The main focus of this week was on Anna Halprin’s use of ‘RSVP cycles’. As a task, we had to write down a question that we had about improvisation. My question was “How do I incorporate all of the different techniques/concepts of improvisation without falling back into habitual movement?” I wrote this question as I find that when I’m improvising, if I am thinking about making my movement less habitual I forget to incorporate interesting devices, but if I am thinking about using devices I will become habitual in my movement. To try to answer my question, in groups we created a score. In order to create a score that had clarity we wrote a structure/outline, similarly (but on a smaller scale) to the ‘circle the earth’  score outline that can be seen in this week’s reading ‘Anna Halprin’  by Worth and Poynor, to try to avoid what they describe as a “potentially chaotic process” (Worth and Poynor, 2004, 112).

Our score consisted of five dancers and three roles that were inspired by Thomas Lehmen’s ‘functions’. The first role was to create habitual material that the second role of the interpreter would interpret in a way that was evidently not habitual. The third role was the manipulator, who we set the limitation of not being allowed to use hands to manipulate as this is a very habitual way of manipulating. I found when we performed the score I steered towards the interpreter as I really want to stay clear of habitual movement as I feel that it is my weakest area. I feel I performed the role of the interpreter well as I really made an effort to be unusual in my movement choices and I could tell that I was succeeding as the movement felt different to what I have experienced before. As a goal for next week, I would like to find a way to make the first role of creating material useful to my progression in improvisation, as I feel because the idea is to make the movement habitual that it does not benefit me in building my improvisation skills because I am trying to move away from habitual movement and this role does not challenge me. Perhaps if we were to add some limitations to the role then it would make the role more challenging and something that could help me grow with improvisation.

I feel that the lessons have progressed dramatically over the weeks and the scores have increased in complexity. They are a lot more challenging and it is much more interesting to perform and watch the scores that we are creating now. I feel I am pushing myself further each week and I believe this is creating a positive impact on my improvisation.