'Retain the capacity to laugh at your own serious intentions, even while those intentions remain serious.'

I really like this as I find I can take movement too seriously and worry that I may not be doing it right etc, so by thinking of being able to laugh at my serious intentions has encouraged me to try new ways of moving and not worry about how it may look, and to just give it a go even if it does not work or makes me feel a little out of my comfort zone. I think this is a very valuable thing to remember when creating contemporary dance.

question to explore while improvisng

'What if all of my 100 trillion cells at once choose to surrender the pattern of facing a single direction?'


I found this idea engaging, as it is refeing to the connection between mind and body, and Matthias' interest in neuroscience, by introducing the idea of the cells in the body and how they connect to our mind and our movement. This required a lot of thought while moving, as trying not to have your cells facing the same way at all seems impossible. However, this encouraged a lot of new material and I found so many new dynamics and depths to my moving. I found that by not trying to face the same way encouraged me to use many more contrasting levels, speeds, amounts of space, and details in my movement.



       

Matthias Sperling

As part of my research on Matthias, before working with him I had a look on his website which gave me an insight to his background and previous and current works, in particular his solo 'Riff' was interesting to watch and get a feel for his style of moving..

http://www.matthias-sperling.com/

Performance project!

As a second year student we must take part in a module called Performance project. I am now part of a company called Influx, and our choreographer is Matthias Sperling. So far we have had one meeting with Matthias where we carried out several improvisational tasks. One of which I found I really connected with and enjoyed was building up movement by moving from areas of the body that 'light up'. So we moved from parts of the body that were of interest or held particular tension or energy. We also moved around the idea of all the cells in the body. I found that this encouraged me to feel light and bring the space into my moving, which influenced so many new ways of moving! Matthias also encouraged us to not take ourselves too seriously and I found this also encouraged the light movement, and not to think to much into what I was doing, just to enjoy dancing improvisationaly. Another task we did involved moving this way focusing on the cells etc but traveling from one side of the room to the other without the audience realising this was our intention. This still seems like an almost impossible task but after a few attempts we found moving slower and without outwardly focusing on the finishing point, we were able to move across the space without being too obvious about it. I really enjoyed the day with Matthias and look forward to our intensive rehearsal week :)