Taking the Meaning Out – Putting it Back In.

How do you avoid the ‘acting it out’ syndrome? I.e: You are working with creating movement from text and feel limited by your first impulses that have you embodying the story. Movement becomes more interesting when it is about making a shape without any meaning attached to it. The meaning is more authentic and believable – and the shape more interesting if the shape comes first and the meaning evolves out of that.

In our work with ‘ambivalence’ this is exactly what we did using parameters. The final product perhaps resembling, or having nothing at all to do with the source.

In fact, most of the tools accomplish ‘taking the meaning out’ quite successfully.

Scripting:
Your phrase: ‘punched in the stomach’
Do the action. Script what you just did: i.e: Forcefull shove, two body parts collide, fall back.
Then create a new movement according to the script.

Parameters:
Your word: Ambivalence.
Create a movement.
Have someone else physically describe what you just did.
Find the opposites.
Choose three, do and improvisation using those as your sources.

Postcarding (this is my own term, I think Liz would call it Detailing)
Phrase: ‘A sink full of dirty dishes’
See the image (postcard)
Put the wall paper pattern in your arms.
Be the bubbles.
Be the soap dish.
Etc.
Or
Create a phrase by vascilating between the person standing at the sink washing dishes, and movements from details in the postcard image.

New tool: Acting it out?
Allow your self to act out the prompt, and then take the meaning out.
Ex: Prompt: She tried the shoe on in disgust.
Do: You are trying a shoe on in disgust.
Then , hold the shape but change your expression. Change where you’re looking. Then try the shape again, still feel like you’re ‘acting it out’? Change one more thing, a leg, an arm, a finger, whatever. If you need to, even take a detail from the room and place it in your spine.
Now you have a movement free from imposed meaning and ready to take on something else.

Improvisations From Equivilents to Parameters

This exercise was led by Peter Dimuro as part of the Mixed Abilities Institute.
Starting with the word ambivalence we used Equivilents, Parameters, and added Structure to create an improvisation.


In a circle, everyone creates one movement for the word ambivilance with a clear beginning, middle and end.
We partner up, and witness, noting what we observe . Simmilar to a paramerters exercise, we write down what we see in descriptive terms free from judgement: folding elbows, slow, soft, crouching, covering, wiping…
As a duet, we then choose three ‘physical descriptors’ of ambivilance that we want to explore. My partner and I choose soft, wiping, and sinking.
We then improvise our first duet by using these three items as parameters, and adding a start and end position.

Later we added a floor pattern, the option of three moments of stillness, and the decision to focus on one parameter only at any one time. We did this because we found the parameter of soft automatically influenced those of wiping and sinking. We wanted to add the option of energized, violent or sharp wiping or sinking (anything without soft).

New possibilities for further exploration: I realized the parameters could be taken even further. You could create an opposites list from the ‘physical descriptors’ and combine those with the first list. This would create the element of contrast (we unintentionally did this by focusing on one parameter at a time free from the influence of the other two.) You could also repeat the physical descriptors exercise with the first improvisation to find a greater variance of movement. Ex: we noticed that a lot of the ‘wiping’ was occurring through touching. The next step would be to explore wiping without touching.

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?