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A section from the final protest project sharing. (I am in the front,middle with the blonde bun and light blue top).

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A section of a short group improvisation in the protest project. (I am in the white T-shirt and black trousers standing in the front left, the front left if you're facing the mirror). 

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Reflection 2: Creating a piece - precision vs freedom

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Reflection 2: Creating a piece - precision vs freedom

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Reflection 3: Navigating working as a large group 

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Reflection 3: Navigating working as a large group 

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My research of the key figure in the development of contemporary dance, Hofesh Shechter, in terms of how his creatives ideas/ approaches interest me:

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My research of the key figure in the development of contemporary dance, Hofesh Shechter, in terms of how his creatives ideas/ approaches interest me:

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Exploring the ways in which Hofesh Shechter constructs worlds through dance - Unit 2 Essay by Daphne Wright

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Exploring the ways in which Hofesh Shechter constructs worlds through dance - Unit 2 Essay by Daphne Wright

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This padlet should be read by scrolling downwards, and following the arrows provided. See right of this message for my essay. Thank you!

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Reflections on my experience of creative processes in Unit 2, by Daphne Wright

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Reflections on my experience of creative processes in Unit 2, by Daphne Wright

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A photo of my groups protest project sharing. 

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This experience has taught me that contrast is a tool that can be very effective, but so is togetherness of a collective, and learning this transformed our improvisations from being very individual and distant, to being more united and cohesive as a group, where we learnt to listen and respond sensitively. It was challenging to work together but I felt that the group underwent a huge learning curve, and in the end we made it work well.

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Sometimes it was difficult to pinpoint what felt right or wrong about the improv but as we reflected some common ideas became clear. For example gaguing the commitment of the improvisation was noticeable. I learnt the importance of collective intention and commitment when working together in a large group, as sometimes we would turn to humour out of awkwardness if we got stuck in a loop, but other times sessions felt natural and very involved. I think it depended on the day as to wether the majority of the group would feel invested or not, and with improvisation it's easy to be lead astray naturally, so a certain level of group calmness was needed to work productively and maturely but also with playfullness.

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We also would reflect on what parts of the dance communicated the theme of protesting the most sucessfully. For example, in the beginning we turned to creating conflict or resistance quite often, but realised that actually that doesnt convey the message we wanted, of showing unity. This I feel allowed me to grow my understanding of the perception of certain movements and shapes, and allowed me to think more from the audiences perspective. It was also helpful to think of the audience experience when rehearsing ideas that we grew to like and knew we wanted to involve in the piece, as the ideas began to feel quite repetative and forced. But we had to remember that for the audience it is their first time seeing what we are doing, so learning to pace it right so that everyone can get on board became an important element to practise. As we collectively became more proficient in distilling evaluations from our experience improvising, we then took ideas one at a time and dedicated a whole improvisation to just exploring that one thing. Eva encouraged us to adopt a 'yes,and' approach to group work. Initially, as mentioned before, we created conflict in the dance, but we learnt to support ideas instead and say yes to them to build a group. I think we naturally opposed ideas as often we associate contrast with interest and consequently interest as value of dance.

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Improvising with creating rhythm through dynamics, using impulses, impacts, swings and rebounds. 

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Improvisation video attempting to turn with the dynamics of impulses and impacts. 

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Rhythmical unison experimentation, with the temp gradually getting faster. (I am on the floor at the end in the blue top and white trousers).

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Contrastingly, in choreology I have experienced the creative process of making dance through tight structures. We have been learning dance notation and using scores to create movement, which set the rhythm and dynamics, movement action and shapes in space. Creating dance in this way is entirely different to the improvisation approach in the protest project. There's an element of freedom as the exact movement isn't set, however I have learnt that in order to acheive and communicate the score components correctly, a great attention to detail is needed, so it still feels strict. I've really enjoyed these sessions of creating phrases to scores. When we worked specifically on rhythmical scores, using dynamics, it was particularly satisfying as we could put anybody in the space, doing different chroeography, but it would be cohesive as they were in rhythmical unison. I really liked this more mathematical approach to creating dance, as I thought it looked interesting to play with placing people in the space and seeing how their movements interract, whilst knowing that it matches rhythmically. This process made me reflect on the translation of rhythm from the dancers body to the spectator. The precision in dynamics required lots of attention and practise to communicate clearly the rhythm, which I found this interesting to experiement with.

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That being said, these classes are very valuable to me, as I'm being made to dance in new ways that I haven't accessed before. I feel motivated to practise these specific movement structures as they will broaden my movement capabilities. It feels like strengthening a very small muscle that's hard to locate initially but with time and attention to detail becomes stronger. Identifying what feels difficult to embody through these improvisations has also allowed me to notice the ways of moving that I tend to feel more and less comfortable with. For instance, I personally find softer movement to be my default. I can relatively easily work with impluses or slower continuous movement, however, practising impacts, resistance, more forceful qualities and faster paces feels much more challenging. Engaging with this process of using the structural model to dictate my movement is allowing me to learn about myself as a dancer and how I can practise to expand my range. It is also teaching me a more in depth knowledge of movement qualities, and how to structure generating movement, which could be a very useful exercise in the creative process of creating dance work.

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Here is an example of rhythmic scores we used to generate choreography. The scores dicatate the duration of impulses, impacts, swings and rebounds. 

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We found sitting and discussing after conducting short improvisations was useful for us, to reflect and identify aspects we liked best and other areas that didn't work so well.

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The protest project was a unique experience as I feel it is rare that a group of 20 or so dancers have autonomy over their performance and must make decisions all together. We worked under the shared leadership of Eva Recacha and Tom Hastings for the most part, however we had additional self-directed sessions where there was no leadership and we had to work as a collective. Navigating the process of making decisions with this amount of people all with their own ideas and opinions was very sensitive and it was interesting to watch natural leaders evolve in the group. We managed to create a harmonious creative environment many times, but there was also alot of stressful sessions where cooperation felt difficult.

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In term two I experienced different ways of creating pieces of dance; what it is to create a piece with improvisation and contrastingly making a piece with a very exact score and guidelines.

For the protest project our piece was a structured improvisation. After discussing the theme of protests and contextualising the project through watching clips from relevant documentarys and images, we identified the themes within the topic that we wanted to improvise around. Some of the words we were drawn to were unity and power. With these words in mind we then conducted some short 5-10 minute group improvisations. We recorded them and discussed further and identified aspects we liked best and then formed a structure for our final piece, so it was an amalgamation of all that we had explored, refined to a structured improvisation. This creative process showed me how to create a piece with improvisation and a free approach. Reflecting on this experience, I found this creation process overwhelming initially, as our improvisations were very unpredictable. However, when we began collecting all of our ideas and creating a strucuture I felt more secure and also more connected to the material, as the clarity gave us intention. During this process I thought a lot about evaluating the piece as it was happening, deciding what's needed and not needed, and making my improvisational decisions based off of this. As we developed skills in this critical thinking it became more frequent that we'd have coherant improvisations. I felt insecure at first in not having set choreography and the thought of performing improvisation was very daunting, but I'm glad to have experienced the challenge, and to see the progression of the group.

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Reflection 1: Generating movement with the structural model and improvisation.

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Reflection 1: Generating movement with the structural model and improvisation.

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In composition classes with Eva we have been working through different elements of the strucural model, developed by Valerie Preston Dunlop. We have conducted improvisation sessions dedicated to practising combinations from the model, for example using transference of weight to different body parts, and exploring moving in this way at slow and fast continuous paces, using only impacts or impulses and highlighting the weight of the body through showing resistance or indulgment (e.g falling). I have found improvising to these strict guidelines to be an incredibly challenging experience. I have discovered that certain combinations of movement components feel very unfamiliar to the body, as they contrast with what feels natural. For example, the movement of turning lends itself quite easily to the dynamic of an impulse, starting quickly then losing momentum as you turn, so attempting turning with the quality of an impact is a noticeable challenge for the body. This has made sessions feel difficult for me as, when normally I enjoy the mindlessness of improvising, I have instead been having to really think about what my body is doing, which in the beginning can be frustrating, feeling clunky and like there's a disconnect between my brain and body.