Improvisation

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Adance may have costumes, sets or sites, props, lights, music,and text as well, and these may have more or less importance, but(most would agree) a dance isn’t a dance without a moving body. In improvised dances, the material is not limited to set sequences or patterns of movement but includes a means of finding or framing movement for view- ers as the dance occurs. For some dancemakers who work with improvised material, it is the movement that although not set, defines the work—some- thing inherent in it, something about its look or feel. For others, the interest in the movement material may be secondary to how it is found—as a trace of a process—or to how it may be juxtaposed or shaped with other movement or elements in a work.

In this chapter the issue at hand is the movement material and how it gets chosen in improvisational works. The content, or what gets communi- cated through the movement material, is a different, though somewhat related, topic. The content may simply be the movement itself. But content might also be communicated through metaphor or abstraction, narrative or commentary, et cetera.1 Whatever the materials and whatever the content, there is also a context (cultural climate and physical setting, for example) for a work that shines light on what it is about and how it is to be understood, that gives it meaning. Here we’ll look at the kinds of movement materials that improvisational dancemakers have chosen and leave the question of content (What are they communicating through the materials they have chosen?) up to you, as a viewer, to research when you see dance improvisa- tion in performance.

Materia Prima An important part of maturing as an improviser, indeed as an artist, is the process of choosing for oneself what to work with and how to work. Within what parameters, with what focus.

—s i m o n e f o r t i , “Animate Dancing”

Buckwalter, Melinda. Composing While Dancing : An Improviser's Companion, University of Wisconsin Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=3445138. Created from ucsc on 2019-04-25 12:02:06.

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Using What’s Available

Simone Forti set very particular physical conditions for her early dance constructions, anything from negotiating moving around on a slanted board or twisting while suspended in ropes to climbing over people or jumping off an unseen height. The conditions of the dance limited the available move- ment choices as a result, and captured very particular palettes of movement. For example, Huddle (1961) is a structure in which six to nine people form a tight cluster and take turns climbing over and rejoining it without ever detaching from it. Because Huddle is self-perpetuating, Forti recommends that it be done for about ten minutes. Although unset, the movement is pre- cisely defined by the physical task at hand. Another dance created for the same performance, Slant Board (1961), has three or four dancers climb on an eight-by-eight-foot board propped against a wall at a forty-five-degree angle by holding knotted ropes, with instructions to keep moving up and down, back and forth. The set-ups for these dances delimit the kind of motion avail- able, putting a thin slice of human movement on display in performance.

Key to the design is that almost anyone can do it; the dance puts ordinary movement, not stylized or technical dancing, on display. When Forti made the dances, stylized movement defined mainstream dance. Today, because of dancemakers like her, audiences are not surprised to see some pedestrian movement in a dance concert; even in ballet it’s not unheard of. But in the context of the early 1960s, Forti’s choice of task-based movement material for a dance was radical.

Later on Forti gave up these controlled dance experiments. Her focus shifted to an open-ended, less controlled process of listening to body sensa- tion and responding through movement that she had encountered in her early dance studies with Anna Halprin, a pioneer of contemporary improvi- sational dance-making based in San Francisco, California. Source material for dances came from wherever Forti found them in her environment and travels, for instance, balancing on the wobbling rocks of a crumbling wall, or observing animals in zoos, an area of research Forti continued for many years.2

Since the mid-1980s Forti has been developing an approach to movement she calls Logomotion, which she teaches and performs. The names of earlier phases, “animate dancing” and “moving the telling,” catch the flavor of the developing work. Her breakthrough for this work came when she began to connect movement and speaking through the retelling of the news (News Animations, early 1980s). These pieces, often humorous, juxtapose serious world affairs with the intimacy of the human body in movement and gesture.

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The material for these later dances arises from deep ties between speak- ing and movement—the kinesthetic imagery we often use in storytelling and its accompanying body language. In Forti’s work, this body language is not a grace note added to a story as it is told but rather a preverbal embodi- ment that helps invoke language. To give an idea of the process, Forti uses the example of the “slippery slope,” a metaphor with kinesthetic roots.3 The phrase connotes a potentially escalating and dangerous situation; Forti reconnects the phrase to its physical roots by reliving the slippery slope in movement. Her work goes beyond figures of speech, developing a unique communication system using both words and movement sourced from the sensations and kinesthetic associations the words evoke. In the shifting back and forth of emphasis between verbal meaning and physical action during the dancing, the dances playfully expose a forgotten side of language.4

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Sample Practice: Movement Memory Snapshots

We each tell about something that has stayed in our memory because of some

aspect of movement. I ask people to go right for the image that comes up. The

very moment of movement. The snapshot. And to forgo the lead-up or linear

story. I don’t say anything about moving, but it is hard not to get animated or

even stand up when you are telling a movement story. So we do. . . . When we

have gone around the circle and all have offered their snapshots, we try to play

back some of the movements we saw each other do.

—simone forti, in albright and gere, Taken by Surprise

Barbara Dilley uses “everyday” movement as material for her dances. As a dancer for Merce Cunningham’s company when she was in her twenties, Dilley was influenced by Cage’s and Cunningham’s ideas on art-making. John Cage, composer and Cunningham’s artistic (as well as life) partner, had expanded his musical palette to include all possible sound, “even those ordi- narily thought to be undesirable” as music, and visual artists in the Cage- Cunningham circles used ready-mades, found objects, as art.5 Dilley was also part of the dance scene surrounding the Judson Dance Theater, which had started with composition classes taught by Robert Ellis Dunn, Cage’s pro- tégé, at the Cunningham studios just a few years before she joined the com- pany. She saw and performed in the works of the Judson choreographers, who

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were experimenting with non-stylized and pedestrian—ordinary, everyday— movement as dance.

After leaving the Cunningham Company, Dilley continued to dance for Yvonne Rainer, a Judson choreographer based in New York City. Dilley became a member of the Grand Union, an improvisational dance theater collective that formed out of Rainer’s Continuous Project—Altered Daily. In the later years of the Grand Union (1970–76) there was no preplanned mate- rial for performance, though ideas might be recycled from one performance to the next. Material was taken from whatever was at hand—sets, props, cos- tumes, and music were improvised, as were movement and text—including any current emotional issues between collective members. Dilley found this blurring of boundaries between performance and everyday life exhilarating but often personally confusing. The mix of the two on stage left her feeling uneasy and raised many questions about the practice of improvisation.6

In the summer of 1974 Dilley heard Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of Shambhala Buddhism, speak at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Dilley was struck by Trungpa Rinpoche, who, in speaking of Buddhist practice, addressed many of her questions regarding her experience of dance improvisation.7 She was especially taken with the concept of Dharma Art, an art that springs from the expression of “the appreciation of things as they are,” the ordinary and everyday, rather than as an isolated act of creative genius. Dilley became a practicing Buddhist.8

In her own work, Dilley starts with pedestrian vocabulary. No fancy dance moves or personal vocabulary, no need for invention, cleverness, or original- ity. Simple everyday, pedestrian movement. Dilley will limit this vocabulary even further; for example, she will start off with “five basic moves”: walking standing, turning, arm swinging, and crawling. She will use these in specific structures she has designed, like corridors, described below, or grids (see chapter 4). These limitations create simplicity, which informs the dancers about their movement habits, seeds awareness, and results in what Dilley refers to as “elegant pedestrian,” everyday movement done with mindful- ness.9 Later on, Dilley opens up the limitations—all vocabulary of gesture is possible. Attention expands.

Add the study of influence: how we take on the movements of those around us in our own movement, copying bits and snatches, taking on tim- ings, the impulse to move and change what we’re doing when someone else initiates a change. Dilley uses her structures, for example, her corridors, as a laboratory to discover the many ways dancers are influenced—first of all,

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just noticing that we are influenced and then observing who and what influ- ences us as we dance, and how and why they do so. Also up for study is our attitude toward being influenced. Dilley notes that imitating is often an uncomfortable practice for modern dancers, whose training is based on invention and originality. Yet we are imitating all the time. Dilley finds that speaking of influence rather than imitation helps open up the study and brings our natural tendency toward imitation to consciousness while widen- ing the lens of imitation to include more subtle exchanges.

Another facet of working with influence: being able to accept influences, to pick them up and put them down; letting them arise, dwell, and fall away like they are thoughts in meditation. Dilley writes, “There is so much move- ment sourcing just by looking at ordinary movement. If you really pay atten- tion to it, it’s just endless.”10

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Sample Practice: Corridors

To start, three people travel back and forth in parallel (imagined and self-

determined) corridors. Each must stay within the corridor that he or she starts

in. At first the vocabulary is limited to five pedestrian movements: walking,

standing, turning, arm swinging, and crawling. Notice the influence and

exchange between dancers that takes place naturally. Next, the movers are

allowed to switch corridors, but only at the ends, creating a new corridor

between or alongside the original ones. This development creates a new flow

pattern. Later, personal movement vocabulary may be introduced.

—barbara dilley, Fearless Dancing Project, summer 2004

Penny Campbell feels that dance improvisation starts with the basic skill of being aware of oneself in the moment. She starts beginners off with a body scan—a movement of the attention through the body looking for sensation and subtle movements already present. She instructs students: “Don’t stop anything, don’t exaggerate anything, Let the body be, let it express. Let it continue doing what it is doing.” She encourages students to stick with these subtle movements, let them register in perception, and let the perceptions grow. In her master’s thesis she writes, “Movement, any movement, is the raw material for dance, but we regularly ignore the ever-present activity that percolates through us. . . . A return to this rich resource of intrinsic motion is

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crucial for the improvising dancer. . . . No matter how complex the move- ment eventually becomes, this is the basic underpinning: paying attention.”11

It’s this skill of being present and adaptable while dancing with a group that can eventually lead to “ensemble awareness.” According to Campbell, ensem- ble awareness is a sense of what’s developing in the dance in a given moment and how the individual’s movement choices play into that development.

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Sample Practice: Matching Practice

First students stand in a circle and scan their bodies. Next, they open up their

peripheral vision and other senses, especially hearing and the enveloping

sensations from the skin. Maintaining this listening to the inner and outer

worlds, they are ready to mirror each other, starting from a simple stand facing

one another in the circle. Students reflect everything as best as possible in their

bodies. I layer the directives: “Don’t say ‘no’ to any movement seen,” such as a

smile or scratch, and “If you see it, do it! And don’t stop until you see something

else.” Sometimes someone will think to introduce a movement, but this is a

different exercise (follow the leader). Subtle movement becomes amplified as

it ripples through the body of the ensemble.

—penny campbell, May 2008

Dancing with All You’ve Got

Susan Sgorbati asks dancers to take all their influences from the various movement studies in their lives (dance techniques, somatic studies, yoga, martial arts, and other disciplines such as sports, competitive dance, et cetera) and play with and investigate them in solo improvisation practice to develop a “personal movement vocabulary.” In this study, there is space for a dancer to build his or her own techniques for sourcing movement, to develop skills such as balancing and turning, as well as to integrate what he or she has learned in technique class into movement made under the less prescribed circumstances of improvisation. In Sgorbati’s work, a personal movement vocabulary is something an improvising dancer has at his or her fingertips to use as an ingredient in solo or ensemble work. In her concept of building a personal movement vocabulary, Sgorbati articulates what improvisers are con- stantly doing—integrating and assimilating influences through movement.

For Sgorbati’s ensemble work, Emergent Improvisation, improvising skills are more important than a particular method of sourcing material. A dancer

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figures out how to source his or her own movement and brings this skill to the group. Another skill identified in Emergent Improvisation is recognizing a form as it emerges in the course of an improvisation and contributing to its development, which could be something as simple as joining a group mov- ing in unison, choosing to “frame” a solo dance or a main group event, or something a bit more complex, like accumulating, shadowing, or paralleling the material in some way. As dancers contribute to the creation of the devel- oping form, they use movement material that supports the form, accumu- lating more dance material. A self-sustaining dance evolves. New forms may emerge, adding to the complexity! Dancers learn to be on the lookout for unfamiliar patterns and develop a certain tolerance for ambiguity in the process, while the dancing takes shape.12

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Sample Practice: Solo Practice for Emergent Improvisation: Physical

Vocabulary

The practice of emergent improvisation focuses on the unexplored possibilities

of organization and structure in the process of dance and music improvisation.

The Solo Practice contains four elements: embodiment, physical vocabulary,

spatial environment, and focus on the particular. Here is a sample of one of the

practices for physical vocabulary.

Every dancer is capable of discovering a personal movement vocabulary.

Create a series of movements that build a phrase. Repeat the phrase by altering

it in as many ways as you can. Suggestions are to repeat certain movements in

the phrase, retrograde the phrase, change the focus, the dynamics, the

textures, and the speed. Practice the phrase with different spatial patterns and

using different levels. Explore a part of the phrase that expands your technical

ability (balance, turns, etc.) and deepens your physical sensations. Finish by

performing a 2-minute improvisation using your phrase as a structure that

includes a beginning, development, and conclusion, spontaneously selecting

what interests you from the previous practice.

—Susan Sgorbati, July 2008

Regarding the kinds of movement dancers think to make while improvis- ing, Katie Duck says, “You’ll do what your teachers taught you.”13 For her, improvising isn’t about generating new movement, nor is she concerned with the specifics of how a dancer arrives at his or her movement; rather, skills

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such as “remembering to exit,” counterpointing, and using “biology” (i.e., playing with the rush a performer gets, for example, from being up close to an audience) are what makes the improvisation tick, not the particulars of the movements themselves. “Just don’t work on it during the improvisation,” she says about a dancer’s movement.14 Her concern is presence; you are “on” when you are on stage, not getting there, or preparing to dance.

Duck has an interesting perspective on technique. Rather than as the learning of a particular or preferred way to move, she sees technique as preparing a dancer to choose one thing over another by understanding what his or her body can and can’t do—by knowing its limits. To that purpose, her dance technique class combines elements from ballet, modern dance, and Contact Improvisation and includes postmodern techniques. Duck values technical training, and her dancers are often highly trained. But in impro- visation choosing and editing are also key skills, otherwise the number of available choices will quickly overwhelm a developing dance, no matter how great the dancer! Duck believes it is the knowing of his or her limitations that help a dancer to make the quick decisions—and exciting ones—in improvi- sation. Postmodern training, especially release technique, emphasizes free- ing the body in order to have a wider range of possibility. But focusing on all the possibilities available in any moment may swamp an improviser in performance. Duck concentrates on skills of choice-making—culling move- ment rather than generating it.15 And yet it’s not enough to dance well and

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Sample Practice: Looking into Biology

Take a pass across the studio floor so that you are forced to create movement

that carries you forward in space—either with upright patterns or on the floor.

While you are creating forward movement through the space, notice and play

with the potential that the eyes contain to see in close, medium, and long

ranges, exactly how a camera works when you change focuses.

Now cross the floor in the same manner with a partner, occasionally looking

your partner in the eye. Try to not stare—or “over focus”—while playing with

the different focuses of the eye. Using the eyes while creating movement and

going forward in space may make you feel dizzy at first. Looking your partner

in the eye needs to be a clear action—not passive—so that the “biological”

impact is felt. Make it a clear interactive moment in time.

—katie duck, July 2008

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make sound choices—it’s the dynamics between improvisers that create excitement and interest in the dance. Duck suggests using what she refers to as “biology” to create and raise energy in a dance.

Going beyond What You Do

Nina Martin admonishes dance improvisers to “kill the choreographer” in themselves, that internal choreographer that likes to plan ahead, set something up, and consider what movement will work best next in an improvisation.16 (She also choreographs and has quite a sense of humor.) When it comes to improvisation, she is interested in circumventing and subverting both the mind’s (the choreographer) and the body’s (sensory and kinetic) habits. She speaks of “dancing the brain,” that is, at the speed of the neuronal activity— what she calls the “Neuro state”—and not from the planning mind or sens- ing body. The time it takes to deliberate over a movement slows dancers’ reaction time, which Martin finds can make improvisation plodding for an audience.

The Neuro state practices are part of her ReWire/Dancing States, which also include Kinetic states—dancing the body (see practice below). In the Neuro state practices, Martin trains improvisers to work at a fast brain speed, gearing the dancer to enter an improvisation with no plan and fewer precon- ceived attitudes toward existing material. When you are “in,” that is, onstage improvising, you react to what you find. Her practices aim at developing a

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Sample Practice: The Fussy Baby: A ReWire Exercise in the Kinetic State from

Articulating the Solo Body

The dancer lies on the floor and shifts from position to position as if trying to

get comfortable like a fussy baby might. The idea is to make the shifts regularly

like a metronome and at a speed that doesn’t allow the mind to plan (or even

care!) what the next move will be or the body to discover where it is comfort-

able. Move, pause, move, pause. If you find yourself able to think ahead, step

your internal metronome up a notch. You may find this practice of quick shifts

and “low ambition” movement opens up possibilities for movement invention as

it releases you from your inner censor/judge/choreographer into spontaneous

movement.

—nina martin, Ensemble Thinking, May 2006

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speed-reading of the space and the ability to respond quickly and with clarity to that read. Postmodern and new dance training often emphasizes sensory awareness work, which requires, at least at first, a slower, more deliberate rela- tionship to the body-mind—listening internally, tuning in to develop move- ment material. Although Martin’s training may seem to come from a different place, she feels her work also takes somatic approach. After all, she is work- ing with the brain and nervous system to get at preconscious movement, which “may be an impossible state to reach, but an informative research.”17 Through her training, she offers options to the tendency to build material in

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Dancing at “brain speed.” From left: Mary Reich and Nina Martin doing a Neuro state practice from the ReWire/Dancing States work. Photo © Carl Yamamoto

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improvisation more deliberately. She calls the work Ensemble Thinking (group im provisation) and Articulating the Solo Body (solo improvisation).

Playing with What’s Given

In Richard Bull’s Choreographic Improvisation technique, choreographic skill is a partner in the improvised moment. Bull was interested in making the choreographic process and the collective negotiation of the choreography visible as an improvisation developed. He often used speaking in his dances, referencing the progress of the dance, to accomplish this transparency. For a dance improviser, being able to remember physically what has already hap- pened in the dance and being able to reference those earlier choices are vital skills.

Dancers become aware of how the improvised material is taking shape by recognizing a formal structuring element underlying a developing dance. Take a simple spatial configuration like a diagonal. A dancer, noticing a diag- onal forming in the space, might reference it by joining it or restating it later in the dance. Or he might catch on to an arising movement motif, and repeat or vary it or the quality of the movement or alter its relationship to the music.18 Whatever the formal elements the dancers recognize, they reinforce them (both physically and verbally) by referencing previous material or in - troducing new material that bolsters the form. Because there are many levels of compositional structure to consider, the skill of developing the material of a dance lies in this recognition of formal elements and then in figuring out how to make them apparent in order to continue the danced dialogue. In this way, Bull and his dancers looked at how the dance was taking shape to create a basis for choosing and developing material.

To counteract a natural tendency to repeat familiar movement and to broaden their movement palette, Bull and collaborators Cynthia Novack and Peentz Dubble devoted days to research and development of movement material. They devel oped a practice they called “playpen.” In playpen they pushed themselves to do awkward, physically challenging, or taxing move- ment, and learned movement from styles unfamiliar to them. To broaden their options in the choreographed-improvised moment, they also used movement quality de scriptors in various combinations as another way to push themselves into unfamiliar physical territory.19

Dana Reitz refers to her work as the “radical middle,” as it falls somewhere in between the worlds of choreography and improvisation. She works with

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palettes of selected movement but doesn’t set them in the traditional choreo- graphic sense. She considers movement material, her choreography, to be materia prima, an entry point into the investigation of the dance.

According to Reitz, a dance must be lived through. In her solo perfor- mance work, she listens to her movement—both previously set choreography and movement chosen in the moment—and lets the listening inform what will come next. She gives herself the option to change the movement’s tim- ing or relation to space or to leave material out if it doesn’t fit in the moment. Attending to the movement through the manipulation and placement of her material reveals even the simplest movement’s richness and inherent poten- tial. This treatment of material in performance—through phrasing and other choices regarding dynamics, spatial considerations, light, and costuming— brings life to the dance.20

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Sample Practice: Playpen

Create your own playpen. Choose a movement or movements from a dance style

that you are unfamiliar with, or any move that you would like to learn. Try

teaching it to yourself (and your “playpen playmates”). Or improvise movement

combining one or two of these “effort actions” from Rudolf Laban’s Movement

Analysis: Float, Punch, Glide, Slash, Wring, Dab, Flick, Press. Finally, identify one

or two edges for yourself, such as aerobic movement, continuous flow, balance,

a less familiar Laban effort action, et cetera. Design an improvisation that

pushes this edge by focusing on it in a timed improvisation. Adjust the

parameters of your improvisation until you are satisfied that you have found

and pushed your edge of comfort/endurance/familiarity.

—peentz dubble, on Richard Bull, June 2007

Sample Practice: Adapting a Phrase

Create a short phrase of movement that you can repeat. Choose several new

pathways through the space, and explore the phrase in each one. Adapt the

movement to this path as you perform it, listening to how the path changes the

movement—its timing and quality, as well as any other aspects that may arise

for you.

—dana reitz, July 2008

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In Nancy Topf ’s improvisation work a dancer looks to the body for material—using explorations of anatomy as a source for movement. These explorations are built around the study of anatomical imagery. The study starts with appreciation of anatomical form, cultivated by looking at the skeleton and anatomy books, and by holding bones and feeling their various shapes and weight. Topf ’s work, a variation of Anatomical Release Tech- nique, which she pioneered along with Marsha Paludan, Mary Fulkerson, and John Rolland in the late 1960s and 1970s, mainly focuses on the bones, but in cludes certain muscles, especially the psoas, a muscle of deep spinal support, as well.

In Topf ’s work, which she called Topf Technique and Dynamic Anatomy, dancers study a specific image of a particular anatomical structure, both visu- ally and through touch. For example, the sacrum’s concave, scoop shape is compared to the soup ladle, and then felt with the hands on the skeleton and on the body, one’s own as well as a partner’s. The mechanics of the structure are also considered; for example, the sacrum is the keystone of the arch of the pelvis. As a bearer of weight and transmitter of force—from the spine through the pelvic halves to the legs and floor—it further develops the dynamics of an image. Drawing the structure and tracing these dynamics as cycles of support, often repetitively, on paper and above or on the body with the hands, reinforces the image and helps bring it into movement.

Once the specifics of the image are laid down, the dancer is invited to research the image through movement. In exploring it physically, the dancer follows internal kinesthetic sensation, investigating through movement what he or she had experienced through sight and touch. This research becomes

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Sample Practice: Tai Chi Hands: The Gesture of Sacrum

I want to show you one more thing with the hands. It has to do with the sacrum

and one of the first hand movements of Tai Chi. Place your hands with the

palms facing down, arms straight out in front of you. This is the gesture: You

draw your hands back toward you. Then let the heels of the hands feel heavy

and draw them back and then drop down. The hand becomes the curve of

sacrum. You have made the gesture of sacrum. When I do that movement with

my hands I can think about my sacrum. I can imagine the form and then make

contact with the bottom of spine in my mind while using my hands.

—nancy topf, “The Anatomy of Center”

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material for dances. Topf was intrigued by the recurring qualities of the dances created in this way: for example, a “sacrum dance,” because of the sacrum’s shape and function in the body as weight bearer, had a particular weighted and grounded dynamic. In contrast, a dance exploring the stern- oclavicular joint (the shoulder girdle attachment to the sternum) is lighter, airier—because of its relation to the mobility and reach of the arms.21

Mary Overlie uses viewpoints—the elements of theater—as frames of ref- erence to focus a dancer’s or an actor’s attention and perception in the task of making performance. Overlie’s work is influential in both dance and theater—she is one of the founding members of and has taught for many years at New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing. She created the Six Viewpoints, which have been adapted and widely used in the theater world.

In this work, Overlie identifies perspectives that directors, actors, chore- ographers, dancers, and audience use to create and read performance: space, shape, time, movement, emotion, and story. These have many applications; regarding dance improvisation, one possibility is to source movement from each of the Viewpoints individually, which develops versatility in performers who might be used to working primarily or habitually from just one or two perspectives.22

For example, to build material for a dance concerning the Viewpoint space, improvisers might focus primarily on the placement of their movements in the stage space or perhaps the relative space between elements, such as objects and people. A phrase done in a far upstage corner and then repeated down front is one simple way a performer might give the audience an experi- ence of space (see also chapter 4). Focusing on shape, improvisers consider the design of the body as a shape in space. Overlie says, “When you isolate shape as a separate focus, you find that constant activity is not required onstage. Instead, like a vase in the window, the actor’s visual presence inter- acts in the scene with a highly active language of its own.”23 For the View- point time, improvisers might choose to work with rhythm, varying speed, duration, or a shift from habitual timing of their actions, what Overlie calls “unusual time” (see also chapter 4).

Rather than a specific emotion, the Viewpoint emotion focuses on the im - pact of the sheer presence of the performer detached from a specific story- line. Overlie’s concept of emotion is inclusive: an emotion is not a single tone but a complex of them, like the bouquet of a wine that includes a variety of notes that may harmonize or clash with each other. To investigate the

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emotional impact of presence, performers begin by sitting still and allowing themselves to observe and be observed simultaneously, without suppressing their own thoughts and feelings. Overlie says, “The basis of the language of emotion in Viewpoints work is our ability to interact in the present from a natural flow of being. . . . This focus demonstrates to actors that they are interesting to watch and capable of being watched without a role to carry them.”24 This includes, in the case of the improvising dancer, being interest- ing to watch without the need for continuous movement invention. With an expanded experience of his or her own presence and its emotional impact, the performer can include it as a conscious element in unspoken dialogue with an audience.

Movement seems a strange category—isn’t all dance movement? This Viewpoint is concerned with shaping material from a focus on kinesthetics— feeling momentum, movement pathways, and flow (a popular choice in con- temporary modern dance), or stopping the flow, working with the muscles in a manner beyond a common, utilitarian usage (see the sample exercise below). Overlie describes the Viewpoint story as “narrative as flexible logic”

26 M A T E R I A P R I M A

Mary Overlie, right window, dancing in her Glassed Imagination II at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York City, May 1977. Photo © Theo Robinson

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or “an arrangement of information” without the usual standards for prioritiz- ing that information. By treating it as a collection of data with its own implied logic, Overlie’s concept of story embraces the linear and nonlinear narrative as well as the abstract. Stories are as easily told with inanimate objects or through movement as they are through spoken or written word. Overlie says, “People are natural sleuths—it is a necessity of life. We must find out what something means and where it fits into the structure that we know. Accept- ing this condition, the actor can play very complicated logics, because he or she knows the audience will be working to find out what is being said.”25 Likewise, this redefinition of story frees the improvising dancer to be in dia- logue with the presenting logic of the movement material rather than im- posing a conventional or preconceived one, such as a beginning-middle-end progression.

M A T E R I A P R I M A 27

Sample Practice: Looking for the Voice of Movement,

One of the Six Viewpoints

Viewpoint—movement (Perceptual ability to experience and identify with kinetic sensation.)

As you begin to look for the “voice” of movement, be very cautious that you are not: adding exterior rhythm, or organizing or formalizing the movement

into designed shapes.

Practice: Kinetic Feedback/Doing what the Body Wants, Solo work.

This practice derives movement from sensation.

Standing in a studio, bring your concentration to the level of sensation in

your body. Allow your body to move from sensation and to move to create

sensation. Allow the sensory dialogue to flow in a “logical” stream and observe

how the kinetic logic is set up. What is the vocabulary of this sensation?

Benefit: This work will not create very beautiful movement. The practice is

not designed to stimulate movement invention or creation. It is designed to

strengthen the link between body, feeling and action.

—mary overlie, www.sixviewpoints.com

Dances sourced from a single Viewpoint have clarity of focus and develop their own particular character in dialogue with that Viewpoint. Of course there are infinite possible solutions, but a dance based on time could bring out a range of dynamics and use space (for example) in service of dynamics— rushing upstage, or a slow cross of the stage. Whereas a dance that focuses on

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space highlights relationships in the space—the body standing in the far cor- ner against the wall, crawling along a diagonal, running in a small circle down- stage. These actions have different timings, but they primarily bring aware- ness to the stage space. The Matrix is a further development of work with the Viewpoints, allowing a fluid shifting between them during performance.

Choreographer William Forsythe creates his unique vocabulary partly through improvisational means and sometimes uses improvised movement in his ballets. He thinks of movement as prescriptions. Movement is gener- ated according to rules of operation, or algorithms, whose parameters can be fiddled with, tweaked. What makes an arabesque recognizable as an arabesque? What is its formula? How far can the envelope be pushed before it becomes “not an arabesque”? By specifying a rigorous balletic lexicon with- out ballet’s preferences for certain facings or traditional relationships of body parts (e.g., épaulement: head tilted, shoulder forward against opposite hip) he creates a variable vocabulary for his dances.26 He works, for instance, with set phrases of material that can be “operated on” by dancers improvisation- ally, or he gives them (or finds with them, as cocreators) algorithms with which to make up their own movements.27

Forsythe uses these algorithms, which he also refers to as “technologies,” to create a palette of interesting movement for composing his dances. His CD-ROM, Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye (available to the public), is used as a training tool to familiarize dancers new to his work with some of the more often used algorithms, for example, uni- versal writing, using the body to inscribe the alphabet in space, or fragmen- tation, deconstructing a specific phrase spatially (e.g., changing its facings, stringing it out by making it travel, omitting parts, et cetera) to create an improvised variation.28 The algorithms are fairly specific in their instruction, giving the dancer a focus yet allowing him or her choice. The algorithms are designed to engage the entire body in unusual movement patterns, rather than just the limbs or just the torso in isolation, for example. A noticeable byproduct of their usage is the dancers’ intense focus, which is necessary in order to create the movement. Forsythe’s ballets are remarkable for this energy of focus as well as for their movement material that expands the bal- let lexicon.

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1 F I E L D N O T E S 4

My in-depth formal study of improvisation began with Nancy Topf, whose focus on anatomical imagery as a source for the generation of movement interested me with my background in science, athletics, and technical danc- ing. In fact, Topf saw her work, in part, as a way to improve technique. In it, the process of generating movement was primary; it was the movement that suggested the shape and structure of the dance. Later, I discovered qigong and encountered improvised forms within that discipline, studying with Professor Chen Hui-Xian at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in Portland and others. A similar principle was at work in these improvised exercises: in the exploration of energetic anatomy (e.g., the meridian path- ways of flow), movement arose. These movements, I speculated, could have eventually developed into the multiple and various qigong forms that we know today, whether Soaring Crane, Jade Body, or Wild Goose qigong. I took with me to graduate school a curiosity in the forming of movement aris- ing from these various kinds of anatomical investigations—which was imme- diately challenged.

I encountered in succession the work of Richard Bull (taught by George Russell through the Graduate Liberal Studies program at Wesleyan Univer- sity), Susan Sgorbati, and Dana Reitz (both at Bennington College, where I did my MFA), all of whom had different approaches to treating the material of the improvised dance. In Choreographic Improvisation technique, we

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Sample Practice: U-ing, Rotating Inscription, and Tubing

Pick a point on or in your body and inscribe the letter U in space with this point. Be sure to include points on your torso and interior points like your organs; the

idea is not to simply write from the extremities as in regular writing but to find

unfamiliar ways of moving. In rotating inscription a dancer develops skill in writing with as many parts of the body as possible, shifting from one to the

next. Tubing—now, instead of writing onto a “blackboard” in space, start writing on the inside of a long tube, so that the body moves through space. Get

the feel for the kind of movement this exercise creates, then drop the detail of

the task and follow the feel of the movement into dancing.

—william forsythe, February 2008

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often started with a simple structure that generated movement material (for Bull’s Palindrome, see chapter 4), or a short, repeatable improvised sequence. We played with it and developed facility with the manipulation of material. The process of sourcing movement wasn’t belabored. Improvised movement became fodder for something else: a shape-shifting discourse. We weren’t inventing a new language syllable by syllable; we were the debate club—and in any debate, you learn to make your point quickly and as eloquently as pos- sible. It was a tough lesson for me, with my particular predilection toward a more deliberate process based in a slower felt-sense time, but I began to detach from that deep and slow sourcing and to be curious about shaping movement at higher speeds.

Susan Sgorbati’s alternative was a happy compromise for me. Her work relied on the individual dancer in the ensemble having a “personal movement vocabulary”—his or her own method for sourcing movement—that was brought to the table in group improvisation. She deemphasized the impor- tance of a particular sourcing process; rather she suggested many to her stu- dents, letting them choose. The dancers focused on the establishing of form arising in the ensemble work. In Sgorbati’s work, I could add my previous technical training into the mix with my anatomical explorations. I began the work of integrating my past influences into a personal movement vocabulary.

I learned from Dana Reitz a performative aspect of improvised material: not to get hung up on sourcing (or re-sourcing) material during perform- ance. That work has been done in the creating and rehearsal of the impro- vised dance and all the structuring and choice making that might entail: an a priori movement palette, a score or a system for keeping track of the progress of the dance, the lighting, the costuming. Trying to re-create and reconnect with what initially compelled me about a particular choice once onstage in front of an audience could be frustrating. Rather, I learned to refocus on the moment of the movement’s unfolding, allowing myself to have a potentially new experience. The performance didn’t have to be satisfying in the same way it had been the last time. This work deemphasized the preciousness of sourcing the material in order to discover various qualities that might lay dor- mant in any particular movement. This attitude allowed for fresh discovery in performance.

Keeping it fresh—at some point, sooner or later, the question of habitual movement arises. “I’ve done that movement a million times before.” Do I get bored and want to change, expand, and develop new movement? How do I go about it? Some dancemakers address this issue by creating practices that

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push them into unfamiliar territory, such as Richard Bull’s Play Pen or Nina Martin’s ReWire/Dancing States. Others, like Katie Duck, accept habitual movement as a given limitation—as Duck says, “You’ll do what your teach- ers taught you”—and focus on performance practices (using biology) to rejuvenate familiar material. Penny Campbell and the Architects’ practice of getting to know and accept your “shtick,” the movement material you fall back on when tired or nervous in performing improvisation, was very useful for me. Observing and acknowledging my habits helped me to be less critical of myself, stay present, and, in the end, expand my range.

In my encounter of many different teachers of improvised works, I began to question: “What is the purpose of the work they are sharing with me?” I started to classify each of them loosely as an artist who worked from a material base or one who worked from a form base. Was the artist offering a particular process of generating or sourcing material? I thought of this as material-based work. Or was he or she most interested in how I placed, re - stated, or integrated whatever movement I contributed to the class/ensemble/ performance? I thought of this as form-based work. This understanding helped me navigate whatever skills I was learning and not reject them out of hand if they weren’t familiar to the way I was used to working.

My favorite memory of the clash of cross-purposes was a workshop on the Forsythe Information Technologies taught at the Boston Ballet studios. Helen Picket, a former ballet dancer in Forsythe’s company, had taught us, mostly modern/postmodern dancer/choreographers, a few days’ worth of the technologies when a question arose: “So how do you compose with these methods?” We students for the most part had been introduced to improvisa- tion as part of a dance composition class in college and were used to consid- ering it in the context of making dances. The question confused Picket at first. The purpose of the Forsythe technologies she shared with us was to generate movement, which Forsythe arranged in his choreographies—material for his dances. Forsythe’s technologies weren’t compositional tools; they were col- ors in his palette. I found the collision of the two worlds most clarifying!

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1 I N T E R L U D E 4

So Many Influences, So Little Time . . .

There is so much movement influence in our lives that filters through us and becomes our dance “background”: not just our various teachers but other movement in our lives, such as sports, social dancing, injuries and reha- bilitations, exercises, bodywork. Add to this the performances we’ve seen, which influence what we think of as dance and define what dance is. And the culture we’ve grown up in and its relationship to dance and the body also affect our understandings. There are many more influences I am sure I am missing, but you get the point. Even if you don’t think you have had much dance training, you could make a long list of movement influences.

Here are mine in roughly chronological order:

Doing yoga with Hittleman in front of the TV at age 3 Dancing at Miss Mimi’s ballet school Spraining ankle ice skating, getting thrown from horse at five years old Growing up with dachshunds and ducks Hanging out at community theater rehearsals and being dragged to

the opera Horseback riding, body surfing, and rock climbing Mr. Richie’s circus-influenced gymnastic team and Mr. Wilhelm’s

bareback riding acrobatics Cheerleading in eighth grade The movie The Turning Point Diving Bad back sprain from my own choreography in college Peggy Lawler’s one-woman barnstorm performances Eiko and Koma, Oskar Schlemmer reconstructions, and Noh Dance

come to Cornell Losing a felt-sense of theoretical physics and finding my body through

dance Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Ashton’s Cinderella Cecchetti Ballet and Miss Craske, the tendus and tales of Meher Baba

on her back porch New York Theater Ballet, meeting James Waring and Michel Fokine

through their ballets

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Working for next-generation modernists: Chris Gillis, Matthew Nash, Jumay Chu, Ellen Cornfield

Nancy Topf and Dynamic Anatomy Qigong with Chen Hui Xian The Lean Years: massage school and finding Contact Improvisation in

Connecticut Graduate School: Bennington College Earthdance, more Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement,

improvisers from all over—the good, the bad, the ugly—all beautiful

Late nights at Contact Quarterly

Are we only born to be mime machines? To copy and pass on? To colo- nize? Is there more to it than that? How do we digest all this influence? How are we to be not simply carbon copies or flags in the wind. It takes time to take it on—the study part, the going to performances, and so forth. And it takes more time to take it in—digest or spit out, metabolize, detoxify our movement influences. How do we find our own movement interests amid the flotsam and jetsam, the swine and the pearls? And swim?

Here is my homemade digestive remedy: Take it on / Take it in: simile and metaphor practice.

First try an idea or an image on your body, in a representational mode, as best you can. Copy, mimic, take a shot at it (simile phase). Keep working with it—watch and wait for a transformation to occur. Let go. Suddenly you are in it, no longer acting it from the outside, but knowing it from the inside; you’ve made it your own through experience (metaphor phase). Watch for the transition!

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