My experiences with the Dance Exchange have begun to inform how I interact and work within the dance community here in Vancouver. And I had the opportunity to introduce some of the 'tools' in rehearsal the other day.
I'm involved in a process called "Drift-Walks," with Julie Lebel, artistic director of Ensemble Independent and current artist in residence at the Dance Centre. The process has been focused on tracking our experiences while engaging with the natural environment, and then experimenting with movement, to draw out moments that stood out to us on our walks. We direct our attention and sensations in a specific way, helping us to find the physicality within the experience of walking outdoors alone. "By looking at physical forms, small and large, listening to sounds, touching the material world, our mind creates associations that can be creatively documented along the participants' journey." - Julie Lebel
The 'Drift-Walks' and our associated creative explorations in the studio began to raise a few questions for me. What are the different components of an 'experience'? In this case, the experience of observing some aspect of your surroundings, (although the question could be framed much larger as well.) What components are we using when we translate this moment of heightened attention into movement?
Having been working towards a better understanding of the Critical Response Process, I began to refer back to how observations are discussed as part of the process. In observing someone else's work and forming opinions about that work, it's important to note the array of possibilities for observing something, and that the type of observation is entirely dependent on individual experience or world view. In other words there is a huge variety of possible observations for one work, and the more people you have, the more types of observation you will come across. In particular, a guideline of the Critical Response Process is that it is important to notice the meaning that other people find when responding to someone else's work, and how that expands your own perception of what you are responding to.
I started relating this to Equivalents. And thought that I could use it as an example to notate the different ways that movement can be created from one word/ one 'experience'. An 'Equivalent' is the direct translation of a word into a movement. The tool is usually used to find interesting phrases of movement from text or phrases where each word has it's movement equivalent with a clear beginning, middle, and end. What's interesting and became very useful for us, is the variety of ways that one word can be translated into a movement. For example the Dance Exchange often uses the phrase "I came into the world..." As I led rehearsal we used "I" as an example. We could do this exercise with numerous people numerous times, and the results would be numerous and varied? Why? Because how we observe, how we translate, the types of impulses we have and how we listen to them vary from person to person. It makes us individual. (One reason why I find the work and methods of the dance exchange so interesting, is because it honors the individual!) It's interesting to note that first impulse is always useful, but can sometimes also result from pattern. (If repeating this exercise several times over, the next step may be to notice your patterns.) In order to notice patterns you need to know/ be able to identify with what you are doing. The same goes for if you know what you are doing, and you are familiar with the other possibilities, you can figure out what you're not doing. For example: "I" can result in a movement relating to the way the word looks ("I" or "eye"), how it sounds, it's literal meaning, its personal meaning (for example, if referring to myself, how I see myself that day, at that time might affect the movement that results),the rhythm of the word, the literal meaning and an associated action (for example "eye" could be a pointing at the eye, or the entire body mimicking the opening and closing of the eye, or the act of seeing, seeing something for the first time... etc.) Innumerable associations are possible.
The next step was relating this work to our efforts to capture movement inspired by our "Drift-Walks." I had everyone choose one experience from their walk which stood out to them. We then did a prompt writing exercise - dividing a paper into three columns and starting with "I see...," then "I feel...," then "I observe, taste, question, notice, smell, or hear...". I did this in order to try to capture every aspect of our experience of observing something in detail/ interacting with it in such a way that it's memory had a lasting impact, and possibly to discover something new about what we were observing. I then added across the bottom a row, where for each column we attempted to identify how we were arriving at our observations. For example: I see the rough texture of the log, and bright green moss - I am standing outside looking at the surface of the log. Where as "I feel the pull of the hills and valleys of the bark, perhaps "I am placing myself on the surface of the log," or I feel it's weight in my pelvis and it's texture on my skin, "I am placing the log in me..." Again this exercise I thought might be a way to pull out images that were concrete enough to explore at length in the studio and to also figure out patterns - what are we doing, what are we not doing....?
In any case, it was what I thought, was an extremely successful rehearsal that resulted in rich material (shown last Tuesday as part of our open showing), and many thanks to Julie for allowing me to introduce the Liz Lerman tools into that part of the process.
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