In this week we concentrated on the range of movements and to get rid of habitual movements. When doing the spaghetti and knife task I realised that I don’t use my upper body as much as I can. I only use my arms and legs to dance. It gave me a chance to open my mind and try new movements that I haven’t used before. The next task was that you had to imagine that all of your cells were racing. The range of the movement I used was fast and sharp. I felt like I was out of control. This wasn’t in my pallet of movement as I’m used to working with structured tasks meaning letting go was not an option. To feel like I had completed this task I felt like I had to shake my arms and legs. This was able to wake up all my body parts. When I was completing this task I traveled in a direct pathway .I thought this was the quickest way to get to the destination.
The tasks which were given were challenging as you could not resort to habitual movement as it didn’t fit with the tasks. When I was doing my solo I resulted in trying to move every body part but a slower pace. I also tried to use my torso more as this is something I don’t use and I feel like as a dancer I need to open my knowledge of what my body can do.
From watching the seven dancers do the score, I noticed that it was clear at the start which was a duet and trio. As the piece gradually progressed it wasn’t as obvious. I thought this as the dancers weren’t dancing in synchronisation. When doing a variation of the movements it is not always as clear. The dancers found it hard when exiting and entering. The attention was hard to get correct as if you entered/exited at the wrong point the attention would go onto the dancer entering/exiting not the dancers already on stage. When Kayla said to the dancers to ‘see the space’ this changed the work in a way the dancers started to use all the stage and started looking at the space around them making the piece connecting to the audience.
When I was dancing on the stage with four other dancers I found it hard to enter the stage as I didn’t know when it was the right time. If something changed I had to change my intention. I tried to change the timing, as when a duet was on stage the dynamics were slow. When I entered I did fast dynamics to make the attention be on something else. A limitation we had was not to walk in the space, I found this difficult as it is a habit I need to get out of. I really enjoyed performing in this score as I found my strengths and weaknesses. I felt like I was in control of the score and this is something I never knew about myself. I could be in control of a score without knowing it.
How is it possible to make a shared choice of movements during an improvisation between two or more dancers without previous agreement and without communication through words?
One way you could do this is through focus between you and the other dancers. Watching the dancers you are working with allows you to be able to see what they are doing. By entering the stage and mimicking a dancer you are turning a solo into a duet without communicating with them.
When doing the improvisation jam this week, I realised that doing the impulse task with a partner helped me with a starting point. I imagined that a partner was pushing one part of my body and see where I would go from there. It has also given me more confidence to allow me to feel more comfortable with my fellow dancers. This allowed me to make my movement less static and more fluid. I found this task helpful to my knowledge as a dancer. I felt like I was being more creative with my movements this pushed me to go out of my boundaries and this is something I found satisfying.