- Warm-up with dancing to 3 numbers of Daft Punks latest album
This is something I wanted to experiment with. Usuallly my warm-ups pr prepping body and mind for a more focused session is more gradual and involves a focus already pinpointing a specific area. While this works very well in highlighting this specific area, it can also put people in a limited mode attention wise and energy wise.
From an energised state, where people have danced and sees eachother we go to a structure that is quite open and calls for presence, self reflection as you are moving and stresses that any movement you make is 'it', if you scratch your head, or stand a moment in thought, then that is also part of 'it'.
- Practice with duration of 30 minutes(it can be longer but this week we did mostly 30 min sessions): Generate movement, ongoing, one movement generates next(but it is not necesarily flowing). Stay with yourself,it is possible to make connections to others but when you notice you are getting more engaged with reacting to the other(s) you disengage. No need to be polite, you leave - Whatver you do is 'it' and you are never out.
Here we divided in smaller units where people have to negociate the sense of someone watching. The watching is not too intrusive here because the watching person is part of the structure. Sometimes I do this in trios and then there will be 1 witness. There is time to talk after each stage among the duo(or trio). The talking can be different in each person. It does not have to be a linear story, but it could be, it can develop freely, but the one thing not to go into is a direct commenting or description of what is happening.
Duets: 1 talking, 1 moving.
-first stage: the talker stays out of the space of the mover
-second stage: the talker moves into the space of the mover and changes position whenever relevant
-stage three: changing roles, initiated by the mover who starts to talk
General guidelines:
Talking and moving are independant from eachother, but you do notice eachother.
Connections can be noticed but do not necessarily demand a direct reaction
Final structure:
A group practice
The whole group gathered on one side of the space from which the floor could be entered(I also do it from all sides but not this time). There are maximum 5 people active- the others are watching. One can leave at any moment. In general you wait for an opening to go in but of course you can go from watching to being active even when there are already 5 people active, thus creating the necessity for someone to leave.
I did not formulate restrictions as to what could happen, ie soloing, duets, touching, all could take place. The group practice turned out to be a good vehicle to hold what we had been working on and the students took the focus to another plane. The group was very diverse, including people with a dance background as well as theatre and a visual artist, professionals and committed amateurs.