Movement Idea .3

Movement Idea .3, for your consumption...
I say that this is for your consumption because I would like the participant to take a new position or perspective of movement (dance) as a language of expression. My purpose is not aesthetics or style, but instead a communication.
To participate, you are invited to read the movement. Reading the movement means that you will watch, listen, and reflect. Second is the translation of the movement idea. As you reflect, watch and listen again and again and again, you will then take the idea and speak it yourself using your own body and movement 'technique' (I use the word technique here in the sense that all bodies have an acquired and learned way of moving). Thirdly, and this is the most exciting and rewarding part, you will then video yourself translating the movement and then share with all of us **.

**I realize that readers can not embed video to this blog as comments but you can post a link to your video in the comments section. If you do take the 3rd, exciting step, please leave some words along with it in the comments section, so that we can know your perspective or state of being :)

Discoveries

What I've discovered so far.....

Movement Idea .2

Here is the 2nd movement idea to consume.  Listen, and then narrate it back in your own language and interpretation.

Final Summer Video

This is my final video post for this summer trial.  I will be sure to post the video of the formal showing of this accumulation.  

To recap, I am using these videos and this online presence to expose or find human subjectivity.  By subjectivity I mean the uniqueness or individual qualities that make a person identifiably singular among all other humans.  This summer I have acquired new language to describe what I have already known but not fully understood.  I had the privilege of listening to Michael Kliën speak and share his philosophy of dance as well as participate in what he calls Excavations, which are safe spaces where a person can dig out their thought-body and release it into an honest and true dancing state. 
Kliën believes that dance forms and bodies are institutionalized, shaped by their societies, and are owned and regulated by the politics and philosophies of these societies; hence most people have never had the experience of an intense and true dancing state.  This of course involves the politics of bodies and bodies in motion; what is proper, what are acceptable ways the body can or should move?  

So an aspect of this research is to instigate a method whereby a person, a moving body, can have a safe place to excavate into their own body's way of speaking a common language without judgement.

This is Not Your Regular Rehearsal

In the common dance world there is a usual set up of events that lead to a performance:  

1.  A choreographer premeditates movement or an idea for a rehearsal with dancers
2. Dancers and choreographer show up to regularly scheduled rehearsals where the choreographer shows or facilitates movement to be learned by the dancers
3. The dancers take on the role of emulators of movement and feeling, basically they do what the choreography tells them to do
4. The choreographed dance is performed by the dancers in a performance space where the outcome is clearly defined and foreknown

 As a choreographer and performer I have always valued the ability to make choices in performance, and as I have matured in age as well as in my art form, I increasingly am investigating choice making, sensing, being, and active sharing of responsibility in performance.  
Here is the third installment of the movement accumulation for this summer project.  Two dancers are watching and embodying the movement contained in the videos over a set period of time.  The two dancers are tasked with using their own bodily knowledge (they must stay truthful to their own thought-body) to translate the movement.
P.S. Anyone is welcome to try this at home.  Can you take this simple, pedestrian movement and allow your body to speak it? 

 

2nd Video

Here is the second video in this accumulation. Each video has a short phrase which is to be added to the previous phrase in the 1st video.  Remember that the mover/dancer should NOT emulate or copy my movement step by step.  Think of the movement as a blank or empty form,  a plain shirt that you can wear.  The mover/dancer should take the empty form and fill it with their own context and bodily knowing.  The timing, phrasing and emphasis will be drawn out over time as the mover/dancer considers and "tries on" the movement.  Eventually, after considering the movement in the body over time, it will begin to take on the mover/dancer's own viewpoint.  
P.S. please excuse my haggard appearance and the arbitrary objects in the frame, the video was taken late at night after a long day of movement and discussion with my cohorts and guest artist, Juri Nael.

This is How We Play the Game...

This is the test run of my idea for tele-choreography, an investigation into finding embodiment through a dis-embodied conduit of information.  I am viewing the computer and video camera as an extension of my conscious being. In doing this I will be adopting a posthuman definition of cyborg by adapting my artistic process to this mode of translation and transmission.  The video and computer will be a conduit for the transmission of movement to the movers.  At this time there are two movers who will be engaging in the absorption of my mediated movement (Tommie and Sayward).
Here are the rules for the movers:

1. Your task is NOT to emulate or copy the movement you see.  Instead, you will watch the video as if you are reading a story or passively listening to music.  
2. After watching the video a few times, you can begin to try on the movement.
3. You will use your own body to understand the initiation, timing, and phrasing.
4. Your primary goal is to access your bodily knowledge in order to read, and interpret my 2-dimensional, mediated movement.
5. Think of the the movement as a sentence that you will consider throughout your day, and when a new video is uploaded, you will add that movement sentence to the previous, and so on.

P.S.  This is an all-skate!  Meaning if anyone out there in cyberspace would like to try their body at embodying my movement, then by all means go for it.  I would be very interested in seeing how people interpret and translate it via their own knowledge