Time and space were the key concepts of today’s lesson in which we looked at how we can make use of them during improvisation.

Looking at the idea of beginning, middle and end, we were required to improvise in the space thinking about each part as we were improvising. When I started my beginning, I gave myself the intention that I wanted to end how I started – this meant that I was tracking my movement. I feel that I am starting to build up the different elements in improvisation and they are coming to me more naturally then before. My use of tracking in this task is just one example of how I am starting develop and use the elements that I am learning over the weeks.

For the partner task this week, I was the observer. When observing my partner, I noticed many aspects of her improvisation but particularly that she seemed to stay in a specific area and travel at the same speed. When she next performed, I gave her targets to change (specifically about her use of space and speed) and she improved instantly making the work much more interesting to watch. I now know that I need to think about these elements too when I am improvising in order to get the best results.

One of the task’s that I found very interesting today was when we were required to look and listen to the space. In order to listen to the space, I found myself listening to footsteps, for example: if I was facing the wall in the corner of the room and I couldn’t see what was happening around me, in order to find the next available space, I would listen for footsteps from a specific area of the room and move straight to the area where I had heard these footsteps come from – I knew the area had space because the footsteps were from people moving to a new space. Similarly, when we were required to look at the space, I found myself looking for the empty spaces that people left once they went to find a new space. Looking and listening for empty space is a pattern that I tended to follow. Frequently I would directly walk with intent to where I wanted to be in the space, but someone else would have the same intention. Sometimes I would decide to abandon this intention and move to a new space. Other times instead of moving, I would continue on my intended path causing the dancer and I to both be in the same space in close proximity. This created an interesting change in the way my personal space felt, as well as causing me to have to read the space differently.

I definitely feel I am starting to improve and develop my improvisation skills; I particularly noticed this week something that is becoming more natural to me when I am improvising is finding the movement. The state of panic I have felt in previous weeks where I would be worried about what movement to do next is slowly leaving my mind-set. Midgelow states in her article ‘Dear Practice …: The experience of improvising’ “Go ahead, dearest Dancer, with the belief that ‘something’ (even if that something is a ‘nothing’) will emerge.”(Midgelow, 2012, 11) and I feel that I’m becoming more confident each week with this belief. I don’t need to question what to do next anymore because it just happens, as suggested in the quote. Letting go of this panic is allowing my mind be more open to developing and building upon all of the aspects of improvisation that I am learning each week – helping me to achieve my full potential in improvisation.

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.

The focal point of this week’s lesson was around the concept of ‘tracking’ as discussed in Landscape of the now (2014) by Kent De Spain. After reading the full chapter prior to the lesson, I could see that there are a lot of elements to tracking whilst improvising, however, I didn’t appreciate how challenging it could be until I turned it into practice.

We started the lesson by working individually, moving around the space, preparing the body for movement through improvisation. Looking back, this could have been a great task for me to fully explore my kinesphere, however, I feel that I didn’t use it in this way and instead my movement choices were very habitual. I had chosen to move in a speed that felt very comfortable and therefore was not challenging myself either – if I continue to do this, it will not be helpful in the progression of my improvisation abilities and next week I want to make a conscious effort to be more explorative with my movement. The speed was soon required to increase; when this happened, I feel my movement literally became just movement, there was no thought or feeling towards it, I wasn’t bringing any technique to it and I literally felt like I was throwing myself around. All my movement during this task was created completely in the moment.

My favourite task today was ‘Think, Imagine, Move’. I found that having the time to think about the movement I wanted to do resulted in a more unique and innovative creation, rather than the habitual movement that I would normally do. It was really helpful in exploring outside my movement vocabulary. When we were required to repeat what we had created in this stop start manner to normal speed with no breaks, I found that in comparison to the other tasks today, it was a lot easier to track what I had done because I had a little bit more time when creating. I really struggled with the tracking of movement during many of the other tasks today involving remembering a sequence that we had created through improvisation and repeating it. Perhaps the ‘Think, Imagine, Move’ task required too much thinking and so I have to question if my movement was truly improvisation?

“As I am Improvising, I am noticing certain aspects of what is happening to me, conscious and unconscious, so that I can use them to inform my choice-making.” (De Spain, 2014, 45) I feel that this quote is summative of what I have discovered from this lesson today. In improvisation there needs to be a balance between how much you are absorbed in the now and how much you think. I feel this is necessary in order to be successful in improvisation.

We began our first lesson of dance improvisation in pairs, starting by simply throwing and catching the bean bag whilst moving. This allowed us to explore the space and check our spatial awareness. However, the throwing and catching of the bean bag then became more complicated when new terms were added, meaning I had to think and make decisions a lot more quickly. The rule I found most challenging was freezing straight after throwing the bean bag. This was because I had become used to running to a new space every time I had previously thrown the bean bag so I had to decode what had already become muscle memory to stop myself from running. By this point, the list of rules had extended too, so we now had to drop when we heard a bean bag in the room drop, as well as freeze and watch where our partner would move to next so that we could prepare to catch the bean bag. Due to having lots to think about and focus on, I found it difficult to coordinate all of these new rules together and this could be another reason why I instinctively went back to running to a new space when I was meant to freeze.

The main task in hand was to create a score within our group of eight, incorporating the previous ideas from the partner task. Our score was controlled by the pair who were throwing the bean bag and making a sound each time they did so. But as a fixed term in the score, the pair would always have to come back to the sound ‘sssh’, making the surrounding pairs, who were throwing and catching the bean bag, drop to the floor. Although we (as the surrounding pairs) were improvising as we had no idea when the sound to make us drop was going to happen, you could say it was partly choreographed because we had pre-planned the movement we were going to do (dropping to the floor) prior to creation. This applies to another of our fixed terms too as when a pair dropped their bean bag, they had to jump and freeze until someone else dropped their bean bag. In order to truly be improvising, perhaps we could have each done our own individual movement that we felt appropriate when we heard the controlling sound or dropped the bean bag. Looking back, I feel that our score was quite structured as we didn’t really have any unfixed terms and had planned for every possible scenario we discovered. Due to our score not having a finite end, maybe if we had extended the duration, we may have discovered more unfixed possibilities.

In reference to improvisation, Vida Midgelow states in her article that as a dancer you have to ‘give up expectations of pre-knowledge and control’ (Midgelow, 2012, 11) and this is something I can definitely say I found challenging to put into practice due to improvisation being out of my comfort zone. But now I have been introduced to improvisation, I hope that in future lessons I can start to fully embrace it.