Dance Improvisation / Nomadism Workshop

Developing an understanding of improvisation in/as nomadism has lead me into new thinking and refined my improvisational practice.  Improvisation becomes, in this approach, a mode through which to (re)figure subjectivity and form connections to others in physical, spatial and temporal terms.

The below workshop outline pulls together many of the improvisation tasks in the blog below and places an emphasis on the development of fluid, shifting forms in and between bodies, creating an ethics of intersubjective engagements.

Warm-Up
                      Skin
                                  Transformations
(Re)locations
                                                    (Re)visiting and inverting
Flow and interruption
                                              Intersubjectivities
                                                                       Open improvisation

Open Improvisation

Open Improvisation from Vida Midgelow on Vimeo.

Intersubjectivities: Duets 3

See March 16th 2012 post for the task relating to this video material. A duet between Sam Frizzell (MA candidate, University of Northampton) and Vida Midgelow.


Video (duet version 1):


Video (duet version 2):
Intersubjectivites: Duets 3(version 2) from Vida Midgelow on Vimeo.

Intersubjectivites: Duets 2

See March 16th 2012 post for the task relating to this video material.

Video: Duet (version 1 : part 1)

I-Ying Wu joins me in a duet (I-Ying is a PhD candidate at University of Northampton researching movement improvisation and daoism)

No sound, filmed from fixed camera. Here one round of call and response are edited into one screen.

Video: Duet (version 1: part 2)

I-Ying and I in a duet emerging of the call and response solos shown in the video above. 

No sound, filmed from fixed camera and unedited.

Video: Duet (version 2)

I-Ying and I move through a loose call and response score and resulting duet form.

No sound, filmed from fixed camera and unedited.

Intersubjectivities: Duet

Feeding off your partners movement.. Partner A Partner B

A. Dances for 3mins. Pause.

B. Observes. Noting what draws you. Imagine shapes, patterns, dynamics in your body as you watch.

B. Dances for 3mins in response. Take with you into your dancing the imagined sensations, images and patterns you noted whilst observing.

A. Observes. Watching, noting, imagining.

Repeat the call response structure at least 3 times.

A and B dance together.

Both drawing on the sensations and actions from your dancing/watching.

Both respond to each other in the moment.... echo, contrast, transform.

Note what changed in your own dancing and that of your partner.

How does dancing together shift you both?

Video: Duet 1
Matthew Gough joins me in a Duet (Matt, is a senior lecturer in Dance at University of Northampton, Director of Playgrounds Dance Company and blogger: http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/).
Filmed on a dolly, lightly edited

Video: Duet 2 Filmed on a dolly, lightly edited (this version, danced again with Matt Gough, takes a more open approach to the above structure follows in essence the same task/score).

Perspectives: Call and Response 2

Perspectives: Call and Response

Improvise for 2 mins.... then pause, reflect.
Taking your own improvisation as a score or trigger, dance again for a further 2 mins.

You might think of this as making a response in order to reveal something of the previous dance

And... in a cyclic process you can go on... each period of improvisation illuminating and shifting the previous version.

Video: One round of 'call' and 'response', filmed on the left and right side of the studio respectively with a static camera, editing together into on screen.

Perspectives: Shifting focus

Video: short timelapse

A beautiful day!

Responding to what is available.

Giving yourself space and time to absorb and integrate your changing environment is a key part of nomadism in/as improvisation...

Video: The studio is bathed in sunlight, casting shadows and warmth across the space, I dance.

Connectivities: duets

Embodied transformations

Working with a partner, support their movement – stroking, holding, guiding, following your partners movement with your hands. Guiding their emerging solo, and echoing it with your touch and in your body.

When you are ready exchange roles - passing from guide to guided.

As the dance between you develops and extends let a duet take shape. Following and leading blur. A dance with or without touch/contact is formed.

                         Note how this dance resides within you....

then, when you are ready - drift away from your partner and explore this dance as a solo... how does it reside in your body?

then when ready find a new partner.. here allow a different dance to form – informed by the previous duet and altered by this new partners dance…

       and again move to solo’s, and then in time, new duets…

then, following one more solo re-find your first partner –

re-find your first dance,

                      Noting what has changed, how things have moved                 on,             transformed.

                     Note what remains, what remains anew...

inspired by Eva Karzcaq (ID workshop Dec 12th, 2011)

Connectivities: breath

Working from ease and flow in the breath...

Begin in rest... allow air to enter the whole body and exhale deeply, 

as you exhale release tensions in the body,

becoming like an empty suit...

As you exhale and the tensions drop away see what movement is opened....

Video:

Flow and interruption 5: complexities

Developing upon the previous post/task, here the complexities become greater as the instructions are linked to random external sources (sounds, light changes etc).

Requiring multiple levels of attention - internal and external, aural and visual, the task is to maintain the sense of flow, the internal connectedness to image, whilst being open to layered external sources surrounding you and, here being purposefully brought into the improvisation.

Video: two version of the the improvisation are here linked together, in which both the dancer and camera respond to the complex layers of 'instruction'.

Flow and interruption 4: internal image and external triggers

Working with a partner/witness the purpose of this task is to develop and maintain an internal image whilst paying attention to multiple layers of information and responding to 'instructions' that are intended to expand the improvisation and the territory of movements emerging.

Both the partners give and respond to the agreed 'instructions', here they are:

enlarge

minimize

stay with that

shift

Video: Two versions of the improvisation are edited together, cross fading between moments. Here the cameras position, depth of field and relationship to the dancer are also altered in relation to the same instructions.

Flow and interruption 3: external triggers

External Triggers (vocal):

Working with a witness/partner.

As you dance you respond to external instructions to....
         Change, 
         Pause,
         Elaborate....


Pay attention to the nature of your 'responses' and vary them, play with the different possibilities.

As a development you might give instructions to your partner at the same time such that an exchange as a form of duet evolves.

Video: Lightly edited, camera on dolly.
In this version I also trigger alterations in the camera operation/framing via the instruction to 'change'.


External triggers (sounds):

Developing the use of simple instructions to trigger a response
... to a change, pause or elaborate...
map these instructions to external and random sounds.


In the video below for example the triggers are mapped as follows:
Change to passing Cars
Pause to external Voices
Elaborate to corridor and door sounds

These random 'interruptions' become part of your dance,
listen for them, whilst staying within your practice...  
note the way your awareness needs to be in several places.
Note the way the sounds layer over each other, generating complexities....

How do you elaborate a pause?
How do you response to two triggers that come at once?

Video: lightly edited, camera on a dolly.
Here the camera work is also triggered to 'change' through external sounds (in this case passing cars).

Flow and interruption 2: one long phrase

A short dance that consists of one long phrase

As you start to dance pay attention to the way each movement, idea, happening gives rise to the next. Note this in yourself (and perhaps through writing on the page). 

Take pleasure, without wallowing, in this transitional mode of operating.

Start to reduce the gaps in-between, such that the body is in constant 'flow' - movement without pauses, highlights, hesitations, glitch's.  

Perhaps, as Rainer would have said, we could work towards an improvisation that is a short dance that consists of one long phrase.

This phrase might be said to have flow.... 

What is the nature of this flow?

Photographs: 'Pleasure and flow in one long phrase'

Flow and interruption 1: internal flow

Finding Flow 
Find a warm comfortable place to lay quietly.

In this space spend time just being with there, being in the moment, such that you allow yourself to come to rest. 
This may take time. That is ok. Note the time is takes to be present in this moment (rather than rushing ahead with your time, thoughts, actions...)


Note the sounds, textures, movement, temperature in and around you.

Are these part of the flow of being in this moment, or perhaps you find them interruptions... (interruptions to what you might ask yourself?).

Allow the sounds, textures, movements etc to drifting in and out of your awareness, such that you remain open to them (you needn't pretend these 'interruptions' aren't happening, but don't fix upon them,....) they are all part of the flow of this time.   



How does this reconfigure notions of flow and interruption, what would a flow of interruptions be like? How might flow itself be an interruption?

(Re)visiting and inverting 2: accumulating

Composing and building... noting and 'repeating'
Material adds upon material it emerges...

Starting dancing, following whatever movement initiation occurs to you, while paying attention to your actions.

Note a 'key'* movement idea and return to it (in repeat, inverted, to another direction for example)

Moving on.....

Then again, note your next 'key' movement ideas.... add this idea to your first - 

replay one, add in two, replay one and two, add in a third, replay one, two and three, add in a forth...

Accumulating these never quite the same materials, ....following each phrase and returning, replaying..

                                           this is an exercise in paying attention, in remembering...

 * by 'key' I mean you to select whatever movement images resonate strongly with you whilst you are dancing.

Video:

Improvisation 1 (in timelapse video)

Video:

Improvisation 2 (in real time with a light edit)

(Re)visiting and inverting 1: tracking back

If you use the metaphor of sewing - this improvisation is like making a back-stitch within a series of running stitches.

Begin your dance, using an impulse of within the body, in the room or the sounds around you to initiate your movement....

Stay with a single action/phrase a while - find out by dancing with this action/phrase some of its possibilities. ..... and then as you feel ready, let your dance 'run on'....

Then returning, going back to a previous point in the improvisation... revisit this material in order to know it otherwise and to see where else it might lead....

tracking back and forth your dance evolves....

Video: An extract from an extended improvisation filmed on a dolly 

(Re)locations 6: in isolation

Shifting small isolated actions across different parts of the body,

    .... Echoing patterns and rhythms whilst responding to the anatomy of each new location.

Video: Filmed in closed up and arranged on screen

(re)locations 5: repositioning the image

Playing with a single pose in a series of photographs....