Dance Improv Class Diary 12/22: After All…

Intro

As a dance/movement performer, we have been focusing on Energy, Repetition, Relation, Space/Silence/Stillness and sculpting the space. Today, we invited a double bassist and would like to collaborate with music, recalling another layers of relationship from the list of Coexistence with sound/music. So we tried:

1. Ignore 2. Near & Far 3. Leading the Band 4. Coexist (See Class Diary 5/19)

And we can notice, the list of relationship we have been working on is the detailed version of  the number 2 of the list above: Near & Far, in other words, how to be near and how to be far.

Warm up Exercise

Map our feet and legs by touching and breathing. We reviewed Irene Dowd’s exercises to connect the pelvis and lower torso.

Improv Exercise

Go over or create your own repetition and find what kind of energy is making those movements happen. Or what kind of energy is created by those movements?

Reflection: Clarifying the original movement in repetition is very important. Not only the movement concept, but also the movement itself has to be clearly existing in space by defining especially such as: facing, spacial degree, size, speed and texture. Then, when you repeat with slight difference, all the differences start to get out stand.

Now with music, try the list of relationship.

• Be it
• Adaptation
• Relate
• Ponder
• Mirror
• Reflection
• Protection
• Accent
• Extension/Expansion
• Syncopation
• Opposition
• Break/Shift/Away

Pick one or two of what you felt most comfortable to execute and be interested in.

Try the list of Coexistence with Sound/Music.

Dance Improvisation!

Reflection: I have been introducing a part of what I have been experimenting in the past thirteen years as a dance improvisor. Working with music improvisors, I learned a lot from them, but eventually I also had to find dancer’s or mover’s way to be responsible, visually being in the space. What is the differences between sound and movement? Sound maker’s movement comes out as a result of what they need to be creating or what they committed to release. Then, how about movement of dancer/mover? What are dancers responsible for? Which does reach first to audience: sound or movement, and how can performers adjust the time lag between the two? There are endless possibilities in dance improvisation and music and dance improvisation. To practice and make something original, sometimes limiting what you set (movement, theme, tasks, space, etc.) and exploring the diversity and variations in the movement helps. “Dig deeper” was the advice from my teacher Robin Wilson when I was at the University of Michigan and I truly agree with her now, and it means reflect always whether you tried other choices related to what you have been doing. And I now can see we also need to make the surface of the whole on the ground widen to dig deeper.

Lastly, I truly appreciate Nana Shineflug and Kay LaSota who made the class possible. Thank you Christoph Erb and Jason Roebke who played in the class. Thank you Liz Joynt Sandberg and Justin Cabrillos who came to the class regularly!

Dance Improv Class Diary 12/15: Dealing Energy 2

Intro

What happens if we grasp movements more as the result of energy/forms of energy released through our bodies and incorporate it more when we move.

Warm up Exercise

Worked on exercises to connect pelvis and lower torso created by Irene Dowd. Question about finding neutral pelvis position was asked, so explained how to work on/imagine the right placement of sacrum (as a keystone of a bridge), sit bones, hip sockets, and the feeling of  the ball of big toes, and how to adjust them. Then, did roll down and up from the Klein/Mahler Technique.

Improv Exercise

1) Go over what you worked on when we practiced repetition or create new repetition sequence. Maybe three (under your own consideration) movement sequences.

2) Find energy and be aware of what kind of energy is initiating or creating the movements.

3) Start to go over the Relationship List we have been working on in the past few weeks with your own movement and found energy in it.

• Be it
• Adaptation
• Relate
• Ponder
• Mirror
• Reflection
• Protection
• Accent
• Extension/Expansion
• Syncopation
• Opposition
• Break/Shift/Away

What did you find?

Reflection: When we try the list, some are easier and some are not. It’s interesting to feel the movements are not the matter of shape so much. It’s about energy.

Dance Improv Class Diary 12/1: Dealing with Energy

Intro

Dance seems like that it’s about physically how we move. Yet before that, what’s the movement consisting of? Yap! It’s energy. The choreographic accumulation of movements/steps is largely about how to deal with energy. Similar steps or movements look a lot different depending on how the energy is conveyed through the body to do it. I am interested in pursuing that since it expands a lot of possibilities for dance.

Warm up Exercise

Sitting down cross-legged, find sit bones and your center of gravity/visceral sphere/Dantian. Connect sit bones to Dantian so that the triangle is felt stable. Deep breathing. Touching your Dantian area, inhale from the top of your head into your Dantian and exhale out from the top of your head. Repeat. Placing hands on the knees. Keep deep breathing.

Thinking the arms are going to express the pathway of energy going through the body as well as space, scoop up your hands outwardly from the bottom all the way up and tap in from the top of your head and shift the direction of hands toward the front in front of the body, separate the hands as if swimming, arms to the side and down, scoop up as if scooping up sit bones, go through the center of gravity/the visceral sphere, and keep palms out and attaching dorsal of the hands as long as possible until those come apart naturally when hands pass in front of the face and keep going up. Palms naturally shift its facing to the front and bringing down as if hands are painting the front. Repeat.

Explanation: The reason why this kind of exercises are important for improv class is because performers have responsibility to present superb moments of being as an improvisor and need to be physically responsive as quick as possible to what’s received to do. The tuned human body-mind realizes “Anything is possible.”

Feet & Legs mapping (starting from the left). Touch from  the bottom (sole), grab toes and circulate outwardly and inwardly, trace foot bones,  leg muscles, space between bones and muscles, balance the back of the knee between the heel and the sit bone. Jiggle the sides of knee and the quads. Touch (acknowledge) IT band. Insert the left hand under the sit bone. Place left hand on the hip socket. Feel the centralized pelvic placement by trying and correcting the sit bone placement. Withdraw the left hand from the underneath of the sit bone. Enjoy the moment of balancing through the center. Do the right side.

Stand up. Roll down, bouncing with puffy plie, rocking head to tail in the squat position & roll up.

Improv Exercise

Focus on dealing with energy. Experience how energy flow can designate your movements rather than steps and/or  physical image itself.

Did exercises below 3 min each and discussed how we felt.

Inside — Outside: Think of energy moving from inside (from your core) to outside. Outside…where, how (speed, amount…through where…) all up to you. Be meticulous with your image.

Going through: When an object moves through somewhere, air around the object passes by the object. The air moves in the opposite direction than the object. Experience that with your body and also feel the air moves not only around you, but also going through inside of your anatomical structure and pathways.

Reflection: One person did go through peanut butter, the other did go through struggle. Do they have any common ground? Yes. From the outlook, we feel the physical difficulty going through somewhere/something. All the texture, feeling, gravity start to be revealed. Viewers can get shared the kinetic experience from both performers.

Dealing with (Energy) Wall: Anywhere create wall you deal with. Enjoy alternation of replacing the wall/space you rely on which initiate your weight  shift.

Search and try other forms of dealing with energy. Picking up, sending off…  for 2 min. Remind yourself Butterfly Effect from Chaos Theory: “One flap of butterfly’s wings could change the course of weather forever.”

Watch each other 3 min of improv dealing with energy. Discuss.

Reflection: Go deeper…any cheesy exercises, e.g. “My finger was caught by spider web and I am trying to get rid of it!”, can be seriously, metaphorically and extravagantly useful expression later in your dance/movement expression because the action contains the truth of the universe! In other words, when we do it with full-force with all the anatomical structure and physical state fully involved, even accompanying some arrangement skill, we should be able to have ability to transform the movement experience into more universal level.

Dance Improv Class Diary 11/17: Autumn Leaves II – veins & fibres

Intro

Still good weather, couldn’t help to bring three leaves in. Those were nothing special or beautiful in terms of it’s colors and shapes in the standard of my past aesthetics, yet now they were beautiful due to the curled (not flat), somewhat dried, and fainted as well as dark colors. Their veins were clearly recognizable though.

We looked at them.

Warm up Exercise

Exercises are shared, focusing on knee alignment and support of the knees. Also shared how to do plie (bending knees e.g. to jump, to lunge, to squat) without creating the burden on the knees. Plie should be done as if puffing air from the knee caps (patellas) through eccentric contraction, which muscle lengthens. Taking consideration from where the muscles are arising and to where those are attaching, whole muscles in legs have to get involved in the lengthening spirally along with the fibre structure: the gastrocnemius, the hamstring muscles (the biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and the semimembranosus) and the Quadriceps femoris (the rectus femoris,the  vastus lateralis, the vastus medialis and the vastus intermedius). We can activate those muscles through the exercise so that they function/move along with alignment of the legs through patellas, using our image on muscles, which becomes to develop/reeducate neuromuscular coordination (ideokinesis) .

*My image of muscles doesn’t mean strong and rigid concentric contracted muscles. Rather, they are tensile bunch of strings which works as mass. Sorry for vegetarian folks, yet if you deal with meat while you are cooking, you feel how they are like. I don’t want to say it’s soft, yet it’s not hard. It’s sustainably flexible.

Improv Exercise

Feeling the alignment and connection of the muscle fibres, as energy lines, radiating from the visceral sphere, slowly and gradually stand up with flow of movements. When you start to stand up, be aware of puffing air from the knee cap (patella), spiraling slightly turning out tensile energy through leg muscles above (to keep the alignment of the hip socket, knee, ankle and foot, keeping the arch of the sole) . With breathing and in the manner of circulation, sustain “narrow and concave” in your center.

Open up the path ways of your inner space of the body between bones (e.g. ribs) and muscles along with the whole alignment of the structure. Feel that even our straight line from outlook is consisting of spiral inner extension of muscles.

Start to connect with others.

Feel the space. Sculpt the space. Enjoy gooey viscous energy connection between yours and others’ anatomical structure.

As pairs, try the list of relationship by keeping the energetic practice above. Consider the elements of movement at the same time: Texture, Speed/Timing, Size/Scale, Shape, Facing, Path, Location etc.

Reflection:

The more you practice, elements of movement can be overlapped and done to execute the relationship.

Dance Improv Class Diary 11/10: Autumn Leaves

Intro

Still yellow autumn leaves were seen. Beautifully composed/improvised pattern on the side walk and the ground. Thought this might be the last chance to take an excursion to see them as a part of the class.

With the list of relationship below at hand, also being aware of anatomy of leaves, we started to look at some leaves scattered at the corner of the entrance, toward steps, and still remaining on branches. We shared some impression we can receive from those scenes, states, conditions etc..

The list of Relationship (how we can relate to one another):

• Be it
• Adaptation
• Relate
• Ponder
• Mirror
• Reflection 
• Protection
• Accent
• Extension/Expansion
• Syncopation
• Opposition
• Break/Shift/Away

*Colors designate the degree of how close your choice is: the upper  the closer, the lower the further.

The corner leaves are nothing special in terms of colors and shapes. Yet even the curly faded color small leaves at the corner inform us a great deal. Mirror, Adaptation, Protection, Extension/Expansion were listed.

Leaves toward concrete steps cannot be irrelevant from the composition of the steps. Relate, Reflection, Syncopation, Break/Shift/Away were listed.

Lastly, the leaves on branches, swaying in the strong wind, were attractively rhythmic and looks identical, yet each one is different. Adaptation, Relate, Mirror, Accent, Extension/Expansion, Syncopation, Opposition were listed.

Warm up Exercise 

Coming back from outside, after foot touching exercise, start to share Patella knee track and turn out exercise from Irene Dowd which strengthen muscles related to knee joints and eventually give better support to protect knee injury.

Using the activated and aligned feeling of the knees and additionally the feeling of puffing air from the knee caps, first, connect the diagonal line through X from toes to finger tips (left to right, right to left).Extend the pattern and create figure 8 around the body, eventually front to back. Connect toes to heels (left to right, right to left) with gooey strings as if energy is connected all the way through and around from front to back. Utilize the spiral connection of muscle fibers when you bend your knees (plie).

Improv Exercise

Keeping in mind what we saw outside, the List of Relationship, and also keeping the feelings of anatomical energy conduit which all the way connected, from toes to tip of fingers, through inner space, move with arc shaped arms as pairs.

Reflection:

Unbelievably united synchronized moments among varieties of related shapes, forms, force, velocity and momentum have seen. Involvement, sending out, meeting up. Different dynamics with almost the same/similar movement or doing different things with the same/similar forms.

Energetic coordination of spiral and twist = twist in space, transformative spiral sculpture of the space with certain energetic texture.

J: Through peripheral vision, even from further away, we sense momentum, speed and texture and make choices.

To be continued…

Dance Improv Class Diary 11/3: Working on Relationship/Distance

Warm up Exercise 

With deep breathing:

Ankle roll exercise – establish whole-body connections by spiraling muscles winding and unwinding around axis of the body and legs

Arm flow exercise – establish and organize the connection and alignment of tail through the base of the skull relationship,  latissimus dorsi and trapezius, scapula, shoulder joints through finger tips, and later lateral as well as inner X connections from toes to finger tips: big toes and thumbs connected with pubic bone; little toes and pinkies connected with iliac crests and tail bone.  Through cooperation with outer & inner force, following gravity & initiating from own visceral sphere, the body exchange energy and placement of muscles spirally, inwardly and outwardly, through straight as well as curved/circular movements.

Exercise form Irene Dowd for pelvis and lower torso connection.

Intro

Review from the last week:

The list of Relationship (how we can relate to one another):

• Be it
• Adaptation
• Relate
• Ponder
• Mirror
• Reflection 
• Protection
• Accent
• Extension/Expansion
• Syncopation
• Opposition
• Break/Shift/Away

*Colors designate the degree of how close your choice is: the upper  the closer, the lower the further.

Improv Exercise

Go over each one of the list above as a pair except “Be it.” One has to be consistent with repetitive materials so that movement choices of the other to establish different relationships become clear.

Reflection:

Doing each is good to know what differences starts to arise for different ways of relationship.  For example, Adapt and Relate seems similar, yet relate has more freer choices.  Ponder gets more freer than Relate and it’s allow the other to have own imagination and sense of observation. Mirror is simple, yet there are so many possibilities. Reflection includes Resonance. Protection is not really protecting the other who is making choices, but it is for the one initiating repetitive original materials.

Here recognition is each way of relationship doesn’t mean relationship in its literal sense, but it can also mean beyond the elemental fields and can be metaphorically applied to other elemental subjects. For example,  Accent is rhythmical term. Yet you can give accents also to texture.

By experiencing one each, we can find out what else. Break/Shift Away can be done if you know the original.

Let’s start to mix those together sometime!

Dance Improv Class Diary 10/27: Sharing Repetition and Relate to Repeat (in so many ways)!

Intro

There are ways to relate to others. In many different levels, we can exist and move together. Below is the list of Relationship (how we can relate to one another):

• Be it
• Adaptation
• Relate
• Ponder
• Mirror
• Reflection
• Protection
• Accent
• Extension/Expansion
• Syncopation
• Opposition
• Break/Shift/Away

*Colors designate the degree of how close your choice is: the upper  the closer, the lower the further.

However, the result or making choices will be different depending on not knowing how others move and knowing how others move.

These are the three stages of knowing and sharing which are still under development.
And here I noticed there are more possibilities about moving together later after class, so write about two options:

Option A: not having repetitive materials of your own (open improvisation)

1. Not knowing other’s materials,  do the list above
2. Being familiar with other’s materials, do the list above
3. Studied and knowing other’s materials, do the list above

Option B: having repetitive materials of your own

1. Keeping your own repetition, try the list above  (“Be it” impossible?)
2. Being familiar with other’s materials, try the list above
3. Studied and knowing other’s materials, try the list above

Exercise

Clarify: Before starting to share your own repetition, clarify the movements.

Share: Study each other’s materials

Practice: Take time to remember what you learn

Watch: Observe each other and give some advice or comment, what is missing and what is interesting

Reflection: Already the same repetition looks so different. Texture, context, timing…we made sure that each knows/understands the core point of the movements even though some differences must be left because of different height, past training, body types and simply because we are different people!

Now let’s find common character between the shared materials. Do you see any cousins? Practice and recognize those. How can they be related, connected or repeated applying varieties in and shifting the Movement Elements: Texture, Speed, Timing, Size, Scale, Facing, Path, Level, Location, Other side of the body, Parts of the body

Now go over the initial list of the day and try improvisation, having one person as the consistent main repetition mover and the other as relater. Both start from your own movements, yet applying the knowledge of other’s repetition materials. Be aware of your own anatomy and Ma, space, stillness and silence, as usual.

Reflection:

Too many choices starts to make repetition too loose. Let’s try only Extension and Expansion from the list and try again.

GOOD RESULT.

Reflection: Advance technique can be tried, which combines/overlayering elements on the list of  Relationship and also the list of  Movement Elements. 

Practice Practice Practice…to be continued.

Dance Union Event Diary: ALive Installation Project 10/28

Performance artist LEE BLALOCK and Dance artist RACHEL BUNTING created a three hour evening together,
separate, yet synchronized at Defiblliator. Blalock constantly writes on chalk boards, picking a word up from the text hidden in the drawing which she is hanging on the wall. The rhythmic deeds overlap with Bunting’s poetic, yet surrealistic sharp images. Over three hours, the two worlds mirror one another as if viewers look at conscious and unconscious worlds at the same time. The colors they picked, black and white, which Bunting transform from one to another several times through the installation, feed and allow our imagination to flow.

Tonight is the last night of the series. Please stop by if you can. The experience is not any one you have experienced before.

http://www.dfbrl8r.com/DEFIBRILLATOR/NEXT_NOW.html

Dance Improv Class Diary 10/13: Just Repetition, But Repetition

Warm up Exercises

Shared exercise for connecting pulvis and lower torso created by Irene Dowd. To recognize the center of gravity and learn how to use the body from the core, feeling the visceral sphere in place in the pulvic bowl and also as the sphere where the gravity line run through.

Intro: Finding worth phrasing to repeat

It’s not easy to find materials which are worth to repeat. As we noticed, repetition here doesn’t mean we exactly repeat the same thing over and over. We use our creativity and artistry to make it to interesting and stimulative components of movements.  Let’s find them out by practicing three phrases you are interested in and picked repeatedly, and refine what it is.

Improv Exercise

Find materials which are worth to repeat with no time limit.

-Ayako visits each participant and ask some questions to make the repeated materials more clear for viewers. 

Show to others as solo

Aren’t there more ways to make the repetition more interesting and impressive?

Shifting: Texture, Speed, Timing, Size, Scale, Facing, Movement Path, Level, Location, Other Sides, Parts of the body

Try with some music, keep dancing more then 10 min. 15 min.

Try as duo with music. What happens?

Reflection: When it’s repeated ceratin sequesnce of materials truly start to arise its meaning and also relationship to other phrases. The materials start to reveal its own dencity and depth. It is very important to start out the materials remembering and knowing what it is. Because of the initial clarity, the materials will sustain as the base and when some slight change is made and accumulate as the huge differences from the beginning, it’s more interesting to recognize how the materials transformed. There are endless possibilities to modify the basic materials and repeat. No one is stopping your creativity. Go for it!

Dance Union Diary 10/14: ALive Installation Project opens at Difibilliator

October 14 & 15 @ 7PM (Week 1) 
dancer: MICHELLE KRANICKE <> performance artist: GIM GWANG CHOEL (Korea)

Time, enormous time, I felt. Have you ever spent three hours straight, just gazing at someone else performing? I witnessed two performers being there side by side tonight. And it was truly microcosmic metaphor of the society, world and universe, or a couple. Sorry about my poor vocabulary. Yet, it was phenomenal and enough for me to feel something larger. Do dancers take space in the body differently than performance artists? Do dancers listen to music differently than performance artists? How about notion of time? How dancers capture the three hours and make them possible to perform in the time duration? How three hours are felt instead of 15 min. or 1 hour? All the answers were there tonight. So to recognize dance newly, as well as get more familiar with performance art, I recommend you to stop by if you can make it.

Btw, how do we spend our time for 3 hours?

———————————

ALive Installation Project

a WALL runs down the middle of DEFIBRILLATOR.

Paired and paralleled side-by-side with a wall between them, two artists present a three-hour performance installation in order to explore the boundaries between dance and performance art.

This is a DANCE UNION and DEFIBRILLATOR production.

Upcoming:

> October 21 & 22 @ 7PM (Week 2)
dancer: AYAKO KATO <> performance artist: SANDRINE SCHAEFER (BOSTON)

> October 28 & 29 @ 7PM (Week 3)
dancer: RACHEL BUNTING <> performance artist: LEE BLALOCK

“Placing codified definitions on specific types of performance, i.e. “this is dance” or “this is performance art”, seems limiting. By actively moving away from those definitions, moving away from a known understanding of dance or performance art, we can then begin to embrace multiplicity and ambiguity. We have to begin an active journey towards what is not known In order to expand.”
- Michelle Kranicke