Month: February 2016

Task 1: Flocking

Following a warm up exercise we were asked to stand in two equal horizontal lines of 12 facing away from each other, we then went into the flocking task from last week; only difference being we were stood in a horizontal line as opposed to a cluster.

It felt to me that the line I was in was stood for ages after the task began before we started moving and I also thought that we weren’t being daring with the movements once we were really into the task. I think this task worked better in a cluster as opposed to a horizontal line because it became easier to mask a leader in the group when we’re clustered together instead of in a line. Standing in a line made using my peripheral vision harder too and I found myself only looking either side of me for the movements instead of further beyond the neighbours either side of me.

As this task was finishing both lines were told to end on the floor facing each other and we followed on into a time task based on Nina Martin’s glacial time theory, which was discussed in one of the readings this week (Buckwalter’s Composing while Dancing). We had to lie on the floor with our head down and stand when we felt that 2 minutes had passed. When I stood up, feeling that I had lay for 2 minutes I found that I was one of the last to stand and when the last had stood we were told she stood at 3 minutes, and I know that I had been stood for less than a minute meaning my timing had been out. During the task I did feel like I was being slow in my decision to stand and I was trying to count the seconds in my head but my speed kept varying because I at first I thought I was counting too quickly then I felt I was counting too slow and was unable to find a balance between the two that I was comfortable with.

This then developed into a movement exercise and we were told to move until we felt that 7 minutes had passed. We were able to move in the space, create different relationships and experiment with levels until we felt it was time to sit. I found that a group of 6 or 7 others and I all felt that 7 minutes were up at around the same time, however, there were others who moved for up to 11 minutes.

These two timing tasks were interesting because, particularly during the second part of the task, you’re not always aware of the time, and as you’re moving and improvising you’re kind of distracting yourself away from thinking about the time so you have to kind of bring yourself back into the time and think about and try to feel how long you’ve been moving for. In a way I find myself agreeing here with what Martin says about glacial timing and where she explains that ‘rhythm marked by cautious dynamics and “creeping” entrances as dancers assess how material is building’ (Buckwalter, 2010, 62).

Nina Martin’s Ensemble Thinking Score

1. 3/2 – ensemble relates through levels, movement, facings and distance.
2. Hot Spot – how can individuals take focus and how does the ensemble give an individual focus.
3. One Idea – how can the ensemble create one simple easily read form?
4. Number Score – how many of the ensemble are in the working space.

Thoughts on “Straddling Trio” by Nina Martin

Throughout this video there are 3 dancers within the space. In the beginning, the 3 soloists show no real relationship between each other and they are even segregated by 3 separate spotlights, one on each dancer. As the piece progressed relationships start to form when duets are made, as well as the use of canon (a soloist would move, then the duet would move or vice versa). I found the whole piece became quite predictable though with the formations and relationships which made it become slightly boring.

Task 2: Working with Martin’s Ensemble Thinking Score

For this task we worked through each of the four points within Martin’s Ensemble Thinking Score adding in a new one every so often. When we were only working based on levels, movements, facings and directions I found when observing that people were working on the levels a lot and that these were constantly changing all the time. There was a trio at one point made of Heidi, Sophie and Wren where they were always on different levels (1 would be lying, 1 kneeling and 1 standing) I joined into this trio at one point and added sitting as a level. This was an interesting group to join with for this task as we always kept each other moving. I also joined a group at one point and followed one person but also developed another person’s onto a different level so I was juggling two different pieces of movement at once.

A trio made of Lauren, Emily and Emily were in the space when Hot Spotting was added and immediately I noticed that Lauren would extend her movements further that Emily and Emily to try and take the focus from them which I think worked really well as it was so subtle at times but it still took my attention. In the middle of this section Emily and Elycia were both sat on the floor facing each other, mirroring each other’s movements and moving very slowly until Emily changed the dynamic and levels by moving quickly to stand behind Elycia, before returning to the same pace as before and developing Elycia’s movements to fit in with her now standing position. As this section was finishing Heidi was stood in a corner and starting doing some really simple steps backwards, rocking between her feet to move. Laura and Elena joined Heidi and followed her movement (same foot, same direction) then Tasha and Hannah joined facing the other direction so they were moving forwards. As this progressed more people joined including Josh, Emily and myself who developed this in a crouch position and just rocked from side to side. It was great to see how people interpreted this idea of focus during this section as everyone did things differently to get themselves seen; whether it was working at a different level to the others they were moving with, or whether it was moving round the space as a soloist, or even extending movements further and making them bigger.

I think One Idea was the hardest point to work with and I think this was hard for many in the group as we all interpret things differently so we all had different ideas of what to do. The first big movement I observed in this section was a group of dancers walking round the space, some moving forwards and some moving backwards, some even changed the levels by travelling on the floor and some were stood, briefly, in stillness.

For the first part of working on point four, Number Score, Kirsty would shout a number of how many people should be moving in the space. Although they didn’t have to work together there had to be that many people moving at once, no more or no less. The numbers in the groups changed between 5, 8, 3 and 12 before the restriction was lifted. By the time the group was at 8 and 3 people were starting to use points of contact by leaning on each other. At one point I was in the space mirroring Josh’s movements when Kirsty started using Josh to lean on. I still copied Josh as his body adapted to the added weight on his body and you could see the difference in the movements as mine seemed softer than his did. After a short break observing I re-joined the group and worked with Wren, I started directly behind her and she lay on the floor and reached her arms up and grabbed my feet, she then began to use my legs to support her and she rolled on the floor before we both came to standing. Towards the end of the task after I had worked with Wren she moved to work Josh, who was lying still on the floor with his knees up. Wren went to use his knees as support as she lifted her leg but Josh lowered his knees. This links back to last week about intention, Wren had the intention of doing something, but that intention had to change when Josh’s positioning changed.

I found this task bought out less habitual movements in people and particularly for myself. I found that I am becoming more confident about experimenting with the movements I’m doing and testing different relationships in the group.

Task 1: Flocking

For the first part of this task we worked together as one big group clustered together facing the same direction. We had to follow as the person at the front of the cluster did until we ended up facing a different direction when the front would change and so would the ‘leader’. We had to remain as in sync with each other as possible and move as one group instead of making it look like we were copying each other. Following this we were split down the middle into two groups and were separated into separate halves of the studio, we then repeated the same task until told to, as a group, find stillness and finish.

During this task I wasn’t on the outer each of either cluster so I never became a ‘leader’ but I found this task challenging because sometimes I struggled to see what the people at the front were doing completely and sometimes I was delayed in making my movements completely correct and matching to theirs and everyone else’s. This also could have caused an issue for people behind me as they may be looking towards me to see details of the movement that they can’t, meaning if I’m delayed in the movement they will also be delayed in the movement.

Task 2:

We worked in pairs for this task and labelled ourselves A and B, A’s were performing in the space while B’s were giving the instruction ‘change’, which was an indication for A to change their movement somehow. After a short while, B’s were then also able to give the instructions ‘develop’ and ‘continue’ which meant A’s had to develop the movement that B’s had just seen until they told us to continue, which meant we could carry on moving freely.

I worked with Josh on this task and I was labelled as A, and he as B. At times I found this challenging because I’m not used to improvising so when Josh told me to change my movement at first I found myself only changing the dynamic of what I was doing. When ‘develop’ and ‘continue’ were added into the instructions I found this slightly more challenging but in a better way because it gave me a chance to look at my movement and play around with ways of changing it. Sometimes I used the develop instruction to use a different body part to do the movement or I made the movement bigger/smaller. This then gave me ideas on what to do if Josh instructed me to change my movement because I realised I was able to change body part as well as dynamic, so later when he instructed me to change when I was doing some footwork I tried to do similar movements except leading with my hands, instead of feet.

As a whole class we then split into groups, A’s and B’s and Kirsty was the one instructing us while the other group observed. When we were doing our movement Kirsty was more adventurous with her instructions than our partners were and sometimes she told us to lead with a certain body part, or give us a restriction on a body part. For A’s, we were given the instruction to ‘develop while leading with our head’ and then asked to change the tempo. We were also given a restriction of no arms and had to keep them clasped together. Following this we swapped round, so we were able to observe how B’s handled the task.

I found doing this task really interesting as it gave us the challenge of thinking differently to how we usually would, for example – what if we couldn’t use this body part for a certain section or if were restricted to having a particular body part, that wasn’t our feet, touching the floor. I found myself moving further away from habitual movements in this task because of the thought process I found myself going through when we were given an instruction. Overall, I felt really positive after this task because I felt myself starting to develop within improvisation and moving away from habitual movements that I was used to using.

Task 3: I enjoyed observing this final task because it was great to pick out on how everyone handled the different instructions and requirements. During stage 1 there was a moment when Laura entered the space where Heidi, Lauren and Charlotte were already performing and between them they played with different relationships. Laura created a duet with Heidi when she first entered the space before choosing to begin a solo, meaning there was 4 solo performances occurring at once. Laura then re-joined Heidi to create a duet again before Lauren joined in. Charlotte exited the space not long before this and shortly after the trio was created Josh entered the space to create a quartet when he began to follow the three already in the space. As well as this quartet going on there was solo performances also within the space too which should a good contrast.

Stage 4 was the most interesting to watch of all the stages because the whole space could be used for this stage whereas up until this point the space had been split and only certain areas had been allowed to be used. Stillness was used well in this stage and the change of relationships throughout was really fun to watch. By the end of the stage everyone had been in the space all together at once and there was a number of different trios and duets all occurring at the same time. While observing this particular stage I found that some people would enter the space to join a soloist, duet or trio and then use what they were doing as a starting point to go off on their own a short while after and started using their own movement. A point that stood out for me in this was when everyone was in the space and performing on the floor and Wren was the only person stood, moving in the space at a higher level than everyone else. This progressed into a duet when Josh also stood and joined her moving with the space. I thought that a trio created between Kirsty, Charlotte and Emily was really effective because throughout Kirsty and Emily were doing the same movements while Charlotte’s movements complimented what they were doing. People also became more experimental in this stage which was great as they were willing to try more things.

In this task I noticed people using their habitual movements less and less and they were becoming more experimental with their way of moving as well as the relationships they were creating throughout and people seemed less afraid to try and play with the situations around them.

I found all 3 of today’s tasks enlightening and informative about improvisation

Task 1: Lying on the floor with our eyes closed and we have to feel where the weight in different parts of our body was in contact with the floor. In this task I found that my body felt heavier on one side at times more than it did on the other, particularly in my feet and arms. However, when we progressed further with the task and had to roll over into a number of different positions I found my body felt very heavy compared to usual and found at first that I was struggling to move. I found the last part of this task interesting, when we worked with a partner and had to use our peripheral vision to synchronise our movements and move together. When we first began I found I needed to start with smaller movements to help engage my body slightly as I was feeling drowsy after the first part of the task. I allowed my body time to replace itself in the room and once I did Emily and I found ourselves quite in sync throughout most of the task and found we were able to work together with ease and fluidity. After moving we’d return to the centre and do some deep breathing to allow our bodies time to track where we had just been and where we wanted to go next. As we got more comfortable with the task we started to take more risks with the movements we were doing and found ourselves moving further and further away from our original placement and eventually felt comfortable enough to stand up and try the task standing.

Task 2: Stand still in a space, think of a movement we wanted to perform, allow our body to track it so we know where it is starting and allow this body part to start the movement. At first I found it easy to start my movements with different body parts, internal and external, but the longer we kept going I found it harder to be inventive with where my movements were coming from so felt myself taking longer to begin a movement or that my movements were close to repeating each other. We then split into pairs and repeated the task and received feedback from our partners. I worked with Elena for this section and her feedback was that a lot of my movements started in the arms and legs, everything seemed completely improvised, unplanned and unique. I was also told that my pauses after each movement seemed to be placed in good movements and that my movements didn’t look like they just stopped in a random place and that nothing in what Elena saw was repeated. When I then watched Elena back I noticed that a lot of the movements done are coming from external parts of the body, and using my peripheral to see others in the group I noticed this was the same for a lot of people. So if I was to repeat this task I would think about starting the movements from a more internal place such as my stomach or chest and not just my arms, legs, feet or head.

Task 3: I found the improv jam at the end of the class was such a good way to learn as it put you right on the spot. We started with two people in the centre of a circle dancing, and when someone on the outside of the circle felt confident enough to join in they would tap one of the current dancers on the shoulder and replace them in the circle until they were replaced with another. During this I found myself becoming conscious of the music that was playing in the background because I wanted to make my movements work to some music I felt comfortable moving too. This is a habitual component that I hope I can move away from and become more comfortable performing to more upbeat tracks. Once everyone had been in the circle at least once another person joined in the circle and we were told to join in and follow one of the dancers in the circle. I liked this task because it was a way to see other people’s habitual movements and maybe pick up and play with different style that we’re not necessarily comfortable with on a usual basis. I felt that because of how on the spot I was during this task that my movements probably repeated a lot and that I was rushing what I was doing and not really thinking about what I was doing or going to do next. I was able to pick up on this because ‘tracking is also a process of memory’ (Spain, 2014, 47)

 

Bibliography:

Spain, Kent De. (2014) Landscapes of the Now. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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