repetition
I’ve been thinking about repetition in improvisation. This is because I’ve been working (for some time) with developing improvisations for quite specific ‘dramaturgical’ framings and seeking ways of arriving at presence within these framings.
Recently I have been working in Melbourne with choreographer/director Helen Herbertson, and we began talking about the “repeat” word. Helen said “going back to” – as a means of avoiding saying “Could you repeat that?”!
What is it to repeat an improvisation? To settle on the energetic essences of the physical actions, whilst maintaining an engagement with the new in the improvisations. The trade-off is clear in this kind of work: to try to locate the past but risk never arriving back at what it was that first engaged us/me, or to acknowledge a settled state of being that potentially reduces the quality of attention or engagement with the unknown.
The desire for me is to remain in the “first week” (or the first instance), whilst accessing (forward in time) the accumulation of the weeks of work. This is clearly impossible, but the idea might provide a flexibility in my attention and listening that quietly emboldens the promise of the past. Far from wanting to drop what has gone and simply move on, I am seeking to perform at the nexus of the known (but still unfamiliar and difficult to pin down) past and the surprising now.
(I’ve been writing a bit for Proximity and this writing is part of that engagement).
13. February 2009 at 03:29
going back in is much more fertile than repetition; there’s a sense of accumulated understanding which repeating doesn’t carry for me. i developed this catchcry for myself of going-back-in-proximity-to, somewhere nearby that is still unfamiliar yet bears a resemblance, an at times tenuous fidelity of sorts to the original discovery. interestingly for me, over duration, this continued ‘going back in proximity to’ builds a sense of history, an accumulated understanding of not just what ‘it’ is, but of what lies all around it and also of what, or more accurately how, its becoming. my desire isn’t just to be in it as though for the first time, but to always be in the slipstream of its becoming, tumbling and lurching half a step or more behind, relinquishing my memories of what i thought it once was and listening for the ‘nowness of the now as it nows.’ (Cixous)
11. March 2009 at 23:32
In questioning the nature of repetition within the context of improvisation I reckon we are getting closer to understanding what it is to be present and to pay attention. In my experience paying attention, I mean REALLY paying attention to whats occurring as it its occurring creates the conditions for presence to be a fuller and fuller state.
I recall doing a clowning workshop where we were instructed to walk around the round looking at the details of the room. Then we were asked to repeat that act but this time find a detail in the room we had never seen before and then spend time observing it. This placed a greater demand on the act of observing, a repeatable act. The level of attention I was applying was far greater than in the 1st instance. I experienced a far greater degree of personal presence the more I paid attention to the detail in the room I was observing. In a reduced pragmatic way ‘attention’ allowed access to ‘presence.’
With regards to repeating an action or even a set of actions it is vital understand that repetition is not antithetical to attention and presence. In fact in order to render gesture and response effectively in an improvisation all three must occur at the same time.
I notice daily that repetition occurs moment to moment in walking and blinking of eyes and breathing. In the studio I repeatedly apply myself to the same movement operations, somatic devices, dramaturgical provocations again and again.
Repetition is the dynamic, it is NOT the result.
12. March 2009 at 00:20
Kristian – damn you. Am trying to find ways for us to disagree. But, what you say here resonates very strongly with me. Particularly the very simple idea that repetition is the dynamic. It represents a very lively paradox for the improviser … one that I was trying to articulate (when considering Bergsonian Duration in relation to improvising).
Am going to be a bit offline in the next few days whilst I finish here in Melbourne and then travel to the UK. More anon.
Simon
27. March 2009 at 19:58
Hmm, paradox number two (with a trace of irony),;usually its impossible to get me to be agrereable to anything.
6. April 2009 at 22:08
Just another footer on this subject:
Have been contemplating the notion of ‘repetition as renewal’, rather than repetition as reproduction.
8. April 2009 at 07:12
mmmm … I think it is the tension between renewal and revisiting that is what I enjoy so much. The impossibility, the desire, the promise of noticing familiar streams/strands.