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Production Week

Production week is all about runs of our show and fixing any gaps in our pieces. By these point most of are sore, tired and drained both emotionally and physically.  It was important for us to have a good rest and eat so that we had our heads on every morning during class and runs in the afternoons. 

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Devising for Show Week

With our assessments done and our Christmas show coming up in a few weeks, we started the week with devising tasks. Matthew Gough always gives us devising tasks when creating a new work.  

For our 29th work, the first task was to create 3 bars of 8 changing diagonals an making it interesting, different and challenging. 

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Improvising in groups

This week’s improvisation task was in groups of 5 and improvising to a 20 minute track chosen by Matt. My group’s music was playful, fast piano. I tried to think of it as a game of tag or chasing each other and changing levels (up and down).

The goal is to articulate, make and read work the moment you are doing it. It is very important to be able to be in a group, work on yourself and create at that moment. You need to make decisions and share them without hesitation. It is obvious to the audience when you hesitate or try something and give up. 

And overall observation was that people stopped creating when they paused to observe the rest of the group. You need to find a way to observe and be at the same time. You need to have your own purpose and practice.

Be able to hold multiple tasks/attentions. Be careful of changing dynamics between the group in space. Always be mindful of what’s been done around you and think what you read in space. 

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What do you find difficult in improvisation?

- Not falling into habits.

- Creating something interesting and fresh.

- Focusing and holding on to multiple tasks.

- Finding new options and new movements.

- Not repeating.

-Fatigue.

It will take time to find your own definition of improvisation.

What do you do when you have nothing else to give?

How/what do you dance when you are drained?

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Observing while improvising

My observations for this weeks improvisation class:

-Couldn’t tell between given an opportunity or if it is already there. Take every opportunity and keep track in your head. Steal them and take the given ones until you practice to recognize with which one you work better with and be able to surprise the audience. 

- The more you understand the options the more opportunities arise. For example, Matt will never lift strangers unless they give him the opportunity. He reads how people are in space and makes clear choices. 

- Reading someone’s decisions in the moment and realizing the past, present and future (where was she - where is she now- where will she go next?) 

- Bring all your options, all strategies into the room (past, present and future)

- It is important to practice the transitions- in and out of the floor- build skill.

- Even though your dancing might grow - your vocabulary will grow - people will still see YOU in your dancing.

WE WANT PEOPLE TO SEE US DANCING. SEE US BEING. 

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Improvising for 50minutes

After an improvisation session in pairs and following Matt’s instructions (shift in and out of contact, dance in close proximity with eyes closed and opened) we summarized things that we had observed. 

- I’ve noticed that when we were in contact I kept on falling into my habits and repeating things.

-I avoided standing up when asked to shift up and down (when I did, I almost got back down immediately and usually in the same way)

- I was sometimes influenced by my partner’s movements rather than doing what I had in mind.

- Whenever we were given a new instruction we would all stop.

- I have noticed that I always had the same patterns and outcome. 

After discussing with Matt he gave us some feedback:

- It is about discipline. You should sense everything that is movement. Create patterns that will disturb that choice. Understand what initiates the pattern and try to change that starting point. 

-Contact is a choice and not a compulsion. When we dance in close proximity and a touch occurs you have a choice to go with it or not. When dancing in close proximity, you need to understand how to read the other person and how to read yourself. 

- Sometimes to lead you need to let go of leading. 

- Holding on to multiple of attentions is the hardest thing in improvisation.

- Learning to live with a confusion and finding a way through it is a core skill for improvisation. 

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Lifting each other

This week’s contact and improvisation lesson was all about trusting each other and taking advantage of opportunities to lift each other. 

Class started with a trust exercises in pairs, shifting each other while one has her eyes closed and then both of us having our eyes closed. Throughout  the tasks, while lifting we had to keep our movements smooth while moving across the room without stopping. To me that was the most challenging task as it is hard to keep track of both lifting and moving and reading the situations and opportunities given. 

We need to learn how to listen through the body and be sure and strong about our choices. 

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Creating the 22nd Work

Half way through our process of creating our 22nd work with Matthew Gough, we had a little discussion about what the work is for us. Matthew tends to start creating his works without giving us a story or what it means for him. He will give us creative tasks that could be related to the idea of the work but won’t specifically tell us what it is about. This has helped me shape my own little stories for each work.  For me, this piece is about finding myself. The changes of quality of movement remind me of the changes in my character over the past few years. Looking for what I’ve lost but surprised with what I keep on discovering about myself. 

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Opportunities, Options and Habits

Another scene. - WordPress.com

Sometimes we have trouble distinguishing between given an opportunity or if it is there already. We need to take every opportunity and keep track of it in our head. Steal them and practice until you can recognize with which one you work better with and be able to surprise the audience.

The more we understand the options the more opportunities arise. For example, don’t lift someone you have never danced with before unless they give you an opportunity. Read how people are in the space and make clear choices.

Another important skill is reading  someone’s decision in the moment and realizing the past, present and future- where was she/he, where is she/he now and where will she/he go next?

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In and out of contact

contactimprovphilly.com

This week’s imporvisation was all about shifting in and out of contact and dancing in close proximity with eyes closed and open.

Some aspects I noticed are that every time I was in contact with my dance partner I kept on falling into my habits and repeating the same things. I didn’t stand up a lot when asked to shift up and down and when I did I almost got back down immediately and usually the same way. I noticed that sometimes I was influenced by my partner’s movements rather than doing my own. It felt like every time we were given a new instruction we would all stop to listen and think about it rather than embodying it as we were still moving. 

What I understood is that contact is a choice and not a compulsion. When we dance in close proximity and touch occurs we have a choice to either go with it or not. 

Sometimes to lead you need to let go of leading.

The hardest thing in improvisation is probably holding on to multiple attentions and learning to live with a confusion and finding a way through it. 

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Rhythm Vs. Pitch

How do you embody rhythm?

How do I listen for rhythm and recognise what it is?

How do I make a choice of movement to the rhythm?

How do I choose the body parts?

How do I add everything together?

What are my patterns of creating and moving that help me or create a problem?

This week’s imporvisation lesson got me wondering how, as a dancer, I can separate rhythm and pitch. How do I train my body to follow one or the other or both at the same time?

What we look for is what we see. For example, if I always look for 4s in music I will struggle with music that isn’t in 4s.

My goals this week is to explore these questions and try to understand what is going on in the music and where in the sound is pitch and where is rhythm.

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Awakening by NDC Wales

Once again NDC Wales has not failed to amaze us. From a very synchronised, heavily patterned work to an emotional, magical piece to a dark humorous piece inspired by religion, I have definitely left the theatre inspired, and mind blown by the dancers’ and choreographers’ ability to immerse us into three contrasting worlds. They have created pure magic and brought the stories to life. The dancers’ effortless movements made the choreographies seem easy to perforom despite the fact that they were heavily technical. 

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Week 5 ~ Responding to Instructions while Improvising 

This week improvisation class was about working on following instructions, understanding what is going on and being able to respond at the same time while improvising. We were given 2 tasks all in which half of us were moving and the other half were giving out instructions. During the process I noticed that most of the time we chose fixed points and ignored/forgot that there are numerous perspectives. We should put ourselves in the spectator’s position and be mindful of the audience perspective but also have a clear image for ourselves. Another thing I have noticed was that every time a new instruction was given there was a micro-pause from the dancers ~ we tend to stop before we react rather than slowly adapting the instruction while moving. 

I’ve also noticed that sometimes I was reacting rather than responding. I kept on falling back into habits and dancing the same material in the same way. I think I was choosing the safe choice most of the time rather than risking and doing something I have never done before or that would be out of my boundaries. 

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En Defensa

En Defensa

 (Week 1)

 Thania introduced some self-defence terminology and kick boxing techniques. She gave us an insight of her work and what she is claiming to do in the space; bring self-defence in dance.

 Her idea is to make a piece about our inner battles and how we can defend ourselves when battling with our personal inner demons. Inner battles could be battles with our body image, as women, spiritual battles, psychological. She wants us to generate movements from our inner battle – they will be our journey/inspiration.

 Thania like to work with vocabulary – she likes to have something to work on and create something raw.

 One way for Thania to generate ideas and groups them is to use sticky notes. She asked us to write on sticky notes what we battle/struggle with and stick them on the walls. We then read them, put them into categories we created; Mental health, Family, Behaviour, Body, Emotion, Dance and Miscelanious. This, on a personal level, helped me realize how much we have in common with each other. We all battle with similar ‘’demons’’. It also saved us time and gave us a clearer picture later on when we were given improvisation and devise tasks.

 Thania likes to give us improvisation tasks, solo, in duets or in groups to help us play with and understand what she has taught us. For example, when she talked to us about kick boxing techniques and terminology she gave us a task to create a deflecting phrase.

 This week we came across ‘’Deflecting’’, ‘’Sparring’’, ‘’360 defence’’, ‘’Take down shrimp’’ and ‘’headlock’’.  I was interested in learning a little bit more about these techniques and how they are connected to the work and in a dance context, so I did a little more research.

  ‘’Deflecting’’

In martial arts, blocking is the act of stopping or deflecting an opponent's attack for the purpose of preventing injurious contact with the body. A block usually consists of placing a limb across the line of the attack. (Wikipedia, 2018).

  ‘’360 Defence in Krav Maga’’

 Self-defense exercise taught in order to improve reaction speed against outside attacks.

 (Week 2)

 This week was mainly spent talking and learning about Laban theory, Laban movement analysis and how it can help us understand what Thania wants in terms of self-defence.

I think as a class we would understand things better if we were given tasks to improvise what we have talked about rather than just talking about them and applying them straight away to the choreography. Also the explanations could be worded simpler using examples that are easier to understand and remember.

This week we managed to get a rough idea/structure of just half of the sections. I felt, personally, that the less material we did and the more we went over the same material, I kept losing my focus and concentration and my brain would give up easily and I would get frustrated with myself for not getting what Thania technically wanted.

 Thania also wanted us to try and do some WWE lifts by showing us a video on Youtube. None of us felt comfortable with doing it straight away because we couldn’t clearly understand the technique they were done and how to safely lift each other. I think if we could slow down the video and slowly and thoroughly go through the lift we would’ve felt more comfortable and safe in doing them.

 At times I feel like I still don’t understand the work and I feel that I need to create more material to have more context of the work.

   (Week 3)

 This week felt a little bit more productive. As a class we struggled understanding the different kinds of planes in the space. Whenever Thania asked us to work on planes we automatically stopped thinking about everything else and focused on the specific plane we were asked to create something or work on because we couldn’t understand them. For me, creating on a specific plane was extremely hard as I didn’t have a clear idea of how each plane works in space since we never worked with planes before.

As the week progressed and we devised more material, the piece started clearing up. We had a structure to work towards and Thania was satisfied with most of the material we created.

We learned a variety of kicks and we had to create a phrase using these kicks. We all found it fairly easy to understand the technique of the kicks and our devised phrases were good.

Throughout the process of this week a few questions were raised:

-          How do I not reduce/sacrifice the quality of my movement when speed increases?

-          How do I control my frustration and give myself a break and try again?

-          How do I work with a particular touch?

Towards the end of the week we focused on cleaning material we did last week rather than moving forwards with the choreography. We invested a good amount of time in the details of the material rather than creating more. In a way, going in this pace was useful as it gave us a clearer understanding of the details Thania wanted. However, I have noticed that going over the same material left most of us fatigued.

At times it felt as if I needed more context as it comes to martial arts to help me get into character and develop the theatrical aspect Thania wanted.

 ‘’En Defensa’’ (Week 4)

 The final week of this work process was very productive. We needed a lot of work on our theatrical intend as it was something we are all lacking and it is important for Thania in this piece. As the piece became clearer and we had a clearer structure it was easier for us to add the aggressiveness, fierceness and everything more real Thania was asking for.  

We finished the work on Thursday and on Friday we spent some time talking about the piece’s choreographic and aesthetic priorities. Thania asked us what we thought her priorities were when creating this piece:

o   Literal theatrical movements

o   Grounded/passive weight movements

o   Dynamic movements

o   Effort qualities

o   Laban technique

o   Planes as an aesthetic map – helped her with time management, editing out things.

o   Improvise devise

  Clashes in our devising process:

o   When given in task we focused on physicality (eg. Plane on which movements were on)

o   We prioritised timing rather than effort qualities

o   Thania mostly gave us corrections on quality movement rather than timing

o   Lack of theatricality

Throughout this process I’ve gained a lot of patience and the ability to respond to changes of material. Being okay with not knowing. Gained confidence in partnering / body weight lifting.

 I’ve also noticed that Thania likes to device within an aesthetic task, gives more emphasis on the clarity of movement rather than timing, works with group dynamics, emotion, personality, aspects of human relations and theatrical aspects. She is also very eclectic and uses literal images in a theatrical way.