# data[].attributes.body
Willens, K., 2022. International Women's day. [image] Available at: <https://time.com/4696309/international-womens-day-march-360/> [Accessed 1 May 2022].

Ultima Vez. 2022. TRACES. [online] Available at:
<http://www.ultimavez.com/en/productions/traces> [Accessed 10 April 2022].

Shechter, H., 2022. Double Murder - Hofesh Shechter Company. [online] Hofesh Shechter Company. Available at: <https://hofesh.co.uk/productions/double-murder/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].

Winship, L., 2020. Clowns review – a blast of bloodlust from the brilliant Hofesh Shechter. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/apr/15/hofesh-shechter-clowns-review-bbc-performance-live> [Accessed 14 March 2022].

Youtube, 'Pina Bausch - Seasons March - YouTube',lllifeform, youtube.com, Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpgjsOr6hk> Dec 5 2018 [Accessed 29 April 2022]

# data[].attributes.body
Pina Bausch  -  "Seasons march"

(If you would like to see what I am discribing, feel free to click on the link in my reference list with the title of this piece. It will direct you to youtube.)

In this film by Pina Bausch I am mostly drawn to the pedestrian movement in combination with dance and drama. Usually, I am not a fan of pedestrian movement but the way this choreographer uses it makes it more than just that. The complexity of the end result, combining all three disciplines, acting dancing and the pedestrian movement, creates a unique piece that stands out.

In this piece, the dancers are all walking in the same tempo while performing different gestures with their upper bodies. They are walking like pedestrians, but their footstepts are set in a synchnonised rhythm while also doing the exact same dance all at the same time. The unison of movement is very  aesthetically pleasing to experience and examine.

Adding to that, the facial expression of the dancer are also important. In this piece, you are moving slow. The way your gaze stands and where your focus is, has a huge impact on how your performance is received by the public.
I have personal experience as I have been in similar piece before that was completely based off of this performance.

Let me summarise and conclude:
Embodying this piece and its rules:
- Walk in the same tempo with fellow dancers.
- Follow the set material.
- Perform with the same quality as everyone else.

This formula is incredibly simple yet so intriguing to me. The notion of unison gives a lot of people, including me, the feeling of satisfaction.

# data[].attributes.body
Hofesh Shechter

Hofesh Schechter is a choreographer that has been gaining a lot of recognition the last few years. A few years back, around the time that the pandemic had started, he first showcased a piece called “clowns”. I remember seeing it online. I was absolutely stunned. All the dancers on stage are all different characters or rather “clowns”. Some of the clowns look down on you, others laugh in your face and some have this intention as if they are looking for a challenge. Each dancer is their own clown, causing it to be very unique.

What speaks to me in the piece and observations

Even when they are all doing the same thing, each person does it differently, which is exactly why I like it so much and how I see that it unites them as a group.

There is something very playful yet so serious, almost sinister. I feel like I see adults on a stage embracing their inner child combined with the dark parts of themselves. Basically a bunch of jesters on stage. I believe we all have a little evil in us and can release the ”little devil” within ourselves. I really like this approach because it is playful and flexible. With this as the central theme, there are so many directions you can go to with this idea.

The piece has the dancers fooling around with each other, murdering and harming each other and behaving like some kind of cult. The cult of clowns in this case?
I like the insane approach. It is mentally exhausting and probably hard to execute well. But going to extremities is not always needed. I love how even though the dancers move fast from point a to b, they carefully go about their transition between those points and really make sure nothing is overlooked in their movements.

Approach to dance that heavily interests me

The reason the Hofesh dancers can easily manage these special transitions is because of a technique that is very hard to master. It can take weeks of practice.

They dance with the idea of pulling strings away and towards each other, with both of their hands. It is not as easy as it sounds. I have tried it myself during a week-long intensive with some of the hofesh dancers and it was very difficult. There are different intensity levels, how hard or soft the strings pull.

While working on the strings with your hands, you also need to move your body and know exactly what every part of your body is doing. These fundamentals should be practiced by the dancers and over a span of time it will increase their awareness and their creativity.

The way the dancers are so loose yet controlled in the movement is not an easy task. Another fundamental is to move in something thick. There are also different intensities around this. You can combine the thickness with the strings which is a real challenge, but makes for such interesting material in its own way.

They have to pay attention to their body as a whole and have complete body awareness.
Not only does this make his pieces in general cleaner and a pleasure for the eyes, it is also something that somebody as myself can use in everyday life in the studio.

"The fix"
It is another piece of Hofesh that I have seen. It is the aftermath of “Clowns”, the ending of the madness and the attempt to mend of the damage done. In this piece there is a lot of compassion and taking care of each other, trying to fix all the things falling apart.

I am interested in the idea of having some sort of effect or after-effect from a previous piece. That does not mean it needs to be labelled as a definitive “sequel.” The piece “The fix” feels like a complete contrast to its predecessor “Clowns” thus linking the two.
In all of his pieces, I always find a specific theme resurfacing. It’s humanity, being human. I feel this in Clowns, The Fix and other pieces like Grand Finale. I am intrigued by how Hofesh has so many different themes within a single subject.

Ultimately, “The Fix” is described as an antidote to the madness of clowns in the official article on the website.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Willens, K., 2022. International Women's day. [image] Available at: <https://time.com/4696309/international-womens-day-march-360/> [Accessed 1 May 2022].

# data[].attributes.headline
Alexander Carpentier BA1 group C: How creative ideas/approaches interest me from contemporary artists

# data[].attributes.subject
Alexander Carpentier BA1 group C: How creative ideas/approaches interest me from contemporary artists

# data[].attributes.body
-Wim Vandekeybus: company name: Ultima vez
2 years ago, on September 18th I saw “Traces” performed by Ultima vez. I was deeply inspired by this piece and took some elements and ideas from it and applied it to myself. Wim Vandekeybus has been quite big in the Belgian contemporary dance world.

"Traces" was a very energetic piece where the dancers were to unleash their animalistic side and find the old traces of humanity within themselves. It would go in a lot of ways where these dancers would either go on a frenzy or work together. I am interested in the idea of finding a humans limit and then trying to breach that so that it becomes “animalistic”.

Inside all the wildness on the stage, they delivered amazing partnerwork in the most swift and elegant manners while still maintaining the craziness on the stage.

The intention of Wim Vandekeybus is to go back to the traces of humankind. In this piece the intuition of the human is put in the spotlight. What interests me is that the story of this whole piece can barely be explained with words which means you need to see the piece to fully understand what it is actually about. The bodies of the dancers need to find old traces of nature that are forgotten or repressed due to todays' world being so modern compared to long ago when we had only sticks and stones.

These old human survival instincts are fascinating to use in the context of dance. The explosive energy because of the will to survive is remarkable and a good way to start the creation of a powerful piece.

What happens when in the context of dance you awaken these old instincts and imagine being threatened, trying to make that feeling a reality. It comes close to acting in a way but embracing a feeling on stage can change so much about your dance language.

I seek to adapt the understanding of a human dancing through their instincts to myself. Treating ourselves as humans changes the way you let yourself be seen on stage. When we dance, we shouldn’t just be the machines that are doing what they are told to do, but we should be feeling whatever emotions arise and express them.

This idea of uncovering ones animalistic side can also be used in an improvisation. In an improv, we are already depending a lot on our instincts as humans.
If we could make a score about this, I would include the following elements:
-Follow every impulse that you get without hesitation
- Adopting animalistic traits or behaviours,

I could definitely see a dancer like myself join a piece like this. The animalistic and instinct-based approach is the kind of thing I would adore to explore in a piece/improv.

# data[].attributes.body
People were stressed. The sharing with the other groups from our year was only a week away. After the two main sessions on Monday and Tuesday, we had a class with Alberto about the sound of a protest. He helped us find the clarity that we needed.

It was week three, Wednesday and we had a new class for the first time:

Sound in protest. In this class with Alberto, we looked at protests and had him look at our set improv. A protest usually has chants and the sound of people talking. Even screaming. Sometimes, there would be no sound at all. I did not expect this class to have much influence on our project, but in the end, it helped the group find the clarity we needed in that week. I always felt like something lacked in our protest. We had good performances and most of the things we did felt right, But there was no sound at all.

the art of sound with movement

With the improvisations always quiet, we needed a change. We added one more thing to our set improv: intense panic. The first few tries of this failed before we had Alberto. Like I said earlier, we lacked sound, right?

I talked to Faye about it, and we both planned to start screaming as loud as we could. Later that day, we finally had the first self-directed. Our plan was to awaken the “terror and anger” within the rest of our peers.

We finished the quiet beginning piece of our improv, which is the intro as previously mentioned. The terror scene begins. It was quiet. Me and Faye look for each other and I hear them go “now.” We screamed at the top of our lungs. Naturally, the whole room followed.

When I was walking home after that, watching the video of us screaming, all I could feel was satisfaction. The timing was how I had imagined it, and the timing of Faye and I screaming together worked very well. The method was effective. When you initiate something in a group improvisation, people are very likely to follow, proving that taking the initiative works.This scene would end with a “dead body” being one of us.

What I loved about this part, was the transition. Everyone silent, acknowledging the dead body. We wrapped the dead body in scarves and brought them to the opposite side of the studio, where they would come back to life and stare at the sun from the window. The scarves were beautiful for the dead bodies.

->This was the end result of the initial idea of the decorated dead bodies in week 2.

Eva and Tom told us about the pure horror they felt as they watched the terror scene, and told us the transition into the dead bodies worked. I think this is exactly what we wanted as a group.

When I went home, I kept thinking about why it was not working until now. Then I realized that the only thing we needed was the shock...

The whole group felt confident after the final round of feedback from Eva and Tom. It was because we had found the clarity that we needed, which was the shocking into the soft transition. We also got extra reassurance after that, so we were more than ready for the sharing.

After that, this was a satisfying ending to the project and my creative process.

# data[].attributes.headline
What direction do we go? (week three aka final week)

# data[].attributes.subject
What direction do we go? (week three aka final week)

# data[].attributes.body
Not knowing what we wanted with the piece, we decided to sit down and talked about everything bothering us. At the time, there was so much tension in that room. People had different desires as to what they wanted the pieces’ outcome to be.

I did not know what I wanted. It is as if I was fine with whatever outcome this process was going to have. We have so many elements that we have discovered in the past weeks. Not everything can be included in the end.

I did not feel frustrated in the end. Some ideas must come and simply go, which is a natural part of any creative process. Those ideas are then not inherently bad. You simply try multiple things and use whatever works the best.

# data[].attributes.headline
Material making for the set improvisation of the protest project

# data[].attributes.subject
Material making for the set improvisation of the protest project

# data[].attributes.body
How did we do it and what methods did we use?

Our group is amazing at doing improvisations. We have done two improvisations in the first week to find common grounds as to what we like and do not like. The first improv felt amazing. We discovered movement and poses. We could decorate people with random items while walking around them. They were the pieces of art that were meant to represent “the protest.”

We worked with symbolism and poses and the usage of the hands.

Example:

Hands were in the sky with the arms a bit bent, as if I am holding a ball. Or both arms on the shoulders, making a cross. Can be seen as totally the opposite of the first pose, which is like you are worshipping or welcoming somebody.

After improvising a lot of times, patterns started arising and we decided to keep the patterns as a set improv.

That week only one more thing remained: the sharing with Eva and Tom.

The more we did our improv with the specific patterns, the worse it started feeling to do so. It started to get old very quickly and it was hard to keep the same enjoyment. We tried keeping the same energy levels, just like the first time we had showed Eva and Tom. The project was getting a bit too much for everyone. Monday, Tuesday had passed, we had self-directed on Wednesday (week2). I felt like I really needed a break and luckily, everyone else did as well, so that’s what we did.

The day after, Thursday we decided to work hard in preparation for another sharing with Eva and Tom on Friday. We did improvs daily, and so we have explored so many ideas that we do not know what direction it will go.

What we did, did not look like a protest anymore according to Tom and Eva:

-We showed a lot of togetherness in the improv sharing.

-We used the poses that we discovered in week two.

-Lifting of a dead person.

-Covering each other’s eyes.

-Everyone hugging each other.

Yet it did not look like a protest. I was very confused. The feeling of a protest should be clear.

But then I realized what was wrong. We had fun discovering so many elements in the past few weeks, but it is very difficult to maintain all of them in a single improv. It might be overwhelming to the audience with so many things happening.

We wanted to keep everything we did yet, we did not know what we wanted to reach.

What even is the intention? What do we want to reach? What is the piece about? All these questions I asked myself yet, I was unable to answer any of them.

# data[].attributes.body
the first struggles of finding my voice in a vast group (still week 2) Criteria 2 nog video?

Around week two, on the first self-directed of the week (which is always Wednesday) We decided to have a long talk with the group because we wanted clarity and
understanding of what we were actually doing.

The group discussed new things, because we needed to start making the piece. How do we show that we are protesters and what role we are playing? I could not help but feel useless in this whole conversation of the self-directed. I had nothing to say; Nothing came to mind; It was a horrible feeling. I did my best to contribute but whatever I said did not make any sense. It is okay to have a lesser day, and I thought maybe I just needed another way to express my ideas. The group decided to have a group improvisation shortly after that. I was quite happy. I felt like this was a chance to finally express what i've been trying to say. We explored poses:

-Arms open, as if you are hugging the air

-Arms closed, hands on the shoulders, crossed

I am the one who started this idea in our improv and the whole group adapted to it eventually. It felt like something we would do in an actual protest.

I have also tried to discover movement that leans more to dance with some people. We would give each other weight and try to balance on each other. Hands coming together in the air, as if we are reaching for something.

My ideas do not always need to be expressed verbally. I can also just show with movement, without using any words. It is a quite unique way of saying things but in some ways, it is more easily universally understood. In the future, I will resort to this manner in a similar situation as the previous.

I will however, work on my ability to verbally express/discuss my ideas during group discussions.

# data[].attributes.body
“Why don’t we imitate a protest?”

In week two, Eva and Tom split the group in two and made us take the roles of protesters and anti-protesters.

Sabotaging each other was the goal. It turned into something on the less serious side, almost childish. Some people felt like we were mocking actual protests in real life and were not fine with it. I did not like it either. Certain individuals even had a few bruises from this because it just turned into a whole playfight.

After remembering what subject we were working on, it all started feeling very wrong. Protests are anything but just a simple playfight. This subject is profoundly serious and should not be taken into a direction like this. It felt like I was mocking the gravity of protests.

Eva and Tom tried to initiate some feelings of protest to help inspire us even more in our improvisations and research. I do not think this is a terrible experience. You research not only to find what works; you also find what does not.

# data[].attributes.headline
Discovery of protest through the means of improvisation (video?criteria1)

# data[].attributes.subject
Discovery of protest through the means of improvisation (video?criteria1)

# data[].attributes.body
After about 3 days of research into the project, we have our first self-directed class and we decided to improvise in response to an essay about protest.

Improvisation was a satisfactory manner of research for our group. We improvised about two times before showing it to Eva and Tom on the final day, the sharing day of week one.

Patterns started emerging that we already saw in the two improvs we did before:

-Silent and slow beginning, extremely focused group. -> this created tension, said Eva and Tom. They were constantly longing for more as the sharing of our work continued. They tried to anticipate what would happen.

-Flocking. It is an effective way to represent the unity of the group and to feel the togetherness.

-The decorating of dead people, seen as the “souls” sacrificed for the brighter future we are trying to reach.

The shocking element also makes for a powerful and intimidating protest.

For no particular reason, the beginning was always silent. It was never decided to be like this, but it just happened naturally and felt right. Not a lot of movement and very still.

After a minute or more, you would notice these subtle movements in the whole group. People slowly falling. The element of people being dragged away or interrupted. Basically, including the opposition between protesters and the anti-protesters.

# data[].attributes.body
(Criteria number 1)

Note: Make sure to always read the text before watching each video!

# data[].attributes.headline
Creative proces reflection: The protest Project Alexander Carpentier BA1 

# data[].attributes.subject
Creative proces reflection: The protest Project Alexander Carpentier BA1 

# data[].attributes.body
The first steps towards a protest

On the first day of the protest project, Eva asked the whole class a very interesting question that lead to a lot of conversation: “What makes you angry?”

I remember thinking about animals in need and the patriarchy. I really don’t like how unfair the world is. In Belgium there has been a case of a drug dealer getting a life sentence, while sex-offenders would get a few years or just a simple punishment. Talking about these things with the group seemed confrontational and scary to me.

How would I embody these issues in an improvisation/dance?

I chose to start using graceful movements. I tried to embody the femininity in myself. This felt the most fitting and right in my head.

Why did I choose a soft/feminine quality?

Showing you have power does not mean you need to show force or aggression. That is how I feel about it. I tried to think about a peaceful and silent protest.

Since I heard a lot of talking about feminism as well and had shared opinions about it, this felt right. You are more powerful when you can remain calm and graceful.

Small group compositions and teamwork

Eva told us to make a small piece in groups based on what makes us angry. I teamed up with Darinka, Brooke and Bronte. We made a short piece of about 2 minutes dancing about what makes us angry.

We had multiple ideas but decided to put the woman in the centre. Feminism, and the voices of women being silenced. We started with everyone doing fast and small movement, as if we are trying to break free. We thought this was an efficient way to represent the voices being silenced nowadays.

After that, Brooke, Bronte and I proceed to use flocking while all doing slow and graceful movements. Darinka is the only one left behind still in the state of being stuck and trying to break free. We come back and try to stop her from breaking free. In the end, she stops resisting and lets us have our way.

I liked how it turned out into two groups that create some sort of contrast with each other. Darinka is the minority. The opposition was clearly visible because of Darinka being alone and us interrupting her.

She, in this small piece represents women being silenced today.