Blog Four: 24/03

The class started with us being stood in two horizontal lines using our peripheral vision to try and create movement in unison. I found this fairly difficult as I was only able to see the person stood at the side of me and had to wait till she moved so I could start movement. As we had little perception of the movements from further down the line, I imagine that there were several different variations that happened as we weren’t able to see movement in the full body.

“Time is a fundamental element of both human life and human improvisation.” (Spain, 2014). All dancers were lay on the floor and had to stand up when two minutes was over, this was fairly easy because we were still and therefore being able to count. However, the group improvisation that had to end after seven minutes, I found this really difficult as I was unable to keep track of the time I’d been dancing for. It was particularly hard when I was leading as I had no concept of duration as I’d been concentrating on movement. I was dancing for eleven minutes which was completely off the intended timing “time is something I’ve got to get right”- Simone Forti (Spain, 2014), this came from my enjoying the exploration and after having missed the movement part of the improvisation lessons I was just enjoying movement and completely dismissed the main intention of the task.

We studied ‘Nina Martin’s Ensemble thinking score which we then had to identify in a video. I didn’t really take well to this score as in the video I found it quite predictable. I was able to easily identify the scores in their movement and I found that the spacing was a big contribution to the predictability as because there were only three dancers, there are only a limited number of variations to have.

When we tried the score as a group, I found that there were a lot of people reluctant to enter the space, and this normally changes as the group gets involved in the improvisation and becomes more comfortable with it, but that wasn’t the case this time as the score was changing each time and therefore the hesitance to join in was renewed. I found myself constantly entering the space to avoid any pace drop as much as I could as one person. “Whether it’s a body minute or whether it’s a clock minute”- Nancy Stark Smith (Spain, 2014) When observing other bodies in the space, I found it very interesting to identify the components of the score and see if I could pre-empt anyone’s movement. I found the second section of the score ‘Hot Spot’ the most difficult as I was unable to find different ways of taking focus and directing is elsewhere. I think that was because I was so interested in the movement and trying to move away from the habitual movement that I could sense myself doing, that I began to struggle. The fourth section of the score, ‘Number Score’ was the section I found most interesting but feel that us dancers as a collective struggled with the most. As I said before, it takes a long time for the dancers to become comfortable in the space and therefore there is a small number of people improvising, but as the group becomes more at ease, then gradually all the dancers enter the space and there is little fluctuation of numbers. It starts off very little and then gradually builds to everyone in the space trying to work with each other, this can be quite interesting to watch but as a dancer in that moment it felt quite hectic and I was focusing more on the space between the dancers rather than the movement “We make space and are made by it.” (Spain, 2014)

Bibliography

Spain, K. D., 2014. Landscape of the Now. Oxford: Oxford University Press.