.me-andering up-date.
Having won a scholarship from NICAI at the University of Auckland I will be embarking on a project both as a dancer for choreographer Hans Van Den Broeck (Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium) and as a researcher for my masters project. My questions for Han’s project and how that will inform my own research are largely unformed. I trust that the right questions will emerge from the practice itself. I will be looking at Han’s ‘Settlement’ project through my inquiries into what is common to both choreography and improvisation. This demands that I develop my own academic perspective and working definitions of these two sites. In all of the reading I have done so far on dance improvisation I have come across little that describes it satisfactorily, and very little that contextualizes it.
My personal need for context comes out of the recent realization that I have no idea how I came to be a performer of improvisational (contemporary / new / post post modern) dance in New Zealand. In my mind there has to be a reason that something like me occurred within the artistic / economic / social / political climate of good ol’ Aotearoa. In as much as i was exposed to improvisational practices as a dance student (Alison East’s improv / comp classes and Catherine Chapells CI classes) there was never any precedent out there in the ‘profession’. No example of any such thing as an improvisational dance artist. There were dancers and there were choreographers and there were also people who did both.
As I set about being one of those people who did both i developed choreographic, performative, and technical skills. When I chose eventually to immerse myself in improvisation as means of authoring dance performance in real time, I experienced levels of personal and political agency that the typical power relationships of choreographer and dancer had limited or no access to. There was a greater democracy in co-authored performance. This ‘agency’ is something I will be looking into further.
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On completely different note I’ve also been intrigued by this question from Shelley’s earlier missive:
“What place does the structured use of time have in improvisation? Do conscious repetitions, variations and time constraints have a place in CI or do they belong to instant composition?”
There’s an implicit holding apart of two improvisational practices in these questions. One can inform the other but perhaps it’s worthwhile opening up windows on their outcomes. The distinctions between CI and instant or real time composition are there to be picked through and elaborated on. But at this stage I will make the statement that real time composition is designed for performance which is why it takes structured time into account. It can and frequently does take techniques, skills, dramaturgy, narrative, choreographic mores etc into account also. It has the facility to house tools such as those found in CI within its compositional field also.
Although CI can be performed it seems to me that it was originally formed with a democratic intervention into the elitist practices of modern dance in mind. CI is designed for access. Steve Paxton refers to Contact Improvisation as a ‘constant’, saying that it hasn’t changed since it was originally and that he has been looking for ways to explode the practice contact improvisation. If CI is to be performed it may well be useful for it to take time structures ino account in the rehearsal or preparation phases. Otherwise enquiring into structured time may well be irrelevant to its outcomes.
Anyway this is the current ambient thought cloud in my body and brain.
14. December 2008 at 09:04
Bro’,
In reading your blog I was impressed with your dialogue about dance (contact) Improvisation. What prompted me to write is your line: “My personal need for context comes out of the recent realization that I have no idea how I came to be a performer of improvisational (contemporary / new / post post modern) dance in New Zealand”.
This got me thinking. So here goes, a small rant which I hope may provide an answer or form a possible answer to your above statement.
I have not had intimate conversations with you in the time I’ve known you so I’ll talk from what I know. I have not seen all of your work but of what I saw, it was mostly the early stages of your development in the mid 90s. Not seeing all your work is perhaps good for me as I ramble on.
For me, the first time I saw ‘dance improv’ done so well was when you and Guy did a performance in Wellington at some Club, sorry I don’t recall which Club. This had a profound impact on me and I can still recall the power of this performance.
My recollection of that night: That it was a raw, very masculine energetic visual feast and physically full of grunt and beauty. Softness interjected throughout your dance improv balanced by violent powerful bursts of energy, moving in a fluid emotion(al)/motion that was mesmerizing to witness. It made me took note; I believe I was watching something very ethereal, something that told me, dance improv is a powerful form of expression, or story telling. It made me say WOW. I want to be able to do that and to take that energy and use it in theatre performance. It made me feel good about dance/movement. For me bro’, I believe this was your beginning in DANCE IMPROV.
My version of course, you may disagree, but I hope this will jog your memory of a time when I saw good dance improv.
And the other thing that prompted me to write is your academic endeavours. I am intrigued by how art and academic agree/disagree or dissect/intersect. Certainly when an artist contributes to an academic branch, it does add substance as the artist has inside knowledge and not merely an observer – akin to the field of anthropology – inside vs outside knowledge. I have more to say about art and academic but thats for another time. Would love to sit down with you some day and talk more.
Anyway bro, best with your academic studies, it does sound very interesting and hope that it will offer you plenty, and that you’ll be able to answer your many questions as you embark on this new endeavour.
PS:
i like to use improvisation as a means to create original ‘devised’ theatre.