The improvisation and reflective practice module has been a real learning curve for me. Initially I was nervous to start the module and often questioned my ability in class, I would get frustrated when I couldn’t think of new movement and often found myself doubting my capability. To tackle this, I began to get myself more involved in improvisation jams, the only way I could improve was to practice and get fully involved in every exercise.

Reflecting back, the module has helped me gain more of an understanding of my own body, I am able to pin point exactly what is habitual and what isn’t and I now have the knowledge to think of ways in combatting this. Learning about different choreographic techniques has really helped me in relation to my practice and developing as a dance artist. For example learning techniques such as retrograde, diminishment, tracking etc has helped me to broaden my knowledge when creating dance and I have learnt how to improvise properly and correctly. These choreographic techniques are ones that I will always refer back to in the future, they are almost like a little choreographic toolbox! Listed in the images below are some other techniques we have learnt throughout the module:

I particularly enjoyed working with imagery and believe that this has helped me a lot with regards to tackling habitual movement. Trying to ‘embody,’ an object and trying to make my body move in a way that it normally wouldn’t was challenging but allowed me to find a new way of moving.

For the first few weeks of the module audience and peer perception worried me. I learnt that improvisation doesn’t have to be about the aesthetic and there is no wrong way of improvising, as long as it is explorative and creative then that’s all that matters, this helped with overcoming my fears of what other people thought; it also helped me explore my movement fully. I would often improvise quite bold and large movements and would find myself stopping for thinking time. Learning about working more internally helped me to tackle these ‘breaks,’ in my movement and develop my improvisation further.

Learning about relationships in improvisation has helped me to become more aware and sensitive to others in the group. I particularly enjoyed learning about ‘thick skinning,’ as I was able to form relationships in the space with people I wouldn’t normally work with. I was able to experiment with complimenting and contrasting people’s movement, intertwining with bodies in the space and pushing my body into unusual positions.

The readings set prior to each class allowed me to understand each process fully. Putting the readings into practice helped me to fully understand them, I enjoyed learning about other people’s scores and using them in the improvisation tasks. Thomas Lehmens score was interesting to work with; being the manipulator I was (in effect) controlling the movement of the creator and it was fascinating watching how their movement changed in relation to your given instructions. I also enjoyed creating our own scores and participating in other peoples.

At the beginning of term I would often try and avoid being in improvisation jams for too long, as these made me anxious but in my last improvisation jam I found myself more or less in the space for the whole time. At the beginning of the module I wouldn’t have envisaged being able to do this whatsoever; the improvisation module has really improved my confidence. My awareness has also improved in relation to entering and exciting the space, I am now able to do this appropriately and confidently.

One of the most important things I have learnt in the module is being able to criticise. Not in the sense of constant negative criticism but in the sense of being able to criticise myself in a way that will help me improve. For me this is extremely important, even if it is just noting things down after class, posing questions to myself to build on, or evaluating my performance each week, I believe this will really help me in my dance training and undergoing development as a dancer.

I am really looking forward to starting contact improvisation next year!

Prior to class this week we were set two readings, one which discusses the audience and/or improviser relationship and the other reading which talks about criticism in relation to our practice. I found the first reading particularly interesting as it discusses how having an audience can sometimes effect the improvisation and that the energy/ intensity of your movement increases. Steve Paxton says that when he gets on stage he can “feel the change,” and that his “physical ability to move gets faster,” (De Spain, 2014, 60).  I feel as though I can relate to this in some way because the pressure you get from an audience and how the audience perceives you, makes you want to work harder and perform your movement to the best of your ability. The second reading speaks about criticism and being able to criticise yourself in a way that will allow you to improve. Larry Lavender says “for improvisation to function well as a kind of pre-choreography training, it must be accompanied by training in criticism.” (Lavender, Predock-Linnell, 2011, 195). From this reading I got that criticism isn’t always a negative thing, it can be positive in the sense that it allows you to delve much deeper into improvisation and improve your movement pallet.

This week we began by working internally lying on our backs with our eyes closed. We really focused on the breath in this exercise taking care of our breathing and thinking only about our bodies. This allowed me to really check in with my body and made me aware of any tightness or discomfort I had in different areas. Focusing on just the body allowed me to feel the sensations of each body part and really focused me for the class ahead.

We were then asked to roll into a foetal position on both sides. When doing this I began to question how it felt, noticing how one side of the body felt a lot heavier than the other. We began doing this exercise faster, switching from left to right quite rapidly. This raised the heart rate and began working the abdominals and really woke and warmed the body up ready for the tasks ahead.

For the first improvisation exercise we began in a child’s pose position and went into a downwards dog and as a collective, we were asked to improvise movement on a lower kinesphere. I explored different ways of twisting my body pushing it to its furthest point before my body restricted me from going any further. I envisaged an elastic band being pulled one way and embodied this to really stretch my body . I also began to release and lift off an arm and a leg testing my balance and trying to make my body move into peculiar positions. As this exercise developed, the instructions changed and we had to lead movement from a specific body part, for example, the nose and elbow. When we were given the instruction of not being allowed to use a certain body part, like the arms or legs, this really restricted my movement and I began to question: where would I start my movement from? How will I move onto the floor without the use of one of my legs? This exercise was good for combatting the use of habitual movement and I noticed how different my movement started to look.

For the next exercise we walked around the space experimenting with stillness, pace and solo movement. This exercise was open, allowing us to improvise how we liked and move at a pace of our own accord. This exercise really brought me back into the room as the previous exercise was quite challenging.

We then split off into small groups and discussed Nancy Stark Smith’s ‘underscore.’ Stark describes the underscore as a “framework for practicing and researching dance improvisation.” (Stark-Smith, 2008, 90). Stark ‘rebelled,’ against what she knew and found herself “prolonging open, structure less sections of class,” where she would “suggest things to focus on through language and her own movement.” (Stark-Smith, 2008, 90). Students began referring to exercises as “that part of class,” as her classes didn’t follow a particular syllabus. It dawned on Smith that her random materials could be put together to make a “very consistent score.” (Stark-Smith, 2008, 90) And this is how it all began!

There are lots of “current phases” to the score, Stark Smith uses a range of symbols to show this, these are listed below:

When creating our own score we wanted to follow Anna Halprin’s RSVP cycle and use some of Smiths ideas in our work.  We decided collectively that we wanted the group to be split into 3 smaller groups and that everybody would be improvising in the space but with different ‘set rules.’ We wanted our score to explore spatial relationships, dynamics and this idea of time (both felt time and active time). We also wanted to create a score which would combat habitual tendencies.

For group one’s score we used Stark-Smiths idea of ‘attraction.’ “Sensing a pull toward something or someone.” (Stark-Smith, 2008, 93). We left this score completely open to interpretation with the only rule being to be attracted to one person in the group and be repulsed by another. This set rule allowed the improviser to find connections between other people in the group. Observing this, we could see different rapports and relationships being formed, their tendencies being to compliment and copy.

For group two’s score we gave them imagery as they improvised on a high and low kinesphere; this we thought, would tackle habitual movement. From previously watching people improvise in class, using a low kinesphere in improvisation seems to be the one people feel most comfortable doing and is the most popular. We thought by asking the improvisers to work on a high and medium kinesphere it would really push them out of their comfort zone and that the improvisers would really start thinking of new movement. Some of our imagery included:

• Blades as arms
• Bouncy balls as legs
• Embody being a worm
• Embody being a shark

For groups three’s score we used Stark-Smiths idea of connection and touch. “Allowing physical contact between your body and another body or object.” (Stark-Smith, 2008, 93) We gave the improvisers a ball to work with as they passed the ball from person to person whilst improvising. To make it even more difficult, they weren’t allowed to use their hands and had to pass the ball using body parts such as the hips, the feet and the elbow. We thought this exercise would be quite challenging as they had to pass the object and think of how to improvise at the same time.

Every group had to improvise and find a moment of stillness when they thought a minute had passed. This tested thinking time and being able to play with the concept of time.

After observing this score, I believe we created something which was too complex and chaotic at times. After receiving feedback we had mixed reviews, people said they found the kinesphere score interesting because you had to ‘think outside the box.’ They also said that they questioned how they were going to move and work on a kinesphere that didn’t necessarily match the imagery. A lot of people found our score very difficult and concentrated on movement rather than time, this was evident near the end of the score as peoples focus dropped. Some people from the group said that the object score was quite distracting and trying to improvise and concentrate on improvising and moving the ball was challenging.

If I were to create our score again I would definitely simplify it to make it easier to understand and for people to follow!

I really enjoyed improvising other people’s scores, especially where we had to improvise with our eyes closed!

Bibliography-

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now: The Audience/Improviser Relationship. New York: Oxford University Press. Pages 60-67

Lavender, L. and Predock-Linnell, J. (2011) From Improvisation to Choreography: the critical bridge. University of New Mexio, College of Fine Arts.

Stark Smith, N. (2008) Caught falling: the confluence of contact improvisation. Northampton, MA Contact Editions.

Reading about Anna Halprin and her RSVP cycles prior to class really gave me a good insight into how she works with improvisation. Halprin worked with large groups of people often reaching into the hundreds, with “many of whom have no background in dance” (Worth and Poynor, 2004, 113). Some of her scores were very ritual in nature which is evident in the circle and earth scores, score four in particular emphasises this. Halprin’s rsvp cycles can also be open or closed scores. Open scores allow and encourage more exploration of movement, a closed score means that “all the actions are defined,” (Worth and Poynor, 2004, 114) making the improvisation less open to interpretation.

Huddle exercise

We began this exercise in the centre of the space as a collective in a huge huddle with our shoulders touching. One person would be asked to disrupt the huddle walking through it in different directions and as a group, we had to immediately close the gap after the person had walked through. This exercise got harder as more people were asked to disrupt the spacing. I believe our reaction time to closing the gap got slower, using your peripheral vision was essential as it began to become chaotic; a real focus was needed to close the gap efficiently.

Walking through groups exercise

This exercise was all about spatial awareness and being able to share the space when invading the kinesphere of others. We walked in lines crossing the other group’s pathways having to walk to the opposite side of the studio under a time limit. The longer the time limit the harder it was when intertwining between the other group, our group often found ourselves arriving too early. When the time limit decreased our group was more focused because we had to travel and get to our destination, when merging through the other group under a quicker time limit I found it a lot smoother because we had less thinking time.

Exploring kinesphere

We first were to explore kinesphere on a low level, then a medium level and then a high level. When improvising on a low level, I tried to explore different ways of moving through the floor, my movement did began to get repetitious especially when starting off my movement. I had to experiment ways of beginning the improvisation.  When improvising on a high kinesphere, I would improvise dynamic movements and would often try and be on a rise so this was clear. My movement however did start to become a little habitualised when I started doing high kicks and hops. To combat this I tried to be more iternal with my improvisation working with how my body was feeling and started improvising much smaller movements. We then had to improvise with all kinesphere’s but focus on using stillness, having high energy and then slowing the movement down. With all these things to keep in mind, trying to improvise the next movement became more difficult and I found myself focusing on just the kinesphere aspect of it.

Creating our score

In relation to Halprin’s RSVP cycle we decided collectively on our resources, score and valuaction. For our resources we wanted to have all the group in the space but split them into four groups and have them improvising in different parts of the room. This meant that everybody was moving at the same time but improvising to different scores. We thought this would be aesthetical for an audience to watch because of how different each group’s movement would look. The improvisers would move for 2 minutes before swapping over.

For our valuaction we posed two questions:

1. How do you improvise successfully without thinking time?
2. Will broadening my movement pallet help boost my confidence?

We wanted the performance of our scores to be visually interesting to watch, therefore we suggested adding objects into our score for the improvisers to work with. We believed this would allow them to create new and interesting movement based both on imagery and improvising with an unknown item.

Our score is explained in brief in the diagrams below:

We believed the rhythmic score would allow the improviser to not have to stop and think of their next movement. The rhythms in this score were constantly changing meaning that they had no time to stop and think, their movement was continuous. We wanted this particular score to be challenging and it was fascinating to watch how their bodies changed from one rhythm to the next.

Using imagery and objects in our other scores allowed the improvisers to break away from habitual tendencies and from observing, I could see individuals starting to push their bodies into the unknown. In the score using a basketball as imagery, it was interesting to see people trying to make unusual shapes and using the ball to improvise with.

I really enjoyed creating our new scores and loved getting involved in improvising other peoples. It was fascinating to watch how people adapted their movement with each score they worked with.

Bibliography

Worth, L. and Poynor, H. (2004) Anna Halprin. London: Routledge.

To start this week’s class, we did a swiping exercise working in partners swiping our arms out to the side, to the bottom corner of our bodies and to the top corner of our bodies. If our partner did the same movement we had to do a corresponding movement. This exercise focused on transference of weight as well as how well we could work together with peers.

We then began travelling the exercise, A’s walked into the space doing the same arm movements as previous, B’s had to weave their body around the arms in different ways.The movement began to get repetitious and I really had to think of new ways in which to intertwine my body around their arms. We repeated this exercise with our eyes closed. When I was moving around their arms, I found it a lot harder to predict the arm movements thus sometimes colliding with my partner. When I closed my eyes I noticed I restricted my arms and slowed the pace of the movement down to make it easier for my partner.

Before going into the next exercise, we walked around the space with our eyes closed, only opening them to take a brief ‘snapshot,’ of where other bodies were in the space. To begin with I found this exercise quite easy but I clearly wasn’t challenging myself enough as I could, I began testing it further keeping my eyes closed for a longer duration and weaving around the space and found that in a number of situations, I was becoming more close and having to dodge other people. We then put the idea of the brain taking snapshots and this idea of ‘backawards blinking,’  into practice working with partners improvising across the space.

For the next exercise we traveled across the room improvising our own movement whilst our partners copied. I found it really interesting copying other people’s improvised movement and really liked working with new members of the class and seeing how unique each person’s movement was to them. This exercise focused on exploration and I tried challenging my partners as much as possible using hand movements and floor work in my improvisation. I noticed some habitual movements began to occur as people began to repeat other peoples movement. At first I noticed that I paused for thinking time in this exercise as I began moving too fast, but once I felt more comfortable working with new people and slowed my movement down this decreased. We were then asked to close our eyes and follow our partners across the room using this idea of the ‘snapshot.’ Because of this, a lot of movement they improvised got missed and we had to predict what their next movement would be. When observing this exercise, it was interesting to see how different the movement looked when they had their eyes closed, it looked almost nothing like their original improvisation.

The last exercise was an impulse exercise, we began by working in partners touching different body parts which acted as a impulse to improvise. We had to do this without having any thinking time whatsoever. We then did the same exercise but with imagery. We had to improvise as if we were:

-Sea weed

– A kitten

– A wrestler

When trying to embody being seaweed a lot of my movement was relaxed using a lot of floor work in my improvisation and weaving movements replicating the shape and texture of seaweed. When I was giving points of contact to my partner with the kitten imagery, I would touch areas of the body that kittens would most likely use, when I was the improviser I  found myself padding my hands on the floor following the particular feline traits of a cat. When improvising being a wrestler the dynamics completely changed, my movement was a lot more fast paced and impulsive striking my arms around my body and rolling around the floor almost as if I was in a wrestling ring.

I found learning about Thomas Lehmen’s score in this week’s reading really interesting and looked forward to putting it into practice. We learn about three choreographic systems in the reading, these are:

• Categories
• Functions
• Its better to

This is a brief diagram explaining Lehmens score:

After watching a video of Lehmen’s score being put into practice, it visually helped me to understand his score and imagine myself in the space doing it. Lehmens “openness of the systems includes a possibility of surprise.” (Husemann, 2011, 33) This quote has made me want to fully explore the score and really try working with it to improvise unique and new movement. I think the openness of the score gives me a real chance for this exploration as there are no limitations to the movement.

In these past couple of sessions we have talked about empathy quite a lot in relation to our improvisation practice. It has been described as a “process that enables the understanding of emotions and intentions among people.” (Ribero, M and AGAR, F, 2011, 73). Empathy is so critical in improvisation especially when working with other people because without building up a relationship in the performance space with other bodies around then the improvisation wouldn’t be as successful.

I really enjoyed this session and look forward to working with Lehmen’s score next week!

Bibliography:

Husemann, P. (2005) The Functioning of Thomas Lehmen’s Funktionen. Dance Theatre Journal, 21 (1) 31-35

Schreibstuck-Vancouver (2010) Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EaaFKu3_Y8 [accessed 9 March 2016].

In this lesson we started the class differently to previous weeks doing a jumping exercise to get ourselves thinking, warm and ready for class. We worked as a collective jumping and adding arms to the jumps on odd counts. Having to coordinate the arms was difficult at first because of working in rows and other individuals turning on different counts. We all had to find stillness at a certain point in time going row by row, this didn’t always work because we were preoccupied with other things around us.

We worked with imagery for the first improvisation exercise putting our reading into practice. In the Buckwalter reading, it speaks of an exterior and interior dance image; what is seen by the audience as a spectator and what a dancer works from to make movement happen. It also talks about senses saying “there is an orchestra of senses, including the kinaesthetic, involved in the perception, making the watching of a dance a full-bodied experience.”(Buckwalter,2010, 91). This quote I found was really interesting as watching a dance is not just visual, we also sometimes without realising, take the images of the performance through the ears too, making dance much more accessible and aesthetical to watch. Methods of creating imagery are discussed in the reading, you can bring the imagery to the improvisation in four ways:

• Physical exploration
• Visual art (looking at drawings)
• Specific environments
• Poetic language

We physically explored imagery and were given five to work with, these were:

• Having knives as legs
• Having spaghetti as arms
• Cells racing in the body
• Trying to get our head as close to ur sit bones as possible
• Making our nose lower than our lower body

When improvising having knives as legs, I focused on the shape of a knives blade making my movement angular and rigid. I noticed that a lot of my movement was performed on the floor with a focus on the legs and feet being really restricted and stiff. Repetition started to occur after a while as I couldn’t think of new movement and slowly started to loose concentration. When we improvised having spaghetti as arms I focused on the texture of spaghetti and made my movement quite loose and ‘slippery.’

For the second improvisation exercise we watched a short video and discussed the idea of ‘thick skinning,’ the idea of staying close to other bodies in the space. For this exercise we kept switching partners to work with new people and try different things out. I enjoyed this exercise as I was experimenting with weaving in and out of people’s bodies and seeing how far I could push my body. When my partner decided to change the movement, I found this difficult because I had to make a conscious decision of how to move with them; every partner was different. To be able to work effectively the movement had to be slowed down to work with your partner to find the movement and connection together.

For the last exercise we had quite an open score being allowed to do anything in the space that we had learnt in previous weeks. Kirsty also discussed accumulation, diminishment, retrograde and echoing as choreographic techniques we could apply in the improvisation. For the improvisation jam we used a technique called ‘tidal wave,’ where you had to make eye contact with other people and then collectively move into the space. For this exercise I found it difficult to initially go into the space with people; after not improvising for a week I felt less confident being in the jam as much as I was previously. Despite being told about different improvisation techniques, most people just used thick skinning throughout this exercise as well as echoing and complimenting movement.

I found the improvisation class more difficult than other weeks, even though the imagery acted as a stimuli for the improvisation.  Finding movement to fit it without becoming too repetitive was hard. Hopefully in the upcoming weeks I will start to feel more comfortable and confident in the improvisation jams also.

Bibliography

Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An improviser’s companion. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pages. 90-105

CFD13 Annie Lok, Ian Garside, Eszter Gal, Andrew Wass and Laura Doehler improvisation ensamble

. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTMCfI21qMM [accessed 2 March 2016].