Life as a Modern Dancer

Blog Series: "Why improv?" (with Audrey Johnson)

Audrey Johnson. Photo by Houssam Mchaimech from “towards.”

6 improvisation scores (or, archives of making a solo through improvisational process)

by Audrey Johnson

 

1.

I walk into the studio.

(I have been here before.)

Mirrors confirm my here-ness: cue a two hour duet with myself. (rehearsal)

 

2.

You may take this as a score.

score: a sequence to attempt, words to embody, curious directives to consume in the flesh. 

Of this dance I am making, months later, my marker on paper proclaims:

ARCHAIC

POETIC

SPIRAL

JOYOUS/KNOWING/REMEMBERING BODY

The list is the body-states I sequence through in the dance that I am making. The body is my own. I had been thinking a lot about what movement can do to “change how I feel.” But now I think maybe it’s about the courage to feel more. 

I start with excavating inward. The underland of myself. I had been thinking a lot about rocks and rock formations and how they hold time. But really, it’s the impression that time passed that rocks hold; the grains of silt gathered, the direction of subduction or convection, the evidence of flora and depression of life. What is the evidence of tectonic processes in the body? The way time is impressed on my flesh? This is something to improvise about.

This dance is also about rocks and time.

The score writes the choreography.

 

3.

I am making a solo. And I am writing around, within, and now about it. The making, that is. It feels like a poem.

 

4.

I am back on the idea of more than just this body. I sit up to listen. I get up and dance to listen. Or to feel “surprise.” 

Who is also in this mirrored duet? A question that asks: might this dance invite those who moved towards my body here, (the ones we call ancestors), to inform my rhythm-making now? Could a gesture repeated close the gap between me and my history? Dancing confirms  - proximity can move. 

Yet, a sound that speaks to my marrow is as familiar as pleasure. Again, history is a place I learned to remember. I drop away the thing that holds the mind over the body. I am beside myself, dancing with you. Telling your stories, shaking my ass, counting on the downbeat. Into and back, here I am in the repetition again. It’s delicious. And this is only what comes up from simply saying to myself: “spiral.” Come on in, won’t you?

 

5.

Recall a phrase you haven’t made up yet. I perform the in(ter)vention of the step, the accumulation of step into phrase, interrupt the fallacy that I have perfected this section before I stand before you and move. Surely I can’t expect myself to remember what I did that one day when I came in to my rehearsal feeling something wild and danced for one hour straight to some beat oscillating my body “moving the emotion like a memory” a bit crazy-making and ecstatic or something else. Like a memory, this section is about moving to remember something I did not already know I knew. My body knows a lot. It all started with the question: “How do I remember myself?”

 

6.

And what is the physicality of memory?

In this improvisation, I dance to know.

And what is the physicality of joy?

In this improvisation, I dance to know.

And what do I want, now and next?

In this improvisation, I dance to know.

And what does my liberation feel like right now, not an imagined next time or a “one day when we are all free,” but what in me is already free, to be felt and moved and lushly opened, liberation in this body, in time right now?

In this improvisation, I dance to know.

Audrey Johnson. Photo by Houssam Mchaimech from “towards.”

 

Audrey Johnson is a movement artist, teacher, and writer based in Berkeley, CA with roots from Detroit, MI. www.audreyjohnson.space

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Movement Poem #27 (Symmetry)

Symmetry

A movement poem for April 10, 2020 by Jill Randall

 

Ah!

To feel balanced,

whole

 

In my body,

in my imagination

equal sides

same pathways

even-ness

strength plus calm

 

The letters A and T

The numbers 0 and 8

Hardback books

and butterflies

 

Mirroring,

two sides,

together.

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Hello!

Today's music = "That Painting" by Michael Wall. It is #8 on this playlist.

Symmetry to me is calming, grounding, restorative. Balancing out, evening out. Re-centering.

For today's opening improv, toggle between free movement and then focusing back on movements and shapes of symmetry. Then try the reverse - lots of symmetry, and then brief moments of asymmetry.

Symmetry also plays out with movement phrases - ie one rolling pass to the right side of the room....and then doing the same rolling pass to the left side of the room.

I hope you will build a phrase for today! Thank you.

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Movement Poem #26 (palette)

Palette

A movement poem for April 9, 2020 by Jill Randall

 

Possibility -

for air moments, loft

 

Possibility -

for verticality

 

Possibility -

for forward motion

 

Possibility -

for floating

 

Possibility -

for falling (slowly)

 

rolling,

rolling,

rolling

 

perching

 

repose

 

*"Possibility for verticality" was a quote from Audrey Johnson's improv class on March 27, 2020. Thank you Audrey!

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Hello!

Today's music = "I Rode on NYC" by Michael Wall. It is #3 on this playlist.

Today's improvisational explorations = ah, the possibilities! Say yes to possibility. Yes to freedom, yes to this moment of moving. Make these 5 minutes of dancing be all about yes/opening/options/this moment. Go, go, go!

Next, play with some of the key actions in the poem = air moments, verticality, forward motion, floating, falling.

I hope you will build a short phrase for the poem today. Thank you!

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Blog Series: "Why improv?" (with Molly Heller)

Heartland Collective. Molly Heller, center. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

 

FINDING (HEART): Practices in Improvisation (& Practices in Improvisational Writing)

By Molly Heller

 

(watching) Self: Sometimes improvisation is an opener, and often it requires that I push back.

It is a way of life. No fixed point or arrival, always FINDING. Offering permission (s) within its limitations. This provides me with freedom and sometimes it suffocates. It is the whole universe within my body. Swell, surge, purge. I intend, attend, and decide. Improvisation is choice, and another choice, followed (sometimes) by another…it is the acceptance of wanting. Desire.

It is (and has always been) where I locate myself and find others.

 

(with) People: They show up, and I invite them in. They invite me in.

Doing it TOGETHER.

        

(alongside) Heartland: Locating FINDING…a series of practices

…FINDING is a moveable exchange where creative autonomy is distributed in making/performing/being together. Leaning into:

Impossibilities: Paradox in the body and within space (such as: precariousness and stability, buoyancy and density, ease and resistance, containment and expansion)

Expressivity: Capacity for the whole body to animate, punctuate, and communicate

 

The idioms, sensations, and physical spaces of the heart

Cultivating connection

Magnification, bursting BIGness

 

…curating our beginnings

beginnings that curate…

 

Imagination. Wonder. Potential.

 

(through) Teaching: Facilitation. Mutable Molly. (way) FINDING.   

 

(witnessed within) Performance:

Bouncing between knowing and (un) doing. Riding the edges of making visible and retreating. Confronting closure, closing the need for resolution.

Puff to create space within my body (and distance from this very body)

Surrounded. 

 

(realizations of personal) Inspiration:

Resistance (the way in)

Resistance (the way out)

Keep on keepin’ on (the way towards)

  People are (the way through)

  

(current) Times: In this together. Moving (through) with…

Compassion

Care

Gratitude

Acknowledging…

Grief

Impermanence

Magnitude

To maybe (sometimes) find…that…

It just is.

Photo by Tori Duhaime.

About: Sometimes a writer, sometimes a teacher, sometimes a director, sometimes a performer, sometimes a maker. Always an improvisor.

Details: Molly is an Assistant Professor in the School of Dance at the University of Utah, and the director of the Heartland Collective. Molly currently dances with Katie Faulkner, Arletta Anderson, and Joanna Kotze.   mollyheller.com

Movement Poem #25

The Delight of Verbs Beginning with the Letter D

(thank you, Ross Gay*)

A movement poem for April 8, 2020 by Jill Randall

 

direct

delegate

disperse

disengage

deflate

decide

discover

determine

do.

 

*Check out The Book of Delights by Ross Gay.

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Hello!

Today's music selection = "7 70" by Michael Wall. It is #7 on this playlist.

Try improvising with each word. How many different ways can you direct, deflate, decide? Play with gestures, whole body movements, level changes. Vary speed. Explore eyes/focus.

Could today's dance be in a chair, or site specific (set of steps, balcony)?

I hope you will build a short movement phrase today. Thank you!

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Blog Series: "Why improv?" (with Melecio Estrella)

Melecio Estrella. Photo by Jessica Swanson.

 

Where We Find Ourselves

Memories of Improvisations 

By Melecio Estrella

 

1998

Physically negotiating and communicating through touch, weight grounded in our feet, spines are organized, leg power recruited to do the heavy lifting, hands gripping metal and plastic...

It takes six of us to get the generator, large speakers, and turntables down the steep uneven steps to the soft sand edge of the ocean at an undisclosed location. Once all the cables are connected, a sure voiced woman who is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology pours gasoline into the generator and says, “Give thanks for the blood of our mother.” This is burned into my 19 year old mind as I think of how this fuel is an offering, how our all night dance on the beach is an offering, how the use of petroleum can be reverent. 

The group becomes 50 people strong under the moon; we arrange ourselves in a circle. We hold hands, we listen to the ocean to our west, we listen to each other, we pray. We listen to the DJ start to spin deep pulsing electronic music. The dance takes over, we share organic fruit under the moon, we snuggle in piles of sandy blankets next to a fire. When the sun comes up, the music is still thumping. 

 

2013

Our toes articulate inside our shoes, our steps are entrained in the same rhythm. Our hearing perks up, instigating a spinal twist to see what’s behind us. Hand slides inside pocket, hand reaches to grab car door handle...

We fold down the seats of the rental car, so we can all face each other. When on tour, one of the best places to sing at this hour is in the car. With intimate and muffled acoustics we try to harmonize, we fail, we laugh, we try again and again, until surprisingly, we hit a harmony that feels like opening a door to a blaring world where there is only sunlight. All three of us are stunned and quiet for a moment. We laugh more, get out of the car to walk, run and dance through a random neighborhood. We stumble upon a creek, and make our way up it in the dark slowly and physically sensitive because we can't really see. We hear the loud dull moan of bullfrogs. Sitting with the bullfrogs, we simply listen before we add our own closed mouth dull moaning. We should probably get back to our hotel rooms before the sun comes up. 

 

2020

Weight of the body spreading horizontally, gravity has a loud voice. Lying down, rolling from side body to back body, breathing wide, opening eyes to see the ceiling. Extending arms and spreading eyebrows with a yawn, sliding on sheets to spiral up, sitting in bed...

In a predawn slowness, I put on multiple layers of warm clothes as I hear the rustling of other dancers in the house getting up to join our sunrise walk. We are in a winter dance making residency at the Marin Headlands and have the privilege of a house to live in and a studio to dance in. We step outside as the sunrise begins to make the fog glow around us. We are still in the liminal space of waking as we walk to the beach. Monterey Cypress, Eucalyptus, Banana Slug, Coyote, Willow, Coffee Berry, Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron. All of these life forms are growing, moving, shedding, feeding, dying. We get to the beach, we listen to the ocean, we are blanketed with the relentless movement of the surf. We dance. We improvise. We don’t talk to each other. The ocean has a loud voice. We listen. 

 

 

Melecio Estrella is a dance artist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He is artistic director of BANDALOOP, co-director of Fog Beast and a longtime member of the Joe Goode Performance Group. Over the last 18 years he has collaborated on numerous site specific dance works in urban and wild spaces globally. His work has been commissioned by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Opera Center, Dancers’ Group, The Headlands Center for the Arts and universities and high schools in the Bay Area.   

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Movement Poem #24 (Movement becomes wishes)

 

Movement becomes wishes

A movement poem for April 7, 2020 by Jill Randall

 

Gather

Collect

Consider

Generate

 

Shape

Care for

Craft

 

Then out in the world

To the world

Offerings + intentions

Gestures + gifts

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Hello!

What does a wish feel like it your hands? Heart? Whole body?

Today's music selection is "I always saw you," which is on an album by Michael Wall and Jordan Chiolis. The track is #3 on this playlist.

Play with the gathering and sharing actions in the poem today. Improvise for a few minutes. Inward and outward. Near and far. Play with body parts, and the whole body moving. Gather and share from where you stand right now. Gather and share while traveling in space. From up close....from afar...

I hope you will create a phrase with the whole poem today. Try repeating it 3 times in a row. As the nursery rhyme goes (at least from my memory): Wipe the dishes, wash the dishes, ring the bell for tea. Three good kisses, three good wishes, I will give to thee.

Thank you!

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Movement Poem #23

zig zag

a movement poem for April 6, 2020 by Jill Randall

 

marble chase

Yosemite switchback

sumi-e brush painting

 

back + forth

sequentially progressing

subtle changes of direction

be patient

 

here,

gentle shifts

side to side

or forward and back

head - shoulders -

ribs - pelvis -

thighs - knees -

ankles - feet

 

and again...

and again...

 

What is that zig zag

within me?

How can the energy start to flow

to my feet + where I am at?

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Hello!

Today's music selection = "4 120 (Vary Vary 2018)" by Michael Wall, which is #39 on this playlist.

To begin:

• A classic improv of painting in the space with different body parts. Lines, curves, circles, and of course zig zags.
• Pathways - drawing attention to our feet. Linear pathways, curvilinear paths, and zig zags.
• Internal zig zag - head to toes, feet to head. How can the energy travel through the body? What size is this movement?

Composing:

• Today, maybe it is the essence of the poem and not line by line. Create a short phrase that captures the key ideas in the poem for you.

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Blog Series: "Why improv?" (with Ellen Slatkin)

Ellen Slatkin. Photo by Robert Flynt (Brussels 2019).

 

Rigor + Anarchy in Improvisation

By Ellen Slatkin

 

I’ll start with a couple of relevant definitions. I think a lot gets lost in translation when we talk about improvisation because we’re not clear about what we’re referring to. When I use the word “improvisation,” I am not referring to content. I am referring to a method implemented to explore different techniques and aesthetics, to achieve different goals. A state of improvisation is simply being ready for what is going to happen while it is happening. Somehow improvisation is falsely associated with a particular aesthetic: generally directionless, wiggly, illegible. If that association is dispelled, if the way we define and talk about it changes, I believe improvisation can be implemented widely and become more deeply ingrained in every practice; everything will be richer. At least, it’s something that’s become inextricable from how I practice.

At the core of how I approach movement are rigor and anarchy.

When I say rigor, I mean doing it on purpose. I use improvisation as a method to explore the nuance and extremities of physical capacity. Recently, for example, I’ve used it to explore exhaustion, through constant falling and getting back up again. I emphasize specificity - it is not “anything goes.” It is “anything is possible through loyalty to this methodology.” I use improvisation to react to falling and getting up, over and over and over again.

Credit where credit is due: many of my personal dogmas I have learned. Hagit Yakira (Israel, UK, Norway) introduced me to the expansiveness within falling and recovering. Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold (Norway/Denmark) showed me the magic of anarchy in practice. David Zambrano (Venezuela, Belgium) showed me how to apply rigor to the study of spontaneous performances to find hundreds of different selves.

With David Zambrano, I worked for 60 days on improvised performance. It was grueling, methodic, at times agonizing work, because of the specificity it required. In the first weeks while working solo, we focused on “changes.” Every time, spanning from five minutes to three hours, had to TOTALLY, TOTALLY DIFFERENT. I’ve heard many times that “every improvisation is different inherently because it’s improvised.” I guess you can see it many ways, but I think that assumption is both dangerous in that it can lead to laziness, and completely untrue. To be different requires it to be something in the first place. This means it needs to have intention, direction, to be composed and communicated consciously, and that requires some kind of rigor. Anything most certainly did not go. It’s incredible to watch someone have complete control over their body and communication, to transform themselves purposefully. What I am saying is when you want to reach a goal, rigor can be applied as much to improvisation as to anything else to achieve it.

Anarchy is important because it allows you to place what you need within what you have. This is not the opposite of rigor, but the motorcycle’s sidecar. In the circus of freelancing, I’ve found it a great tool to find continuity throughout ever-changing projects and performances and workshops and teaching. I’m always working on something that I will be working on regardless of where I am. Right now I’m stuck in Denmark because the world is broken and I’ve become obsessed with how much power I can produce from my legs to jump up onto something. I’d be doing the same thing (secretly, in different ways) if I were in a ballet class, or if I were touring a piece, or if I were teaching floorwork. I do this with rigorous improvisation.

Find something you’re obsessed with, try to put it everywhere to figure it out from all possible angles. Improvisation is an angle, tool, method to be able to do this with some levity and joy. Rigor is not just about repetition, anarchy is not just about rebellion. They are active choices, thoughtful ways to implement improvisation as a method that can provide depth of study regardless of where or how you are studying.

 

Ellen Slatkin is from Berkeley, California. She began her contemporary training at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center and in the ODC Dance Jam, and has been dancing in the UK, Europe, and Canada for the past six years. She has performed for Second Hand Dance (UK), Clod Ensemble (UK), Arch8 (NL), Julia Bengtsson (SWE), Chloë Lum/Yannick Desranleau (Canada), David Zambrano/60 Days of Improvisation, and is currently working with Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold (DK/NO) in Copenhagen. 

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Related posts:

 

A Dozen Questions about Improvising (Actually, A Baker's Dozen) - Jill Randall

 

Movement Poems

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Movement Poem #22 (small dance)

 

small dance

a movement poem for April 5, 2020 by Jill Randall

 

go smaller

less

to 20%

 

one hand

two hands

torso

leg lift

walk

turn

float

suspend

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As of late, I have been loving playing with range and size. Small, medium, large. Extra large. Extra small.

-Today's music selection is: "Up, at the moon" by Michael Wall (in collaboration with Alie Vidich). This is #7 on this playlist.

-Begin with a "size improv." Paint the space. Body parts in isolation. Whole body moving. Play the scales. Play the range. Juxtapose. Stick with one idea for a few moments before switching. Move in place; travel the expanse.

-Then, consider choreographing a short phrase with the poem today. Try it in three different locations (whether within the one space you are in right now, or move into three different rooms or outside areas).

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Launching a New Blog Series: "Why improv?"

Jill Randall. Photo by Tony Nguyen.

Even before Shelter in Place, improvisational practices have been on my mind this year and a big curiosity as of late. This week, I am thrilled to share essays and musings from around the globe. We will hear from Ellen Slatkin, Anya Clarke and Mitsuko Verdery of MICHIYAYA, Melecio Estrella, Audrey Johnson, Molly Heller, Molly Rose-Williams, and James Graham.

Today I begin with my humble offering.

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A Dozen Questions about Improvising (Actually, A Baker's Dozen)

By Jill Randall

 

What is "just movement?":: When is it dancing? :: Is the movement dancing because I use the identification of professional dancer? :: How can improvising lead to freedom? :: How can improvising bring me back to my 3-dimensional self, especially in this time of screens and forward focus? :: How is improv "free + accessible?" :: Is improvisation really easy, or really challenging? :: How can I take away aesthetic judgement? :: Or should there actually be more aesthetic choicemaking? :: How + where can I just let go? :: How can I be lighter - in spirit, focus, and attention? :: Is this weird, or beautiful? :: When can I improvise next?

 

 

Jill Randall is the Director of this blog, Life as a Modern Dancer. She performed for 18 years in the Bay Area with Nina Haft & Company, Paufve Dance, Dana Lawton, and Martt Lawrence. Jill received her BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah in 1997 and her MFA in Dance: Creative Practice from Saint Mary's College in 2016. In Berkeley, CA, she is the Artistic Director of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. jillrandalldance.com