DOCUMENTATION AT ULTIMA VEZ WORKSHOPS IN BRUSSELS

The experience

The teaching consists in 5 days; 5 hours/day.

Two of the groups were amateurs and one of professionals.

The classes contain: practical exercises, reflective exchange and documenting considerations.

The participants got led to the workshop with this introduction at the Ultima Vez website:

“During the workshop participants explore and confront the company’s vocabulary through improvisations, contact- and partner work. The workshops are led by (ex-)Ultima Vez dancers who have worked with the company for several years and have a broad experience in teaching classes and workshops”

The participants have not been informed beforehand about the documenting circumstance within the workshop. This supposes a new mind setting to integrate the position of documenter and how to articulate it while learning the dance stuff they principally came for.

I offer some supplies such as paper roll, pencils and markers and video cameras but I invite the participants to use their own tools.

We define two documenting approaches: Immediate and reflective.

To capture the expressions we’ve been mostly using drawing, writing, filming and photography as media supports. The interchange between receive-info/actively-generate starts to flow progressively as we go getting familiar to the proposed physical language (by the 4^th and 5^th days): this goes for both, dance facts and documenting. In some exercises we split the group in practice/observation and some participants take then the time to document during the observation process.

I create a Dropbox account where we all upload our documents to share. The digitalization of the physical documents, such as drawings and notebooks, becomes a new issue to investigate.

The Documents

At the moment I’m happy when participants get the hands-on documenting.

The most abundant type of document is the immediate one and the most familiar way of expressing is generally writing or drawing out of impulses and using one-liners: These manifestations express physical feelings (weight, pain, suffer) and they echo words and sentences that have appeared during the explanations. The appearing imagery often includes references to animals and abstract drawing like arrows or circles.

The introduction of the smart phones makes filming and photographing more accessible but usually of a poor quality. When filming or photo shooting, we predominantly get large images trying to capture the whole movement, action or the complete exercise.

At the end of the workshop, as we all go back to our current realities we often find difficulties to invest time in finalising any reflective document. Few people conclude one. When it happens it opens gates to new worlds further away from the Ultima Vez vocabulary, creativity takes over the education. 

Reflexions

That documenting is time consuming is a fact.

We generally lack familiarity with documenting: The word ‘document’ evokes a serious idea that some participants don’t seem to be capable to accomplish.

I try to introduce these concepts:

• Documenting is accessible.
• It relies on opening different expressive channels towards other ways of expressing.
• Once found a thematic thread we can compound with various kinds of documents and make the use of references to other documents or artists

Giving meaning to documentation: we are informing about what has happened during the workshop and setting an opinion about it. But moreover, the documenter also benefits from the fact of having created a proof that reflects about the dance aspects have attracted his/her attention.

Practicing the Ultima Vez vocabulary remains the main subject of the teaching while documenting during the workshop needs to accommodate to the rhythm of the physical activity.

Within some professional and vocative dancers I’ve noticed that the focus into movement is such that shifting towards other expressive supports gets difficult.

I divide the documenting in 3 categories of expression:

• We capture the shape of the actions
• We try to capture the feelings emanating from the actions
• We express what the actions inspire

The concluded documents are generally done by people having affinity to one or another way of expression like drawing, writing poetry or photography.

Intimacy: This aspect also plays a roll in the finalisation of a document. We see it more clearly when publishing the notebook images: these notes were originally made with no other meaning but for ourselves, intended to be our personal memorandum, with our particular code, sometimes a labyrinthian, only us knowing the actual meaning behind what is actually written.

The thought that we will get exposed to opinion, the incertitude about the pertinency of the document or perfectionism regarding accuracy are some elements playing a roll in giving the ultimate step towards publishing a document.

At the scale of public we are now, (other workshop participant or other dance fans) a goal we can achieve is to unveil inspiring images and shared feelings.

In the compilation of elaborated documents we also got a song, few large drawings, a reference note, some picture selections and lots of rushes of video shooting.

Here below you can find a selection of documents from the three workshops.