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.