Task 6a: Informal Trial

One of the methods I will use for the research process of my inquiry will be a personal diary from my daily routine. My inquiry will be much based on my personal experience, when since last year I began to get in touch with other techniques and methods and more interested on contemporary dance. It have been also a moment which I am connecting all my experiences from studying and working in different countries, and be part of different processes of education and lines of choreography.

For this task, I decided to report here my observations from a special workshop which happened last Sunday:

Workshop

It was a Sunday workshop, and unique opportunity to work with a great professional with huge experience behind. Her formation includes diverse techniques such as, Release based Technique, Flying Low, Gaga technique, Contact and Improvisation, Soundpainting, Passing Through and others.

On the beginning of the class we moved constantly for 20 minutes, beginning with the lower members until reach the top of the body. During the process she didn’t speak much, just gave us some tips to increase our movements and expand our ideas of ways to get our bodies warm and approach new places. Some of those tips were of dynamics , others were images such as “getting air between our joints” , “fell like we are in a honey jar” and “each part of the body wants to move to one direction”.

Already on those twenty minutes, I could observe some experiences on my body. Because is a non-stop process, there is a moment where I felt tired or without any ideas on different ways to move. After this moment however, I felt that I just let it go and stopped rationalizing too much. At this moment, maybe because the mind fell freer and without self-judgement, non-conscious movements began to happen and continue to follow to other places not before reached. The body gets warm, I felt more concentrated and internalized.  It happened a wish to close my eyes and she mentioned about how important is to don’t close it: not just because a safety issue, but also because we need to be aware of us on that place that we were, to be able to be around by others without losing concentration, and to turn our eyes also a way to move our bodies. I found this last information very interesting: to make the eyes also part of the choreography. To be able to be concentrated in yourself and on what is around you as well.

After these twenty minutes, we began to walk around the room. She asked us to analyse how we were walking, how was the weight on our feet, hips, knees and up body. She then began to ask us to walk faster and make the curves faster. After she began to ask us to drop our weight on the curves, giving a feeling of “rebound” and from this just increased to turns, jumps, and slides. I really enjoy this method which began with a small, trivial action to a bigger and more complicated action. We did this game also very close to each other, trying to avoid the ones around you, as well as redirecting or conducting them to a movement.

The third part was more about Contact and Improvisation. One activity got my attention and made me reflect later about it: after one person has been manipulated/conducted/influenced by the others, she was asked to keep moving and improvise alone. The ones around her had to copy her movements. This generated an interesting dynamics, because at the same time that one shared her movements, the others received and gave their interpretation, stabilizing a cooperative work where all the ones involved would be influenced by each other.

We finished with a sequence choreographed by the teacher. All information shared during the class could be brought into the choreography and is interesting to notice how my body felt more “open” to the movements, and the sequence could be done lighter and more conscious. With all the exercises given, I believe my body had more information and bigger range of movements.

This workshop was an intense and very productive experience. New approaches were given and more possibilities for improvisation, composition and dance quality. Experiences which share creativity stimulus, contact, improvisation, self-conscious and routines on a whole connected package, I believe are very important. Not only because different methods are brought into one class, but also because it shows how is possible to connect all them.