This is the second question from Shelley Marshall’s call for contributions to Proximity:

2. What tense is the present in? How expansive can the present be? (What does the present exclude? Can the present expand and bleed out to encompass the past and the future? Is it possible to experience a present which does not embody the past, and conversely, is it possible to experience the past except through the present? Is it possible to experience a present which is not in some way anticipating the next moment?)

I’ve been trying to address this stuff for Shelley, so thought I’d call on some Henri Bergson to answer it (again, trying very hard to be brief with the responses … to avoid the temptation to ramble on!).

Henri Bergson’s Pure Duration is a form of temporal synthesis, the “horizon of inner life” (Guerlac 2006 p.81) in which quality, feeling and sensation are experienced. It is the “data of consciousness” in which time is  de-spatialised (and as such any notion of time being linear is abandoned).

What does this have to do with the tense of presence?

To be present implies (whether we mean it or not) knowing where one is located. But, at the same time, we tend to refer to the temporal—of being in the now for example—as being a critical aspect of presence.

Bergsonian Duration frees the experience of presence from location or space. It marks the experience as a purely temporal one, but not one that is locked to the current. Rather, Duration exists in flight through the temporal*; it demands (gently) that presence be thought of as consciousness: as flow through memory, temporality, attention and novelty.

Now, here are my really short answers to Shelley’s questions:

The tense of duration.
Very.
Nothing.
Yes.
No & yes (although this answer requires a rethinking of what the ‘present’ is – ie, careful not to conflate ‘current’ with ‘present’).
No (although I think the word “anticipating” is not quite right here).

* It’s so difficult to write without invoking spatial metaphors!: “marks”, “through”. In other words, to write about presence denatures it. Writing is a spatialised act, its primary weapons are metaphors of space. It is nigh impossible not to feel clumsy when writing Duration.

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).

“All these things are difficult to form into words. If a person gives a name to something and then holds fast to that name, he will miss the real meaning.  Yet if no name is given, then he floats about in empty space and does not attain awareness. “

Chozan Shissai Master Swordsman Japan 1728

What do you want from or through improvisation?

What are improvisations / your outcomes ( aims / intentions / directions ) ?

Perhaps a better beginning for this question might be: When you are improvising in performance are you trying to communicate with the world? If so, what are you trying to communicate? Can you know prior to the moment of emergence?

How do you train for improvisation ? (provided that you care to)

Or more specifically how do you train to represent aesthetic non idiomatic departures in dance – seriously what skills do you need in order to pull that off?

What kinds of improvisation do you distinguish (if any) ?

If improvised dance is non idiomatic, does its reliance on perpetual-departure-from-idiom  to  define and redesign itself keep it pre-cultural and pre-lingual ?

Belgian choreographer, ex -psychologist, director, and all around good guy Hans Van Den Broeck worked with 22 performers in New Zealand to regenerate a performance piece called ‘Settlement’. By way of preamble here is the press release:

Settlement is a performance created in 2 weeks with a local group of professional performers from different ages/ origins/ backgrounds. From day one they construct a temporary village/ settlement with material found or collected. The area where they work is inside ‘The Print Factory’ which was chosen as it’s a rough looking place that suggests an outside world. The creation process takes place in that environment. They associate around the notion of “settlement”, a concept with many different interpretations and subjective outlooks.The performance(s) are shown for an audience at the end of the workshop-period. It is not a work-in-progress, the aim is for a finished result. They try to perform the constructed outline 3 times in a row in one evening, to create the sensation of duration and a feeling of real life.The first settlement took place in May 2007 in Sydney. The intention of this project is to explore and to create this performance in other cities. Part of the research is to know how other participants in other cultures/settings react on the notion of “settlement”.

I have looked at Van Den Broek’s process through the lens of the compositional nexus between choreographic and improvisational process (yes I am a walking Venn diagram….thanks Simon and shuddup!). Rather than explain what that means at this point I will just talk about how I perceived Settlement worked as a performance composition.

Settlement is a little like a prefabricated building: it has a fundamental design with a degree of flexibility in terms of potential variations in construction. The structure itself is altered according to the site it occupies, it can house one or many participants, and when the occupants move in they create the look, feel, and micro culture of the place. This is influenced by what people bring to site as individuals and as a group collective. Hans himself is an occupant, placing himself within the work. Despite his apparent ‘hands off’ approach to guiding the process of workshopping Van Den Broeck is the key individual who embodies the concept, and is ultimately the design architect of Settlement.

The performance is made up of a series of scenes and images that vary and change according to the location and group involved (this project has been done in around 5 (?) cities / countries…TBC). I suspect however that the degree of variation in performance from group to group is kept on a tight leash. Van Den Broeck has very specific ideas about what Settlement is and how it works. Certain behavioral and artistic demands on the performers become evident and consistent as the workshoppng process unfolds.

The loose weave composition has many pre-installed decisions and conditions within its spacious design. That said however there is a subtly felt democracy within the group which influences the ‘school of fish’ decisions the collective can make. For example in the transitions between scenes, individuals listen to the group, and move in a loose ‘unchoreographed’ fashion onto the next scene. This placed a high demand on individuals to respond as a group at all times. In order for this to work in performance sensory acuity, feeling sensitivity, and non egotistically driven responses had to be part of the intrinsic design of the rehearsal process.

There whole composition could arguably be described as a set of task based improvisations with specific and occasionally unnameable parameters. Certain individuals were designated to act as ‘drivers’ within each scene in order to create some degree of control, (eg:create beginnings and endings) within the overall design of the work.

The simultaneous looseness and strictness created the potential for interesting interpretations of appropriate content within the site of the performance itself. For example when one of the performers displayed a pukana in the middle of the second night of performance, this expression of Maori culture although easily accommodated within the world of Settlement seemed out of step with the actual culture of  the piece. All individual decisions within the site of performance were improvisational within very tight ‘framings’ (Simon uses this word a lot to denote delimiters within improvisations).

Settlement was a theatrical event that 23 people extraordinarily brought together over a mere fortnight.  As a contributor I felt that my practice pragmatically and creatively fed into the demands and conditions of constructing Settlement ie:working on timing as an individual and as a member of an ensemble, ‘reading’ the composition accurately, and diverting my own egoistically driven creative impulses to become author. More importantly understanding how improvisation and choreography reciprocate each other within a composition allows a certain advantageous perspective. Currently that sense of ‘advantage’ is an intuition that is evading direct elaboration. However i can say that having a clear understanding of ensemble work from an improvisational point of view was enabling in terms of supporting the unchoreographed elements within the site of performance.

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.

Shelley’s 6 questions are great topical launch points for contemplating and writing about improvisation. Rather than explore each question directly I am going to take an over arching view of her admittedly overwhelming provocations and then hone down to relevant topical components. In order to even begin doing that effectively I’m going to use my practice as the context of my reflections.

The 6 questions bring up two main areas of enquiry for me; time, and presence. In discussing how I deal with these things in my own practice, I’ll begin with a reconfigured question of my own “How does one train time and presence for improvisation?”

Drawing on the practices of Julyen Hamilton, Pedro Ilgenfritz, Min Tanaka and Peter Ralston I have looked for commonalities, principles even, that have pragmatic application for improvising in performance. For me Ralston’s notions of ‘feeling-attention’, and ‘feeling-awareness’ manage to summarily capture and pragmatically elucidate commonalities between these practices.

Feeling-attention and feeling-awareness take into account that all of the body’s sensory data ie: taste, touch, hearing, sight, and smell are either perceived as bodily sensation or converted to sensation. For example if you pay attention to an object such as a ball coming towards you, you ‘feel’ its trajectory and ‘feel’ your response to catch or avoid it. A ball flying through space towards you also has its own time or duration. This duration is  something that can be felt when you put your attention on it.

In my own practice I have committed to an exercise of feeling my entire body at once, whilst paying attention to its relationship to the floor and gravity, as well as to ‘external’ events (people, movements, objects, space, light, sound, and time). I constantly work on this awareness as a whole awareness, rather than build up its fragments.. In my experience it is this cultivated attention that is at the core of presence. Invariably at times focus shifts to different emphases such as having an awareness only of the ball for a split second and losing sense of where my body is. When that happens I lose accuracy in my relative response both to the ball and to myself.

A component of a Julyen Hamilton exercise that I still use and adapt is to practice feeling duration of one minute. This can be done whilst being still, or whilst improvising solo, driving a car, or performing in an ensemble etc. I’ve particularly enjoyed playing with different timings and durations of movement events within that minute. Moving my body at high speeds tends to shift my sense of time radically, the same also applies when I move incredibly slowly. But a minute is a minute is a minute. Only my perception of it and the movements I am doing within that minute alters.

When dancing a duet and playing with this particular exercise there can be incredible differences of perception between the dancers. Particularly between how the two people are perceiving time and execute timing within that same minute. The perceptual variances are not useful for composition in performance if, within the duet I am out of relationship with my own time, and/or the time of my partner. By ‘out of relationship’ I mean not perceiving accurately, and therefore not being present to what’s actually happening. It doesn’t necessarily follow that if I am present to what’s happening I then have to augment, join, or follow my partners timing. I still have other choices eg; exaggerate, conflict with, ignore etc . But my ability to choose in any moment is considerably lessened if I don’t pay attention to the ball!

There is a lot more to be written on this but for now, time to go.

In her call for contributions to proximity, Shelley Marshall outlines a number of fantastically complex questions. The first of these is below. I plan to work through them, with the goal of speaking clearly and concisely. My answers will be rooted in the experiences of my performance/improvisation practice, and are offered as gentle, uncertain opinions.

1.    What does it mean to ‘stay in the present’ in improvisation? (How does this enhance our practice? What are the philosophical and political consequences of being committed to ‘the present’?)

To ‘stay in the present’ in (dance) improvisation is, I think, an engagement with attention. Attention to details in remembering, in what is seen, heard and felt (corporeally, emotionally). I experience it as a fluttering across these various levels and types of concentration. Sometimes ‘zooming in’ on the minutiae, other times zooming out to give room for more external stimuli.

Paradoxically it is not so much an experience of ‘now’. Rather my experience of time is a shifting between the immediate past (sometimes reaching far into my history) and (the possibilities of the) future, and in allowing this time travel to support my active/current perceptual experiences.

I don’t think ‘staying in the present’ enhances my practice, I see my practice as being about understanding and exploring presence – in various conditions, contexts and activities.

Philosophy and politics will have to wait.

there are so many events in her silence

Bagryana Popov, discussing Gladys Eastwood’s interview from 2000

From: Shelley Marshall <shelley.d.marshall@gmail.com>
Date: 20 November 2008 11:19:13 AM
Subject: ‘time’ . . . . something to muse about over summer

Dear <proximity> community

The March edition of <proximity> will be a special edition on the topic of ‘Time, the Present and History in Contact Improvisation’.  I (Shelley = boring old <proximity> editor) will be joined by Norbert Pape (= exciting wring in) to pull together the edition, with the help of the usual (fabulous) team. Norbert is a dancer and movement facilitator based in Frankfurt who was one of the creators of contactencyclopedia (http://contactencyclopedia.net/develop/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page – check it out if you haven’t already).

We’d love to include your writing, drawing, pictures, poetry, class plans, labbing ideas, MSN chats, interviews, . . . anything . . . on the topic in this special edition.

We have listed some questions we’re interested in as a point of departure – to get the lateral thinking juices flowing – but you can come at the topic from your own angle.

Shoot me an email if you’re interested in contributing and please send this email on to others who you think have an interest in the topic.  Contributions are due by January 20th (but we’d like to know something is on its way before then).

all the best

Shelley

PS My apologies if it isn’t summer where you are. Perhaps this is an interesting topic to muse over whilst in winter hibernation, also?

Time, the Present and History in Contact Improvisation

Some questions:

1.    What does it mean to ‘stay in the present’ in improvisation? (How does this enhance our practice? What are the philosophical and political consequences of being committed to ‘the present’?)

2.    What tense is the present in?  How expansive can the present be? (What does the present exclude? Can the present expand and bleed out to encompass the past and the future? Is it possible to experience a present which does not embody the past, and conversely, is it possible to experience the past except through the present? Is it possible to experience a present which is not in some way anticipating the next moment?)

3.    How do our personal narratives and history find their way into our bodies, our contact, our practice and performance?

4.    What happens when our sense of time, temporality, tense or of timing differs from that of our partner’s? (Can we utilise disruptions as much as we employ ‘effortless partnering’ and ‘flow’?)

5.    How does the collective history of contact improvisation find its way into our bodies, patterns and quality of movement and the contact between us? (How often do things have to be repeated in order not to be forgotten?)

6.    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?