The act of improvisation for performance:

 Miranda Buckwalter's Composing While Dancing (2010) gives insight to a range of practitioners working with improvisation for performance and instant composition. Through the direct readings of these practitioners, in relation the development and learning from practice in my Praxis thus far, I choose to highlight the work of two artists: 

 

Katie Duck

 

Having taken part in Katie's Summer Workshops in Amsterdam and here at MMU, I have always come away questioning my ability to use focus and the role of enter and exit.

 The following exercise is used for 'the eyes'

Take a pass across the studio floor so that you are forced to create movement that carries you forward in space either with upright patterns or on the floor. While you are creating forward movement through the space, notice and play with the potential that the eyes contain to see in close, medium, and long ranges, exactly how a camera works when you change focuses. Now cross the floor in the same manner with a partner, occasionally looking your partner in the eye. Try to not stare or over focus;while playing with the different focuses of the eye. Using the eyes while creating movement and going forward in space may make you feel dizzy at first. Looking your partner in the eye needs to be a clear action not passive so that the  biological  impact is felt. Make it a clear interactive moment in time.

Katie duck , July 2008

 

How does this relate to composition or performance? 

Katie talks about being 'on' when you enter a stage - you are not concerned with movement, this underpins the compositional choices you are making on stage. Movement and training should be developed in the studio. Through the vried use of focus, the dancer is able to source a range of information that can shape compositional choices.

With enter/exit she asks the dancers to lose the option of entering - you are always on. When we exit, we usually, due to habit, drop attention and lose what is happening on stage. By exiting to a new place - to somewhere - we train ourselves to be alive and attentive to what is happening for the whole performance. We treat exit/ enter as a compositional aspect that we continue to stay concerned with.  As a solo dancer, the use of flow, pause and the eyes that Duck refers to can shift the view of the performance space,  allowing chance to occur and develop compositional opportunities.

 

In referring to Duck in my critical essay, I'd like to provide the link to some of her writings that doscusses composition further.....

 

Lisa Nelson 

 

Lisa Nelson also focuses on the eyes...In Buckwalter's book she shares Nelson's use of the eyes as a kinesthetic way to deconstruct and reconnect the eye to the moving body. She discusses the visual desire, the choices that satisfy us and allow us to really see. How does this new perspective of the eye inform our choices? Nelson developed a Tuning Score to explore movement as a response to enviromental influences, working both with internal and external sensory information that a dancer can consciously observe and respond too.

In a choregraphic sense, a tuning score can be used with an ensemble - moving and viewing each other in space. They are invited to call action in response to their sensory awareness...this can affect the piece predictably and unpredictably. The calls ask the dancers to sense what is satisfying to them, as they openly and responsively read the space sensorially - responding to present time. The relatio of cause and affect are up for play.

This is a practice of performance as the dancers also observe the audience. Nelson invites the audience into the practice as an Observatory. The audience is let in on the process - the audience is caught up in the growing suspense of how the actio will play out. From Nelson's point of view, the play educates the audience on their own desires.

 

The Single Image Score - Page 94 (Buckwalter)

"The Single Image Score is a basic practice of Lisa Nelson's Tuning Score. For this score there are a group of dancers or players on the edge of an image space they define for themselves part of the studio or a space outdoors where the images are played. It begins as a duet form.

A player imagines him- or herself in the space in stillness according to his or her desire, then closes his or her eyes and enters the space to realize this imagining as closely as possible. The rest of the players watch as the whole space comes into focus for them, taking time to absorb the image fully with their senses and in their imaginations. When another player imagines him- or herself in the space completing this image, he or she enters with eyes closed and fulfills it.

The duet maintains this stillness while gauging when it is time to begin a simple action culminating in a second stillness. The two dancers maintain the new image, sensing it as it resonates between them and with the viewers. Any player from the outside may call end.  The dancers exit the image space, and the play starts over.  

The very first placement of the body in the image space reveals aspects of what a player is tuning into in his or her read of the space, choices that often surprise the other players. And from there, the ensuing dialogue of images responds and reacts to, reconsiders, and refines these choices, educating players about their personal habits, styles, and strategies while expanding on them, introducing new options through the play.

For example, a player might find that he or she habitually completes the image by being close to the other player or by relating the image to the architecture of the surrounding room.

Some players tend to look to formal elements of shapes in space, perhaps through imitation or repetition, while others become engrossed in developing the narrative, whether as antecedent or consequence of the first player's action. Players get to experience the image from both outside (eyes open and viewing) and inside (eyes closed and embodying the image) perspectives, comparing the seen and the felt worlds. What is it like to  read  an image from diering sensory perspectives? For example, with eyes closed, reading the image space and sensing when an action will occur entails a sending of the senses out to feel for the other, to get instruction for what is coming. In work- ing with the visual and other senses in the Single Image Score, the anatomy of the image gets teased apart, uncovering a physical dimension of seeing that may feel familiar but forgotten, like a long-lost friend."