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.

 

 

 

This reading thing that what said was “Everything has a form” this quote stood out to me straight away and got me thinking about it straight away. For me when choreographing I just choreography lots of different phrases and then eventually the form happens and the work then just fits in together so for me there is some sort of form when choreographing, when improvising it’s a lot harder the form is thee because movements lead into one another and should just come natural as to what to do next whether it’s to go down into the floor or stay up and travel. This particular quote stood out so much as well as the part where she talks about “chaos” improvisation is very chaotic personally I think but like I said earlier finding a form and letting each movement glide in to each other you find what she calls a “pathway” in the middle of it which is the form. All though chaos is very frantic and can see to be very chaotic there it is a type of form because you find that pathway and allow the form to come together as the improvising carries on. From this first quote I found out and reflecting on my own improvising’s that I use this form and improvising came to be very clear that not always everything is set out in a line there can we twist and turns but still have some sort of form.

 

 

This was a lot about space and time, I didn’t realise that space was such an important part of improvisation I learnt that it’s not just a place you can dance in you can use this with improvisation and that everything around you, you can use this to include with in dance and how you can see it to guide and help movement quality and also us it to  help no to your habitual moments.

The space is so important I found out we should admire where we are dancing and how we are using the space , the walls and how we can use these, and also specially each other and how using each other in the space to create contact improvisation this was very much about our own bodies and the exploration of our bodies with in the space. For example we did an exercise  were we were told to go into the space and use this space floors and each other and just improvise.