Improvisation – Page 2

March 1, 2017Rayanne Montecalvo No Comments

Is Artistic Form the same as Structure?

The first reading I read was about form. I’ve never really thought about form in improvisation before but after studying this reading I’m considering that there is form in everything we do, including improvisation. Whether were conscious or not of it. A statement that sparked my interest was ‘ You’re talking about form in improvisation? Then it’s no longer improvisation.’ ( Halprin. A, 2014, 122). For me I think there has to be an element of form in improvisation in order for the group to ‘perform’ safely, but is this classed as form or structure? And are you fully improvising the piece?

To help answer these questions I will study if I use form in class when I’m asked to improvise, I feel that subconsciously I will do so.

The second reading was about structure, having a structure during improvisation can be as little as to how many dancers you want in sight of the audience or how long you want the improvisation to last. Something that confused me was ‘structures can be imposed from the outside and discovered from the inside’ (Kent De Spain, 2014, 158). I’m not sure what this means, I would interpret it as you can set a structure before improvising but finding out the limitations this gives you or the freedom it can provide will be made present during your improvisation.

This weeks readings were very clear, to work this into my improvisation practice I’m going to be conscious if I create a form when dancing and how structures provided will influence the movements I choose to perform.

Bibliography

De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now: Artistic Form. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 120-127
De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now: Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 158-166

February 21, 2017Rayanne Montecalvo No Comments

Discovering Time and Space

This week’s readings were based on the aspect of time and space. One of the things that stood out for me was how Lisa Nelson senses time by beginnings and endings, but how these two aspects can be switched so that the end is at the start and you finish with the beginning. Also that your relationship with space is constantly changing moment by moment.

The activities were all based on relationships with a group of people or just one person. For most of the session we had to look at 5 aspects as to how we could change a movement someone was doing. These aspects were;

Diminish
Copy
Echo
Augmentation
Make bigger

The thing that I struggled with the most was making things bigger. I think the reason I struggled was that when your partner or person leading the group already performed a large move you had to make it greater. It was difficult to think on the spot how you can develop it to succeed in the task set.

My favourite part of the session was the last task. The class split into half and with the same concept had to dance for 5 minutes, changing partners or groups. We did this twice and the last time my group were told to have legs like knives and arms like spaghetti. At the end we all came together to do the same movement. I feel like it was strong and interesting to watch, even though all we were doing was repeating the same movement multiple times.

Bibliography

Buckwalter. M (2010) Composing whilst dancing: An Improviser’s Companion. Madison, Wis. The University of Wisconsin Press. Pages 60-90
De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now: Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 108-113
De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now: Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 108-113

February 13, 2017Rayanne Montecalvo No Comments

Awareness, Attention and Intention

This weeks readings were all about awareness, attention and intention. They talked about awareness of what is going on in your surroundings, for example the people around you, what’s in the space your in, your attention and where your placing it, so you may be aware that someone is dancing in a circle around you but your attention is on the dancer in the far left corner. Finally about your intention, what do you intend to do about the girl in the corner, do you want to copy her movements or come up with contrasting movements?

My favourite task of this week was done in partners, two sets of partners had to get up in front of the class and dance together with our eyes closed. The task was to be aware of when your partner stopped moving and to stop with them. My partner was my best friend of 7 years and dance partner of 5. The audience commented on how we were so in sync it was ‘weird’. This was probably because we know each other so well in normal life as well as dancing.

Some of the other task included;

– Straight line group of 5 people, 2 people stood straight while others bent their knees.

– 3 people walk, run, jump forward, 2 people back

– Dancing in the space in groups of 3, 2 or 1

This week was m2y favourite of the weeks I felt that I learnt more about being aware of what others were doing around me and that if you know the group of people you’re working with well, it’s easier to get a sense of each others movements.

Bibliography

Buckwalter. M (2010) Composing while dancing: An Improviser’s Companion. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pages 34-59
De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now, Attention. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 167-172
De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now, Intentionally. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 68-72

February 6, 2017Rayanne Montecalvo No Comments

Discovering Your Habitual Movements

Although I didn’t dance this week I feel I picked up a lot more knowledge than I did the week before. At the start of the session we discussed the reading in groups, we compared the ‘Dear practice reading’ with the 4 rules of improvisation. The 4 rules are;

Show up
Pay Attention
Don’t get attached to your results
Tell the truth

The Dear practice reading talked about connecting with your body and how one dancer did this through improvisation. She talks about being open during her improvisation sessions and losing control of what her body does. Another reading was also about tracking, keeping track of what you do with your body in order to create the next section of your work when appropriate. Whether this is to develop what you’ve just done or to come up with new material that doesn’t include your habitual movements.

One of the exercise’s the dancers did was to dance for 10 minutes changing speed on a level of 1-10 when told. 1 being the slowest 10 the fastest. This was all about moving away from your habitual movements. I noticed that when they were told to dance at 6 or below, they used the same movements repeatedly, some of these were, rolls on the floor, kicks, leg swings and hand gestures. Interestingly when they went at 10 new movements were happening everywhere, this is because they weren’t conscious of what they were doing, they didn’t have time to think about what to do next they just had to go with what their bodies told them to do.

Video of speed improvisation task

Bibliography

De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now, Body. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 45-52
De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now, Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 93-96
De Spain. K (2014) Landscape of the Now, Tracking. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 97-101

January 30, 2017Rayanne Montecalvo No Comments

Introduction Into Dance Improvisation

For me improvisation is something I’ve always dreaded, but after the first session I feel like I have a whole new perspective on what it actually is.
I’ve been given the impression over my few years of dance training that Improvisation is boring, limited and there’s only so far you can go with your exploration of movements. I now know that this is not the case…

The session started with a slow warm up exploring our bodies and what they felt like, after the warm up we went to the bean bag exercise. This exercise provided us with set limitations in partners. We had to throw the bean bag to one another but not in a simple way. These are the tasks that were set;

Throwing the bean bag to your partner around the studio, without noise.
Swap partners.
Throw the bean bag to your partner, pause in the space for a few seconds, then run to a new space.
As you throw the bag make an abstract noise
Development of the above. Stop the noise halfway and let partner imitate.
Finally split into groups of 7 or 8, make up a 5 minute piece performance using the above tasks to perform to the group.
My Improvised Group

For the final bean bag activity we had to make a way of stopping the piece when we thought 5 minutes was up.
By the end of the session I have a whole new perspective that improvisation can be fun and it’s not just about ‘dancing’. We improvise every day, on the way to university, what to make for tea or even what clothes we should wear that day.