The Difference between Departure and Abandonment
Improvisation itself has no purpose or function; it is a thing that operates inside purposeful and functional action.
That’s this morning’s insight. It has emerged from reflecting on some of the ways I’ve seen improvisational performance wielded as a Utopian site for liberation from the exile of the familiar. Admittedly this is partly how I wielded it when I first started down this track.
In my experience of practicing improvisation, it always starts with what is known; the room, the situation, the body that I have, the languages / ideas / movements I have learnt and developed, another person dancing with me etc. In and of itself it is seldom a magical process that leads to new plains of originality or radically liberating experiences of transcendent creativity.
When I see improvisational performances driven by compulsive agendas aimed at abandoning the familiar, very recognizable aesthetics still tend to emerge visibly. I see material and decisions that I don’t enjoy seeing – selfish actions and decisions. The goal of being evermore inventive by compulsively abandoning personal historical elements sets up certain conditions. Under those conditions a performers ego can easily transform from being interesting for who they are, to being unbearable to watch. This pursuit of the new becomes cliche’.
Improvisation can be a site for choreographic / performative invention and investigation. However as an intervention used to unsettle ones own entrenched aesthetics its not necessarily an effective vehicle. Improvisation is invisible, plastic, far too easy to impose on aesthetically – it doesn’t actually have its own aesthetics other than the recognizable prominence of the decision making process happening in real time. Improvisation is not a ‘no limitations zone.’ It most certainly has its limitations, usually when no limitations are set. Improvisation loses its efficacy with poor direction, flimsy content/structure, imprecise action, or non attendance to audience.
I’ve heard it said that most people don’t have the discipline to handle a Utopia. Improv can appear to be a Utopian site for honesty, co-authoring, chance, indeterminacy, failure, creativity, expressivity, spontaneity, egalitarian making, sensitive responsiveness, and fun. But the best improvisers I have seen have all that embedded in discipline, techniques, purpose, and the threads of history woven into in their skills. “Release technique is all well and good but you’ve got to have some technique to release!”a friend once remarked to me. A contentious throw away remark that I agree with in sentiment – you can’t depart from where you never were.
3. August 2009 at 09:28
So improvisation is purposeless yet must hold to its directed intent and connection to audience in order to be effective? There are so many contradictions in this flawed practice.
3. August 2009 at 09:52
In relation to the above discussion of utopic practices and my earlier reply you might also like to look at Foucault’s ‘Of Other Spaces’ on heterotopias.
3. August 2009 at 21:06
Thanks Carol,
The ‘flaw’ may lie in thinking of improvisation as a practice. Improvisation is something that occurs IN the practice, and the practice (for me) is a whole event.
Action and thought, purposeful or motiveless is the only way improvisation can occur. So far in my experience I have yet to find a way that improvisation in its myriad of distinct ways of occurring, is not an intrinsic dynamic within thought and action.
In foregrounding improvisation within my practice I have ended up working on presence and consciousness.
I guess what I am saying is that improvisation does not occur by itself, it doesn’t exist as a singularity.