This week we concentrated on looking at Anna Halprin’s scores and creating our own. When we as given the freedom to create our own open score, I found it easy to enter and exit. I found it easier as it wasn’t structured so I didn’t have to wait for anyone to leave a trio for example so I could go in. Before I entered the space I thought about my intention for what I was going to bring to it, trying to change the dynamics in the space. If the dynamics were slow and fluid I decided to come in with sharp fast and strong dynamics. I think this made the piece more interesting and it caught your attention. Seeing as though we were allowed to bring anything to the score, I brought in a lot of new material. I feel like this is something I felt comfortable and strong with. I was able to show my understanding of improvisation and I enjoyed dancing in this way. I avoided joining a trio as I found it hard to connect with the other dancers. I also noticed that once I was in the space I joined a duet with another dancer we used the impulse task. This is something which stood out to me as it lead me onto new movements.
The question I wanted to know about improvisation was ‘What makes a score interesting?’. We used Anna Haprins RSVP cycle to create this. Getting in groups and creating our own score allowed me to bring my input into what I thought made a score interesting. I feel like when there are more than 5 dancers in the space this makes it interesting for me. As everyone is either doing different or the same but has a different effect as of the number of dancers. The intention of our score was to make sure that the performance is visually interesting for an audience. The resources were that the score would include all six of us, meaning we wasn’t allowed to leave the stage. If we wanted to stop dancing we would freeze until you thought it was the right time to start again, this meant that the stage would always be full and busy. We decided for our score to be nine and a half minutes so that it gave us time to establish our intention. Our strategy was to find unison at different points in the score, however we didn’t choose when to do this. We had to use our focus to see if everyone else was doing the movement and it was our choice whether to copy or avoid it. We wasn’t allowed to use thick skinning in our score. We decided to do this as this is what many dancers use to make duets and trios so we thought to just use impulse and copying as it has more of an effect.
When performing the score I really enjoyed it as it gave me the chance as a dancer to show what I have learnt from improvisation and how I can put it in my own score. I feel like from this task I have learnt a lot from creating our own score as we have put our questions to the test. I noticed that throughout we did solos more than any other groupings. This could be because we feel stronger when dancing alone. It could also because of our limitation which wasn’t too use thick skin, meaning we found it hard to connect. From performing the score we could improve on having some more limitations. I felt like there was a lot of stillness and solos throughout. We could put a limitation on only being still for certain amount of time and to only have your own solo for a limited time.
‘RSVP cycle allows even large groups to retain clarity in what is potentially a chaotic process’ (Poynor and Worth, 2004,113). I feel like this quote clarifies what the cycle is about. From my own experience the RSVP cycle allowed me to create my own score with the intention to understand what makes a score interesting. It made me think about what does make it appealing and how I could do this from working through all the stages. I feel like this cycle can relate to every day activities too. Always assessing the situation then having to resolve it.
Poynor,H and Worth,l.(2004) Anna Halprin. Ablington Oxon, Routledge.110-125