Finding New Meaning

Sitting in the Dance Exchange offices on Sunday with no complaints. We're going into the first day of our Teen Exchange Institute tomorrow for which I've had a hand in recruiting and planning, and will also be leading at different times throughout next week. I'm excited to see who's in the room tomorrow and how they will respond to the week, having had such a large hand in the delivery of this institute.

The last few days I've had the opportunity to partake in rehearsals for Funny Uncles, learning set material, or recapturing it from video with the dancers and improvising to create new material. This creative process, led by Peter (Artistic Director and creative lead on Funny Uncles) reminded me of a useful tool that I have had yet to talk about. I've found Essencing within the institutes and within this process, to be a tool that requires a particular degree of focus, attention and creative skills on behalf of the dancers, while also being extremely accessible to anyone, and in fact inviting different movement adaptations because of it's structure. For these reasons it works very well in creating human, honest, shared movement material that remains interesting to the eye. In a way, Essencing is a prime example of how expertise are used and shared at the Dance Exchange.

In the Funny Uncles process Peter had the dancers do some topic focused writing, and then improvise from that writing. Essencing comes in when other dancers watch the improvisation and then put together a phrase based on what they are able to draw, (or essence) from what they witnessed. A chain of essencing can then continue, resulting in all kinds of material if the dancers continue sharing and essencing each other's movement putting together various phrases that are each unique to their own bodies but have significant overlapping images.

When using this tool in the institute it occurred to me as an interesting way of editing material - to ask an outside eye (dancer or non dancer) to watch and then give back whatever movements stood out to them - thereby allowing the choreographer to find those "golden" moments that stood out for someone else, and to edit the unmemorable. It also places significant importance on the "outside eye" and requires a significant degree of impartiality and willingness to play on behalf of the creator.

It's also a great improvisational structure having dancers enter a space - all essencing from the same phrase, and interacting however they wish.

I realize some of these tools are not new (perhaps none of them are) - many of these ideas are familiar to those of us used to a variety of creative processes. I think what is new and most significant is the ability to articulate the tools in such a way that allows us to find new meaning, create new applications for the tool, and teach them in a way that is accessible to anyone. I think this is a huge key in how and why the Dance Exchange has developed their creative methodology in a way that allows them to work in this "horizontal synthesized way of being", whereby community dance and professional dance all live on the same plane, creativity becomes accessible, and everyone is able to discover their own level of expertise when it comes to creating movement whether they've been doing it for 50 years (as Martha Wittman has - long time senior company member of the Dance Exchange) or if in their first generating movement class ever. A well defined and accessible creative methodology is something that I would like to see developed more within dance communities. I think it could be huge for the viability and success of the art form in general, (by making our work accessible, we can not only underline the significance of creativity in everyday life, we also welcome our audiences into our world as opposed to alienating or marginalizing them.) Articulating the creative methodology also opens doors for the deepening of creative exploration - by knowing where we've bin, we can figure out where we need to go. I wonder if there could be a grant created for dance companies to hire on someone to articulate and synthesize their processes, and help them define ways of teaching them. This would require a high degree of openness on part of dance makers, many of whom might be more interested in keeping their work very private. Why is that?

Duet with Dorthy

This is an excerpt of my duet with Dorthy, (still dancing at 72) created and performed as part of "Technique, Invention, and Performance" a Dance Exchange Institute with Gerri Houlihan.
Dancers: Dorthy Levy and Laura Hicks
Choreography: Dorthy Levy and Laura Hicks with excerpts of "The Bench Duet" choreographed by Gerri Houlihan.
Text: Dorthy Levy
Enjoy!

Tools for Generating and Crafting

I've been meaning to get on here to at least share some of the material from last week's institute: Generating and Crafting Dances. The focus obviously, was on creating material and crafting it. We were again a varied group, while mostly dancers (including once again, Kip Lee) and dance teachers, we had Doug Fox - dance blogger extraordinaire, and Erin Onweller an extraordinary visual artist and as it turns out, skilled mover as well.

Thoughts on Theme and Variation
What is it: Using material, and finding variations of it to arrive at new material.
Variations can mean change of: levels, different body part, speed, layering of ideas/tools, take out repeats, add repetition, change of direction, timings, stillness, sound, tracing, enlarging/scale/size - various scales to think about: room, house, neighborhood, world.
If crafting a phrase or work using theme and variation - it could mean thinking about what's there and what's missing.

Personal Response:
I began wondering about how to make choices. Do you replace the phrase with a new one, or craft it by adding/subtracting variations/themes. We used variation as a tool to generate and share material, (this is the phrase, make a variation of it using different body parts, scale, etc) but we never used it to add a theme to a phrase or section of material, other then by using Parameters. My impulse was too make big changes (very small becomes very large), I felt I was missing the crafting aspect by skipping out on the less obvious. (Maybe because I feel I do that already when working on material - without thinking about it).

We used Equivalents by selecting a section of journal material and creating a movement equivalent for each word. For an interesting discussion check out Doug's post "The Body As A Verbal Memory Recorder." It's interesting to note that the Dance Exchange is pursuing some projects that will involve working with teachers and ways of using Dance Exchange tools such as Equivalents to help kids learn/absorb information in the classroom.

Parameters:
What is it: Using improvisation with a partner/or group observing, to figure out 3 new parameters for you to focus on to find new ways of moving. We then used parameters to find new phrases with shared themes and also to find a variation on a phrase of material we were already working with.
How does it work: I improvise. My group observes and takes notes on what they see. Eg: rippling spine, small gestures, low plain. Together we find the opposites to what they observed (eg: what was not there), and I pick three I want to focus on eg: straight spine, large gestures, high plain. These are now my parameters for making a new phrase, or a variation of a phrase.

Personal Response:
I began thinking of different ways that parameters could be used to craft a work. You could structure a dance using parameters - each section reflects different parameters that you decide on, based on your goals for that section, or there might be an on running theme throughout. I began wondering about how parameters could help with the desire to create that infamous "dance section." I.e: the part of the dance you struggle with because you want it to be honest, but you also want it to be really "dancy." Parameters could be used by figuring out what parameters you apply to "dancy dance." Eg: I came up with: change of direction, clear choice of rhythm, full bodied movement as parameters I might use to create a "dancy" phrase or section.

Perhaps you can think of even more uses for these tools?