv’, which reassured me that most dancers go through the same worries that I do. During this article the dancer writes to the practice “I dance without a plan – without a predetermined direction – without any known end.” (Midgelou, 2012 p10) This statement helped me a lot, as in a way the author is summing up improvisation, so this gave me an idea of what to expect which reassured me.

 

Our class involved getting into partners and throwing and catching a bean bag between two people, whilst running around trying to get into space. Numerous rules were added to this which I found made it more interesting. For example:

Rule one – If you heard a bean bag fall on the floor, then you had to drop to the floor, get back up and then continue playing.

Rule two – Once you had thrown the bean bag you had to freeze until you caught it again.

Rule three – Whilst the bean bag was in the air you had to make a sound until your partner had caught it.

 

We then had to get ourselves into groups and create a score, which had to then be performed in front of the whole class. The rules fixed in our score were…

• We started off with two people on stage throwing the bean bag using rule three.
• The rest of us then joined them onstage throwing the bean bags to our partners. However, we didn’t use sounds.
• If one of you dropped your bean bag, both you and your partner had to jump up and then freeze until someone else dropped theirs.
• Whenever the two people making the sounds said the word “shh” this meant that everyone had to drop to the floor, including the people frozen. The score carried on when the next word was said.
• If the two people making the sounds drop their bean bag after the word “shh” was said, then this meant we all had to get up and switch partners.

 

Overall I think our score worked really well once we all understood the rules. However, as the whole thing was improvised, as none of us knew when someone would drop their bean bag or when the word “shh” was going to be said, or even know what partners we were going to switch to, this made it extremely difficult to rehearse and perform as we didn’t know what the outcome would be. I would say that our score was infinite as we didn’t create an ending beforehand, so the score could have lasted forever. However, during our performance we realised we needed to end it somehow, so in order to do this we trusted the people making the sounds to create an ending we would all understand as they were the ones shaping the score.

 

Towards the end of this lesson I found myself feeling highly confident with the thought of improvisation, as this lesson intrigued me as I never thought throwing a bean bag around could be seen as improvisation.

 

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