What do we understand about process?

I would describe my process as a dance artist as consant and continuous developing, and never ending learning, as well as

• Letting go of end gaining.
• Evaluation
• observation
• whitnessing

First week back moving..

During my first week back in the new term I have taken part in a few classes, and found it easy to get back into, and am still discovering new ways of moving and witnessing. In one particular class we started with a hands on improvisation in partners where we changed roles several times as one person moved and the directed and followed using a light touch with their hands. The roles of having eyes closed also changed several times, to gain new perspectives of moving with our partner. I found it easier to move with eyes closed as I found the use of my other senses a lot more and therefore used more sensitive movements and found a deeper discovery into areas of my body moving. Another task we carried out was where we had to get into small groups with our eyes closed and try and move in unison. This encouraged the use of hearing and sound into our movement. I found this particularly interesting as I do not usually notice other dancers around me using these senses. From witnessing this I noticed the larger the group the more in unison they became, and even if they were not in unison there was a clear strong connection between the dancers at all times. This would be a useful task to carry out before choreographing in a group as the dancers became much more sensitive of each other and the space around them .

Beginning of year two

After a short break from my blog during the summer, I am going to continue writing about my developments and progress as a dance artist, as I begin my seond year studying Dance at university. Previously I discussed developments and changes in my body and moving I had experianced as part of my first year on the course. This had been developed into a Body Story which is shown mainly on this blog.

This year I aim to carry on sharing my experiances as a mover and my bodies developments, as well as write about my movement explorations and improvisations during class and rehearsals, and reflect on ho these are contributing to my development as a dance artist.

This year I am also taking part in a performance project as part of the course, invloving being part of a choreograohers company and performaing to a live audience, after an intensive rehearsal process. I understand that this experiance is a very valuable one which will have a huge impact on my development and ability as a performer and maker, therefore I will be using this blog to write about my experiances as part of the company, including my whitnessing as part of the process.

I aim to include writen reflections and journal entries, pictures, and video evidence of this.

Body story ideas

Here is a photo of an idea I am exploring for my body story. As I have previously discussed, I am focusing on the alignment of the body, and how back pain can be caused by dancing without  correct alignment, and awareness of skull to tail connection. I have been encouraged to do this as part of the course during studio practice classes and can already notice changes in my body and my dancing as we approach the end of term two. I no longer suffer with lower back pain and have overall better balance and posture. I am going to continue exploring and improving this, and I feel creating the body story will enable me to keep track of my progress and be able to look back and see my improvements, and how I can develop further.

Siobhan Davies archive scrapbook

Below is the link for the scrapbook I made on the Siobhan Davies archive website, during the library worshop. It is mainly a collection of images and videos of her work I particularly enjoyed and was interested in.

I chose to put on the video of Plain Song because i was intrigued by the way it was made for television and how this would differ from a piece made for a more traditional theatre setting.
I also chose the images because I particularly liked the formations of the dancers presented, and was interested in the different costumes worn.

http://www.siobhandaviesreplay.com/lightbox.php?removefromlightbox=9

'Move It' dance festival

On the weekend, me and a few of my peers went to the 'Move It' dance festival in London where we took part in a variety of dance classes, one of which was Graham technique. There was a strong focus on breath and contraction an release based techniques, as well as the focus on lines, during floor based and traveling phrases and  exercises. I found this very interesting and feel the techniques I learnt could be applied to my studio practice  development, as they contribute to good alignment and flow while dancing.

Duet rehearsal video

Here is a video of me and my partner rehearsing and playing with a few ideas, which we have now developed.
Just a few questions..

• Does the use of music compliment the piece?
• Is there enough use of space?
• Can you make any suggestions for further development?

Duet working progress sharing

My partner and I showed some movement material we have created as ideas for our duet. We showed the whole class and our tutor, and received feedback. The main points were...

• Go further with the exploration of rhythms made when walking, running, and stillness- music?
• Still see each other in the space, create more relationship.
• More power when running.
• make the transactions clearer, and more experimenting with changing pathways to see when we cross.
• Our movement was clear and strong.
• The idea was clear, although needs more exploration.
• The was we entered and exited the audience during the piece reflected the idea of continuous pathways.

We are now going to explore the use of music/sound, more changing pathways, and the rhythms of the body.

Nottdance festival 2011

We saw Wendy Houstoun's '50 acts' at nottdance festival. It was a physical theare performance involving:

• 'Manifestos
• Apologies and errors
• Random acts
• Small dances and big ideas
• Ghostly appearances
• Invisibility
• Stupidity
• Inexplicable feats and unexpected turns
• Eco soliloquies
• Techno idiocy'

I really enjoyed the use of movement, speach, acting, and use of props.

lea Anderson talk

We went to DMU for a talk with lea Anderson. She explained to us some of the inspirations/ideas for her choreography. In particular she talked about the use of film, and how things such as the camera focuses, scene changes, and movements influenced her choreography and use of setting, lighting, and music.
I found this interesting as i never would have thought to use these aspects of film as a stimulus for choreography.

Improvisation score

Here is a score I created during an improvisation class, also showing the rules we had to follow. We carried the task out in groups of about 10 people, and we could enter and exit the space during the task.

Duet reahearsals

This week during rehearsal time with my partner and the chance to speak to a tutor about our ideas, we have a much clearer idea of what we would like to show in our duet and how to do so. We have now decided to focus on the idea of accumulation and pathways, as well as sticking to the original idea of chance, and no fixed point of focus in space. We have been improvising with movement, in particular walking, running, crawling, rolling, stillness, galloping, jumping, and short motifs. We are now also interested in incorporating the use of symbols within our piece to represent these types of movement. We also improvised trying to use sound with our movement such as clapping and stamping. We now need to decide if we are going to use music or not, and this week we are going to see if this would work, and keep improvising around our ideas in preparation for a sharing of our work so far on Friday.

Duet choreography task motif

This is the short motif we created during the choreography class using the large pieces of paper as a score. As you can see the movement refects what we had drawn on the paper. We performed this wit the audience in a semi circle around us, and the score behind us.

Aspects to remember during jumps

• Articulation through the feet
• Not jumping with the chest
• Falling pelvis
• Continuous through pleas and jumping
• being able to see the toes when in first position
• Back and shoulders flat and soft
• Soft landing
• Seeing the space, not staring out to one point

Body Story reflections and ideas

After focusing particularly on features such as flat shoulder blades, head to tail connection, length in the spine, floating skull, pelvis falling, and many others I have found that focusing on these has really improved my posture, alignment, and overall balance and control when dancing. This has had a positive  effect on my spine. I have found since doing this I have not suffered with any lower back pain, which  had done during the previous couple of years on and off during periods of time when I was doing a lot of dancing, e.g exams and auditions. This my have been due to over arching, sticking my pelvis out and leading with the chest, which i thought created good posture. I therefore feel as if I have been taught to  correct the way I was moving before which has now had a positive effect on my back.. which means I can now dance with more ease, flow, and show a real connection between the skull and tail bone.    

Duet choreography task

The duet choreography lesson we had with Florence Peake involved taping a very big piece of paper to the floor, then one person improvising on it creaing shapes and patterns. the other person would then draw around them and draw shapes and ptterns they could ee being created from the dancing as they were doing it.
This then created a score which was colourful, and you could tell by looking back at it what kind of movement had been carried out. We then stuck it on the wall and created a motif as a duet from the score.
I really enjoyed this way of choreographing, as when we came to create the motif I found it easy to keep looking back at the score and improvise as I was looking at it, as it was on the wall next to us instead of on a smaller piece of paper in my journal. I also found that because it was bigger I could see clearer patterns.

Here are some photos of the process, and the scores.

Duet chance task photos

First duet rehearsal.. chance task

During our rehearsal we designed a chance task to carry out.

• We created 3 piles of paper, one had a number on it representing five short motifs we had created, one had a speed/dynamic, and the other had a place in the space.
• We then picked out at random one from each pile and performed the motifs how this had been arranged.

We found that we then wanted to develop the motifs further and try and include contact, travel and repetition within them, leaving us with a few short sequences that could possibly be used in our duet!

Duet mind map ideas

First duet rehearsal

My partner and I had our first rehearsal and began by making a mind map on possible ideas and themes we would like to explore within the process of creating our duet. (Shown above) Here are a few ideas we are considering so far..

• Cunningham's chance theory - No fixed point of focus in space, and moments of contact and complimenting/contrasting movement through chance. - audience in the round?
• Possible use of an object. - chair or piece of material?
• Use of sound through the body and space to create rhythms, use of music, and silence.