1. Through out the module we did lots of different tasks including RSVP, opening and closing scores and many more, these tasks where all made by professional practitioners that we read in our readings and then in the classes would try out our self. All of these task helped cut out a lot of out habitual movements when improvising and also opened a whole new vocabulary of movement to us. For example pedestrianized movements and playing around with just day to day movements like walking and siting down and how you could have fun with that than just typically  doing ” dance movements” and how these movement types looked against each other.. These were all activities on how we could create relationships and becoming more comfortable dancing with each other and as a group as well.

 

2. Idefinitely feel like through the module  I have gained different ways of starting when it comes to improvisiation and jamming, normally in the first few lessons I would enter the space and dance straight away mostly on my own but thought the 10 weeks of improvisation I’ve learnt how that you can walk around the space get a feel of what the space vibe is then start whether it was starting alone and creating material that way or if it was t find somebody and create relationships and group and partner work between each other. I also gained that throughout the module that improvising can start whilst your out of the space and you can enter whilst moving straight away or even enter bringing another person into the space also. Starting and investigating different ways allowed me to explore different movements to allow me to perform these starting point its allowed my movement vocabulary to expand.

 

3. My movement vocabularywhen it comes to working with other people has expanded greatly through out this module. Is really allowed me to look at groups and ensembles and allowed me to think where I could fit into the groups how I could expand and carrying on movement that was already being created in the space or even how I could go into that ensemble and disturb the group how could I disturb the group so its no longer a group performing improvisation together and was solos again. My awareness in the space itself has become I feel a is strong point for me because although we are all either performing or copying or making movement bigger or smaller and so on you have to be aware of everybody in the space because its improvisation your not to know what sombody is going to do beside you or around you so have to have the awareness of where people are,  for example somebody walking backwards and they where about to knock into somebody just guiding them or turning them into s different different makes everyone and the space more save and everyone more aware.

 

4. At the beginning of the module I felt like I had a basic understanding of compositional understandingbut then I feel like through the module I gained more experience with this when jamming in bothlessons with Kayla on a Monday and with Kirsty on a Thursday, I feel like working with other people and creating relationships through improvisation has helped a lot to expand my compositional understanding skills.

 

5. Throughout my years at university and going onto further education I will take on the skills I have learnedin this module into further practicesI do for example in second year this will come handy when we go into contact improvisation and when eventually you finish you career and go into auditions and they ask you to improvise you will have the knowledge and understanding of how to improvise. So therefore I  will take everything I’ve learned in the last 10 weeks into my further career and further modules.

 

So this week was the last week before our improv assessment.

This week we created our own scores again, we had a lesson very similar to the lesson last week, we created scores, open and closed them and even danced with music again. We also did something called the lucky dip where we had different colored cards and we would pick one card from the different card to create the scores for people to dance too.(sound, duration, how many people, where the audience was situated)

This task I found was really helpful it allowed you to go into the space for the duration of time but create something that had an ending as well knowing that you had a specific time limit to improvise in. We also had a task of putting music on and trying to dance opposite the music this is something that lets allows you to cut out the habitual movements as dancing against the music isn’t typically what you would do.

On the other hand in the improv jam was a full lesson of a jam, entering and exiting the space with lots of different music and on Thursday the use of relationships and using each other in the space was a big concept of this jam.

This session we FINALLY HAD MUSIC!!!!

I can’t stress how much that made the session so much better for me because for me music is very important for dance and the impact that it has on the session, my movement and the different movement and energy that I gave out.

My main focuses for this blog is going to be the beginning of the session which was where the space was ours to warm our body’s up we could use the space how we wanted and then eventually went into opening and closing the scores.

We had an open score allowing the body to do whatever was natural but trying to cut out the habitual movement but then also closing the score have limitation with in the improvisation.

Because of closing the score this allowed me to create different movement to try  around the closed score that our lecturer  told us through the practice. This allowed habitual movement to be limited. For this exercise the music had a huge influence on it as we hadn’t danced with music before in in provision classes and it made the atmosphere so much more happier and also because I enjoyed the music it made me want to go into the space and dance more, it also influence some of my movements as well allowing my body to do movement I had never done before.

About 4 times we had a “dying space” for me this allowed everyone to regenerate and allow it to have a fresh start meaning new movements could be brought in and that I came in with a fresh start for example.Throughout the session we had to create our own score and then perform another groups. This I found was really hard to write one, when it came to performing one it was pretty easy for me as my dance ability is better than my written ability so I enjoy this it was just hard trying to understand the movement what someone else was thinking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reading for this week were all about how improvisors develop the scores and what the scores were, there were 5 different ones

1.Material
Creates movement

2. Interpret
Interprets anybody in the space

3.Manipulator
Manipulates anybody in the space

4.Observer
Observes what’s happening in the space

5.Meditator
Ask questions to make the movement more clear to the audience

Later on in the week we had an improv jam with a different lecturer this was a very interesting and a very understanding lesson about improvisation, we did different tasks of how to move along the space, whether it would be on the floor, getting up and going back down or finding a way from the floor to eventually movement off the ground. This was really understanding and allowed me to explore different ways and methods of moving along the space. We then added dynamic quality and found out that creating sharp straight lines in the body whilst moving along the space was very difficult and felt abnormal to a more free flowing softer movement to move with. We was then told to get into pairs and label our self A and B and the B would have to copy all of A’s movements, this was a very hard task but was very helpful as it allowed us to think and move like different people broadening our movement quality and ability and for the B dancer to no be doing their habitual movements. These exercises were so helpful for improvisation in its self and its helped widen my vocabulary of movements and helped me stop some habitual movements which is good because improvisation is all about allowing the body to do what it does without using our habitual movements.

Week six was all about Lisa Nelsons score which was a part of our reading for this week as well.

Play, Pause, Rewind, Replace, Resituate and End
(This was all controlled by the audience and we used the rule of only 7 dancers were allowed in the space at one time)

Lisa Nelsons score is all about trying to cut out your habitual movements and having a form of instructions and something to reflect off whilst improvising.

• What we had to do was firstly go into the space eyes closed and hold a static position which could be anything.
• The second stage was for a second person to come in and hold a position to finish off the image. (either being next to them or away)
• The third stage was then to create movement and the same time and then to come to a natural stop when the other stopped but still with the eyes closed so you would have to feel the connection with the partner and listen out for movement.
• The fourth was to then after the movement stopped to carry on the movement with the partner in relationship with them which was when the audience got involved and would say either pause, play, rewind, repeat or stop.

This was really good when you wasn’t dancing because even though you wasn’t movement based involved you was still a part of the movement as you had some sort of control over what they did next, this was a great way for us to stop habitual movements like I said.

• After this we did it one more time but did everything twice so at the beginning there ended up with two duets and then eventually two groups of dances going on at the same time but no more than 7 dancers in the space at once, whilst this was happening the audience was still involved in the improvisation but the audience could say resituate where then they could see the improvising from a different angle in the space or even from the center space.

This exercise was by far my favorite so far in improvisation and the most enjoyable especially when you was the audience and wasn’t dancing you was still involved in some way which I really like. This exercise also helped me cut out habitual movement and explore  in different way of doing movement especially when it came to rewind and how I would do the movement backwards.