Dancers – part 2
After some reflections covering our first rehearsal, Anette and I got together once again to rehears.
We felt that the interplay between us in the last rehearsal was to linear, there was no friction, we just followed each other. This is definitely a good thing in certain contexts, but we wanted to create more tension, depth and range.
We used some specific methods to try to reach this:
1 – What ever the first reaction to an impulse were, we should wait for the second or third one. This way the performance becomes more profound because we get time to interpret the impulse and the context.
2 – We can choose to hold on to our ideas even though the music or dance change. Then we will get more tension and the audience experiences two courses at the same time and the interplay between them.
Watch the first attempt here, I did some enhancements to the audio recording method (replacing the microphone on an iPhone) but the image got very blurry … Something I actually think was quite cool.
In the first post about dancers, I made this statement:
I’ve made a temporary holding point for my self: if the musics intentions are not clear enough for the dancer to interpret it as I intended it, it’s not good enough.
After some reflection, I find that quite stupid. It provokes a monotone and linear behavior which excludes all the discussed qualities I want in the performance. It’s always good to have some temporary guidelines, but this one didn’t last for very long.
But there is something in the statement, about being clear and concise which I find very important. Less is as we all know – more. I’ll have to, in time, try to rephrase this statement.
You might wonder why we are doing the same framework every time. The reason for that is that when we first met, we were not sure about where we would go. I didn’t know Anette’s dancing very well, and she didn’t know the intentions with my music. That way, working with the same framework for improvisation every time was actually a really good thing, because then it was more clear what worked and what didn’t and we could focus more on the interplay then on the improvisation.
This method was not a conscious decision from us, rather a concept that emerged from the process.
We have been discussing to what extent composition and frameworks should be a part of the performance and the only thing we know for certain is how we shall start, the first sound and the starting position for the dancer. This gives us peace and a room where to start building the performance.
We rehearsed our framework once again, but this time we tried to continue even further.
Now, after entering the “unknown”, we felt that this was the right way to go. After all the reflections and thoughts regarding our previous rehearsals we had established a way of communication that could work as well with the mentioned framework as with any other improvised piece.
We wanted to try something “completely different” as shown bellow:
The framework that we rehearsed established some borders for our expression. Or in other words, it defined somehow our expression. This I regard as something good.
I like the concept that every thing should be open and free, and even tough what we are going to present during performances is already somehow defined, I was free to not invite Anette to dance, she was free to say no, we were free to decide that we didn’t like what we were doing and cancel or play hip-hop instead. So our defined expression came from something very open and free. And that’s good enough for me, for now.
Thanks to Anton Ligaarden for great promo photos:
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