Month: April 2016

“We believe that students learn to become choreographers through the development of artificial consciousness; the ability to describe, analyse, interpret, evaluate and imagine/implement revisions to their own and others’ dances.”( Lavender, L, 2001, 195)
I am now at the end of my improvisation practice and my views of it have changed, at the beginning I had only a little bit of improvisation practice and I was completely unaware of how much could go into it. For instance, how a score could help you create a phrase, different images to incorporate into my body and so much more. My views on improvisation have changed because it’s made me more aware of my body and all the different possibilities I can use my body for. I believe that imagery has influence me a lot with this change because it’s made me think about ways in which I can move my body, think about what parts I use a lot, what parts can I use when, what parts haven’t I used and what parts are my weakest that I don’t use and what could I experiment with. To continue, improvisation has expanded my choreography because it’s broadened my awareness and has given me more choreography techniques, ways to develop myself further within my stages of choreography.
Furthermore, improvisation has got a lot to do with choreography because it’s always going to be a starting point for it. Without improvisation there would be no choreography we always start from scratch when creating so we are improvising to bring that all together to create something. When you’re improvising you are dancing from within and being internal. When choreographing you are improvising but taking movements that you like and putting them together into a set order. When improvising and choreographing they can be separate because improvising you are just flowing with the movement and the movement is coming out of the body, were as choreographing, yes you improvise but that then becomes set as piece.
Being in the moment means to let out any emotions and any movement within the body, being internal and really feeling the movement. The experience I got from this was a good feeling when I got it right because I found my movement would rise and really flow nicely I wasn’t thinking about where I was going or what I was doing, I was just flowing through it and letting my body create. I think you know when you’ve been there because the movement feels good and you really feel like you are there.
Bibliography
Lavender,L.(2001)From Improvisation to Choreography: the critical bridge. Research in dance education.

During my improvisation this week I found myself trying to figure out my body more as I had a period of time off. In the beginning I found myself laying on the floor relaxing into my body, finding points of tension or where needed some relaxing in order for my body to feel internal and calm during my improvisation. Massaging different points one by one through the floor, curling my body into ball stretching out through the entire body releasing within. Once doing this my body felt very calm as I began walking begin given instructions such as using my kinesphere, head and pelvis, elbow, nose, index finger, left leg on the floor leading with the elbow, no hands or feet these rules helped me begin thinking about my body again, ways in which I could develop abstract movement and get the variation of movement back into my body. Also whilst being in the space walking around there had to be spurts of movement, stillness and structures helping us think about those parts of improvising as well so that we could involve them within the movement material created.

Nancy Stark Score
Nancy Starks score is a piece of framework that continues with developing research within improvisation and it allows a dancer to go “through a series of changing states” which can vary from being internal to allowing gravity to take you within the space. By doing this it allows us to have an in site to these changes, how the body reacts to those changes and how it can be a push into contact improvisation practice. By developing these changes it allows ease, dancing in the space by yourself or with anyone else in the room, initiating the kinesphere and concerns in improvising. I find this score makes you think about, what is an underscore? What is an inner score? How does it help me within improvisation? Whilst looking at the score I found that the concepts and components within it are always changing or developing as new ideas come about, also many more phrases are being added to it as new ideas and movement are developed.
Once looking at this score in groups we used it to create our own idea of a score using some of the symbols that Nancy stark uses to create different stages. Things we had to think about when creating is time felt/actual, dynamics, space, RSVP cycle, Spatial relationships and how may you influence what happening in the space combating habitual? Our score;
1. Split into three groups
2. Attraction and repulsion, one person you are attracted to and one person you are repulsed by, you have to focus around the idea of imagery given
3. Middle and high kinesphere, creating new movement and finding new ways at these points
4. Relationships with bodies, involving a round ball, the ball has to be passed around and it involves an image, connection with the object that is being passed
5. Within the first minuet of each section they have to use internal time and stop for 10 seconds and carry on
6. Must stay in each section for 2 minutes and when they are told move onto the next section
7. Purpose is so they find a connection between time, relationships between each other and objects, challenging habitual movement and connections between the bodies and space
Feedback
1. What did you feel the purpose of the score was?
The response given; To do different things then what you would do normally, not to use body parts that comfortable, think outside the box especially when using the ball, however when using the ball or in certain points of the improvisation it distracted from dancing and would forget to dance.
2. Do you think you challenged habitual movement and breakaway from it?
The response given- At points when thinking about the one minuet, kinesphere thinking and really challenging themselves. In the first corner they found themselves working out of it and really breaking away more from the habitual movement, they found that more interesting and abstract movement was happening.
3. Did you find it difficult to improvise and think about internal time?
The response given – they found they forgot about the minuet as they were so focused on what they were doing and the minuet was lost in every section with each group. They found it hard to figure out and concentrate on the task and minuet.

Bibliography;
Smith, N. Caught Falling the underscore.