Personal Response Stuff

So, this is where things get interesting. I've been meaning to get to this for a while, and it seems sort of out of date now, but, well, still relevant.
Day one of the Institute with Gerri, I found myself in what was I thought a workshop, based around technique, in a room with very different movers. I found myself struggling with the notion of experience and countering it with the idea of professionalism. I kept asking: "what is my job here?" At each turn, I found a different answer, and a different challenge. I think in the end all, the easiest approach was to simplify things: my job is simply to learn from my experiences, whatever they may be. By doing that I think I opened up doors to new possibilities of learning that continue to grow.
Blind lead is always a wonderful learning tool: what strikes me the most is how people's personalities are expressed in how they choose to lead or follow. Creating movement from this experience was also enlightening - the pathways of memorable movement patterns were very clear and easy to recreate because of the aspect of touch involved, and the focus and attention directed to one's partner. Scripting a phrase and then taking that experience and placing it over the original material was an interesting way of inserting meaning, intent and familiarity into movement that had been given to you. It added possibilities of a narrative, visceral, or emotional experience to be layered onto the movement. As a result we had a brief discussion about different processes and the need for different adaptations. Different dancers scripted the same phrase very differently, resulting in very different subtexts. This process allowed room for different adaptations and learning processes to take place with different dancers (very different kinds of movers) performing the same movement phrase. At the end of the day I realized that "doing the job" never changes - regardless of who is in the room - be it young experienced movers capable of high virtuosic dancing, someone in their 4th dance class ever, or someone adapting the movement due to physical limitations. In fact, I realized in some ways the job becomes more challenging - as you become even more aware of your place and your role in such a diverse group, instead of struggling to stand out, you struggle to work at a high level while still allowing room for everyone else.