Form, intention and attention were the main factors that we were concentrating on during the lesson this week.

One of the tasks today looked at changing movement. Every time the observer would say ‘change’, the dancer would have to completely change the movement they were doing. When my partner said change, I seemed to use different levels as a reaction to this in order to show a contrast between the movements, whereas when I observed my partner, her way of showing this clear change would be through using a different body part – generally she would switch from using her arms, to her legs. Each of our solos took shape differently, and I think something as simple as the way we viewed a ‘change’ in movement shows our different forms. I would like to continue developing and discovering my form throughout the coming lessons as I don’t think I truly know what my form is yet.

From all of the partner tasks today, I found I learnt more from being the observer as I could then apply what I discovered from my partner to my own work. Particularly, I realised that when my partner had exhausted her habitual movement vocabulary, the solo became a lot more interesting to watch as she discovered new possibilities. I could tell she felt silly doing the movement as she moved out of her comfort zone, however from the external perspective it was great to watch this unusual movement occur. I think I need to push out of my comfort zone further to allow myself to find new less habitual movement too, then my work can be more creative and interesting for people to watch – even if I do feel uncomfortable and strange when performing it.

The improvisation jam really helped me this week to particularly understand ‘intention’. I feel that often I would look from the side waiting for a moment where I could join into the score. But as I went to do this, particularly when looking to join a quartet, somebody else would get there at the same time as me, causing one of us to have to leave (as a quintet was not in the requirements). Even though there were so many possibilities for movement within the score, for that moment somebody had the same intention as me. One of us had to change our initial intention and this brought about a new area for exploration.  I thought it was really interesting to see how each dancer had different intentions in the space and it was very important to be aware of these intentions. I believe it is fine to have intention within improvisation, however you must be prepared to abandon intention when necessary – I am quickly learning that everything is not meant to be controlled in improvisation, however some elements can be and it’s all about finding the balance. De Spain suggests, “someone who holds too tightly to initial intentions is likely not open to the magic of the unexpected” (De Spain, 2014, 69) and I feel that in the jam, I did have a little too much intention and this would cause restrictions on my improvisation. I would like to change this next time and I’m sure this will lead to the discovering of lots of new possibilities.