Month: March 2017

Blog written:  Saturday 25th March 2017

We understood the 4 elements of RSVP:

R- Resources/ basic materials, S- Scores/ delineate place/ space/time/people, V- Valuaction/ analysis/ appreciation/ feedback, P- Performance/implements score/style of piece. RSVP cycles are essential in creative process’ they produce a forma of flexible spin and how it contains and responds to shifting internal elements. It allows large groups to enter the score, giving everyone the opportunity  to participate.

What is the point in a score?- It gives us limitations and enhances our explorative mindset of  what we have to work with and how we use it. Class contribution towards a scores definition, a score helps structure/give guidance/ supports creativity and exploration. My personal definition, A score is the structure of instructions and rules that open to interpretations, setting limits and boundaries.

My views on Charlie and Karen’s piece, they produced clear developments of movement repetition, the juxtaposition of Karens jumps went against Charlie’s interior movement which caused an aesthetic feel of curiosity.

We were split into groups to undertake a set task, my group had the task of imagining a dance in the mind with closed eyes lasting 3 minutes, then writing the imagined dance on paper for 5 minutes. Using the skills we had learnt from this exercise and linking past weeks into consideration about awareness, we created a new score lasting 15 minutes.

 

Blog written Monday 13th March 2017

Discussions arose on the text ‘What’s the score?’ The text refers to how scores assist the composition of improvisation, I agree because without scores we could not make as interesting work (Millard, 2015). The scores create more possibilities with material focussing on the smaller details, an exercise undertaken was using a body part not manipulated often and discover the freedom of movement with this body part, however scores also set boundaries with limitations, the awareness of these enhance the material to experiment more freely and not think about it, just go with the fluidity of the movement basically.

The starting exercise was a focus for my body, I explored new vocabulary by reacting to the instructions given; wriggle, flick, flop and giving spatial pathways, travelling the movement throughout the space was challenging when their were so many other bodies interacting, so having an awareness was important.

We used the exercise from Lehmen’s reading about ‘It’s better to…..’ and improvised spoken words alongside movement to physicalize and embody the words said An example being ‘running like a dinosaur’ the elbows clenched to the torso and hands floppy in front of the chest, another example being ‘eating cake’ when using the mime of eating cake it is funny, because we use both hands to eat the cake, however in real life we use just one. The judgements I took from this exercise were fun and comforting as every person was expressing silly features and interacting with this activity, yet we all felt accepted so it was engaging for each person involved.

The reading Lehmen concentrates on 5 functions: material/ interpretation/manipulation/observation and meditation, all having an important to play and create an engaging score, questioning one another through the space, who are you following/ manipulating/ watching? why? can you use a different way of challenging the material without touch?

 

Millard, O 2015, What’s the score? Using scores in dance improvisation’, Brolga: An Australian Journal About Dance, 40 , pp. 44-56, International Bibliography of Theatre& Dance with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 11 January 2017.

The Functions of Thomas Lemen’s Fucktionen by Pirkko Husemann- pdf file on blackbaord

Blog written: Saturday 11th March 2017
The discoveries I made throughout this session were quite fragmented and reflected my explorations of the tuning score. Using the different skills of play, pause, resituate, replace, rewind and end. Following the stimuli of an image, connecting with a partners image and exploring together the vocabulary. I felt that I was trying to adapt my feedback to create new movement vocabulary, making it interesting and exploitative.
Using the knowledge learnt from the past weeks focussing on senses and listening to each body in the space, using the sense felt feeling of time being perceived from one another. Throughout the Jam we explored manipulations of body parts with partners, the touch and pressure against the body part touched. The images we explored shown our partners habitual movements in such a way when the body part was touched in the same way it had before, it was noticeable and could see the partner trying to fight against it and discover new ways to enhance the specific body part.
The reading (Lisa Nelson on JJ Gibson and Dance- pdf file on blackboard) explores the ways of using senses to adapt with movement in a humanised behaviour, it talks about the research being undertrained by others in such a way that assumptions are created and cause a perception of the mind, my understanding of this being when we move without thinking it is more free and expressive and when thinking too much we don’t give ourselves the flow of movement fluidity.
Interlinking play as a concept of expressing non-thinkable movement, how we used play in the first week ‘the use of the bean bag’. The task of catch, pause and run creates an image and is different at each attempt of catching the bean bag. Buckwalter expresses the focus of image, my understanding is how we can explore new ideas and the changing of emotive feelings to the given image (Buckwalter, 2010 p.90-105). Likewise in this weeks class we created a solo stillness and another body joined the image and improvised with the eyes closed until resonating the pause and opening the eyes when a second image was created. I felt very well enclosed and connected during this task and found it particularly difficult.

 
Buckwalter, M. (2010) Composing while dancing: An Improviser’s Companion. 1st ed. University of Wisconsin Press.

Blog written Friday 3rd March 2017
De Spain expresses the Artistic forms and Structures of techniques in the two sections of these readings.
‘Chaos is a kind of form’ (De Spain, 2014, 120.) This relates to our tasks in the first week of improvisation, showing that anything can influence. We are told that everything has a form, the structure and technique is a quest to possibilities of artistic forming. The starting point comes from the artistic form on the score through exploring the body’s form. An example being the limitation of a sprained ankle, explore the movement within the torso, arms and head, connecting all three together and scrutinizing with dynamics, this causes new material fixating on intricate details.
Form is how and what we understand, for instance in verbal or body language, we communicate based on a reaction to something.
‘Individual and shared experiences form part of the structure of each improvisation’(De Spain, 2014, p.163) Influences provide opinions, this creates a starting point as such in the Jam the week before we improvised in partners, giving each other instructions and reacting to these caused explorative dance vocabulary that I personally had not felt in my body before.

De Spain, K. (2014). Landscape of the now. 1st ed. Oxford Univ. Press