Prior to the class, I had never had any proper experience of improvisation, it usually consisted of being told to improvise to a piece of music chosen by the dance teacher. However, it is inevitable that we have all improvised in the creative process of our work and that we all improvise in everyday life. I was interested to learn more about it and be taught about it properly, as it is fundamental in dance.
To begin, we began to work internally closing our eyes and exploring how different parts of the body felt, if there was any tension within the body and how certain body parts felt moving in different ways. This made the body relaxed giving us time to think of how to take care of ourselves identifying any difficulties or problems. It prepared us for moving around in the space. We then began to improvise on the floor…
To start with I felt nervous about what other people thought of my movement, but learnt that in improvisation you cant be phased by others around you, they themselves are too focused on their own movement to have time to look at yours. With reference to the Midgelow reading it says you have to go “out in the space and believe something will happen,” (Midgelow, 2012, 10) which gave me the confidence to stop being so nervous and just throw myself into improvising. I didn’t know what to expect from this exercise and without the help of choreographic terms, I would have found this exercise extremely challenging. The terms used were ‘folding,’ ‘pressing,’ ‘rotating,’ and ‘pulling.’ These terms acted as a stimuli to initiate movement in the body, I found it particularly interesting how I was trying to fold body parts I wouldn’t normally fold and body parts that felt awkward and difficult to fold. When pressing into the floor the most obvious body part to apply pressure to would be the arms or legs but you had to think of other less obvious body parts to explore with. For example I began adding pressure to my fingers and hips. I also began to travel more within the space when I got used to the thought of improvising and when I started to increase the size of my movements. I did however, notice that I began to become repetitive doing things a number of times because I couldn’t think of other movements to do. Hopefully this may decrease in the upcoming weeks. Moving along the floor to quite slow relaxing music was quite therapeutic and made me feel at ease. I enjoyed this exercise and it was a good exercise to ease our way into the module.
As part of the second exercise we had to find a partner and label ourselves A and B. A was the person that would move around in the space and B was the one who had to tap different body parts to instigate A’s movement. This exercise proved difficult at first, as we began working quite slowly and I often found myself pausing a lot to think about what to do next, this didn’t allow my movement to flow naturally causing random breaks. The aim of this exercise was to only move the body part touched which was also difficult as I found myself creating more of a sequence, snapping into old stylized habitual movement. As we sped this exercise up, I found it slightly easier as you just had to keep moving; the pace of the movement was so fast there was no time to stop or even think! Interestingly, a quote I took from Hamilton linked into this exercise, “every movement has within it the seeds of what needs to come next,” (Midgelow, 2012, 12) I took from this that you will always have ideas on how to move its just having the confidence to find them. Similarly, in the Midgelow reading it speaks about letting yourself go “a letting go of control, a letting go of the known, a letting go of thinking processes, a letting go of the mind in order to free the body!” (Midgelow, 2012, 13) This quote inspired me to just let my movement take me anywhere and hopefully in upcoming sessions I will be able to free the body and feel more comfortable to improvise in the space.
Bibliography
Midgelow, Vidla L. (2012) Dear Practice… : The experience of improvising. Northampton: Intellect