An Attempt At Structure

It worked! I finally have been able to upload this video. "Pause" (working title) performed at EDAM, for a MACHiNENOiSY's fundraiser performance showing of works in progress, September 30th, 2007, Vancouver. I apologize, the focus of the camera is at times quite frustrating. Approximate length: 9 minutes. Dancer: me. Text and sound arrangement: me. Music: Nannou, by Aphex Twin.

I've been wanting to discuss Dance Exchange ideas around 'structure' for a long time, and I think I can use the process of creating this piece as a means to do so. I was easily able to create movement for this work using some of the Dance Exchange tools, (see previous post) but I was left with a great deal of material and little sense of where to take it. I knew it was leading somewhere, but that somewhere was away from the poem - the place where the dance began.

Talking about structure with Liz Lerman. 'Structure' can be a means to craft material you already have or to generate more material. However, it is different from a choreographic assignment in that it acts as a container, forming the overall arc or development of the work. For example, imposing the idea of a logical beginning, middle, end, and arranging the material to fit into those boxes is imposing a structure. But it's more complicated then that. Structure is framing even larger. For example, perhaps you insert announcements between each section to define them, and this creates a through line. How do you decide what is beginning, middle, or end; where is the meaning? How can you categorize what you've done? Take every inquiry seriously, as nothing is too small to notice. Once choosing a structure it can be an in road to discovering more about the work, or it can send you back to the generating room.

There are formal structures and many dancers are familiar with them:
The MASH structure: little stories that have a through line connecting to a bigger story
The Palindrome: ABCDCBA
Chance: arbitrary selection and arrangement of material. Example: numbering sections and picking a number out of the phone book to put them together.
Narrative
Theme & Variation
Accumulation
ABA

Imposing a structure can make it easier to access different material, or difficult material. Structure, and ideas about structure are forever in the world around us, we just have to be curious about it and willing to play. With Liz we did an exercise where she asked us a series of questions about structure. Societal structures, structured experiences, learned structures, organizational structures, and environmental structures. We created movements based on these responses. For example the structured steps of how to drive a car. The structure of how someone organizes their ideas before writing a paper. The structure of a day. The structure of a week. How you organized your room as a child. The structure of an ecological system. Etc, etc... We then annotated our movement in small groups, and noted something that surprised us. We then took it a step further and asked if there were structures within our responses. I think we did this simply to broaden our idea of structure, to underline that sources and ideas about structure are everywhere, and you can always add or subtract meaning from something, you just need to be willing to play. Perhaps the structure you choose will have nothing to do with what the work is about, but it will lead you somewhere else and open new doors.

There is a difference between an arbitrary vs an organic structure. An arbitrary structure imposed on the work from another source can add meaning or give you clues about what the material is. An organic structure grows out of what you've done. None the less, it's a game to help you notice what you're doing. You need to ask questions to discover information within an arbitrary structure. The answers may be bizarre or useless, but they might also provide information. For example, based on the structure of organizing your room as a child you arrange the material into various clumps. How many steps do you take between sections? What age were you? Can you take 7 steps?

So that's what we did at the Dance Exchange. But what did I do? I returned to the poem, and decided that it might be about one becoming the victim of their own perceived reality. I imposed this on my own experiences and started thinking about the process of writing an email (sometimes used as a therapeutic way to confront one's perceptions) and the structure that my thoughts would take. Post script made me curious. The idea of adding on thoughts, taking things away, saying things in a different way, or saying something you shouldn't say, or thought better of and this is why you didn't say it in the first place. I looked at the word post script, and created two other phrases that P.S could stand for. Parallel sentences, and paradigm shift. I think I then also imposed a structure from personal experience. Starting off in a place not seeing eye to eye, or feeling unseen as if in a hallway, on a parallel path but in a different room. Something to say, but no one to hear you (perhaps because you refuse to send that damn email!) And evolving to a place of 'seeing.' Seeing surroundings, and shifting to a place of new perspective, and some sense of resolve. How did this effect the material? Accumulation and adding on is easy. Introducing new ideas. Inserting other material from a different creation period when my perspective was in a different place. This is still a starting place, I think the work can still evolve from here, but my experiments with structure were effective in adding new meaning.