Improvisation, by my own terms, means to be able to tap into any knowledge that is stored in the body. Human bodies are vessels brimming with knowledge and, in turn, the body becomes a kind of book and/or manual. New input are new scribbles over existing information. We are caressing thoughts and ideas through the embodied experience of improvising.
Imagine that, in one slab of marble, all the faces that have ever existed are already present in that slab. All that needs to happen is for that to be carved out. This is like the dancer’s body. All the choreography in the world is present already in the body. It just needs to be sculpted and carved out.
Skill A --> Emotional intention (story, narrative)
Skill B --> Groove (rhythm)
Skill C --> Puppet (someone else is moving you in space)
Skill D --> Visual (visualisation, texture)
Imagery visualisation
- fists inside the pelvis, hands and feet
- form/anti-form
- angle/no angles
- holding the heart and pulling the energy from the heart into your hands
Questions:
How can one move between these different skill sets?
By using these different tools, can the dancer have multiple identities/a moving identity?
Investigations to find answers:
Sending energy through the limbs and parts of the body, then using this impetus to go into a groove/rhythmic state
Imagining your body as a ‘guesthouse’ —> a new resident resides in your guesthouse and has just moved around the ‘furniture’ slightly, how do you react in your body to this feeling of something having changed?
Noticing the ‘arrival’ - the end of something or the beginning of something new, staying with the score.
Being able to use a scale of muscular intensity to affect the viscosity of the movement
Visualising from nature
Chaos vs. Control
Being passive, responsive and resistive to certain impulses to move
