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Final Piece and Reflection on the Process

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Final Piece and Reflection on the Process

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We performed our piece, 'Cascading', at the end of the two week creative process. Watching it back I can appreciate the flow of the movement and how the work had such focus on the group.

On reflection one thing I wished we had discussed more was the meaning of the piece, we had a vague sense of an aesthetic of protest which was unity but we never went deeper into what it evoked for us. This was surprising as we had Tom with us in lots of sessions and we didn't have conversations about how to project and create meaning in the movement, or any theoretical ideas on the subject of process. The meaning of our piece actually was placed upon us one rehearsal before the performance by Tom; I didn't understand his explanation for the piece and why we didn't have a discussion at least about what he meant.

My final thoughts on being a part of the protest project are that I will take away an understanding of the difficulties of the creative process; initial disconnect of the group (as we didn't know each other too well), the challenging concept of the piece and the struggle to understand our role in creating the work. I think that with these issues altered it could have been a successful project and could have given me lots of take away and use. However watching our performance back I do see how we created a cohesive work in the end that conveyed our concept of unity successfully.

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The flowing sense of the movement material inspired us to use costumes that blended together. In one of our design sessions with Sharon we went to the costume closet to think about colours; we chose a scheme of light blues, greys and light browns. The blue and the grey evoke an appearance of water that is emphasised through our movements.

This colour scheme was effective to create a cohesive look to our group and complemented the fluid movement. The cascade image that we discussed at the start of the process involved images of waterfalls and rivers which were gratifying to bring into the final performance through costume.

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Once finding our theme of cascading which evoked a sense of unity, team work and travel that you find within protests. With one clear idea as a group we decided we wanted there to be more than one pathway of moving in the piece and we created two new sections. These sections involved speech and moving in lines with a more abrupt dynamic.

Although these ideas were not well developed and polished when we presented them to Eva we still had a great sense of energy in the independent rehearsals we had. We felt more autonomy in creating our own work that wasn't so heavily influenced and directed by Eva and that made the rehearsals not only productive but enjoyable. Once Eva and Tom had seen our new ideas she gave us feedback that was essentially that we should work on the cascading only.

A valuable piece of advice I remember was that if you are working on a piece and you have an idea develop it; don't necessarily add more ideas on top of as you are adding more 'problems' to the 'problem'. On reflection I can see her point and understand how deepening an idea through change of dynamics, spacing and speed (for example) could lead to a more cohesive and well thought out piece. I could also understand Eva's advice to keep with the cascading as adding new parts that would need more work would have taken time we didn't  have.

However it was difficult news to receive because as a group we worked hard on the new parts and felt engaged in the creation of it whereas many of us felt like we had no control over the idea and direction of cascading. Thinking back on what I or the group could have done differently would have been to try to take the task more seriously and bring up ideas initially so that we wouldn't have had to be led so much.

Taking on board Eva's feedback was challenging but in the end we continued with the theme of cascading only. We followed her advice and developed the movement we had. We made a pathway for the cascade to travel and had different moments where we explored speed with the movement.

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The next step in this process was to have a few independent sessions. After looking at tasks with material and movement set by Eva we had to come up with our own way of creating. We were inspired by many of the ideas that came up from these tasks such as the developing change of movements that resembled unity through props and improvisational scores.

We came up with a concept of cascading bodies through space by initially being in close contact, leaning on each other in a group. People from one side of the group would move away and traverse across the mound of people to attach at the other end, the people behind them followed in canon creating the feeling of cascading as our movements were fluid and well connected to each other.

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On the third day we began our move away from props through tasks given by Eva to create a still image. One person would enter the space and take a position, then another person and another until the whole group was involved.

Two examples of this task are pictured to the right ->

I found this an effective task for me personally as well as the group to work together; with the task in mind it was easy to create an image of my liking (as everyone else may have been) only to see it's possibilities vanish as other people would interject their ideas. At times I found this frustrating as I wanted my ideas to come through but after a while I began to appreciate the diversity of everyone's ideas, many of which I had not thought of.

Although at times we brought in props we were more focused on the use of our bodies to convey the aesthetics of protest. Once everyone was in the image the people who went in first were instructed to leave the image and view it and take a new stance. This developed into a circular structure where we went in and out of the image in a loose order, observing the changes and what people had been doing around us and taking a new position. This task was one of the many ways we were inspired to use the premise of cascading (creating a moving image through our bodies) as the main focal point in our piece. In these images we demonstrate how the picture developed from start, middle and end while evoking a sense of story.

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The protest project's very broad idea at the beginning of the process was very daunting and at times confusing. As a group it was a real challenge to engage with an unclear initial idea and this made it difficult to connect as a group and create coherent work ourselves. I guess this was part of the point of the protest project; having the premise so open so it allowed us to take autonomy over our creative choices but was still a difficult start to our piece.

On our first day we were given allowance to play with an abundance of props that included hangers, caution tape, large purple material, buckets etc. We started to work on improvisation with the material to explore what meaning could be created from using them. Often we formed separate groups each exploring their own ideas with different materials but would gradually come together to form unity through the props. For example once we all connected to each other by wrapping the long caution tape around us, exploring the aesthetics of protest such as unity.

Although we didn't end up using any props in our final piece, exploring media at the first stage of the process allowed us to investigate different themes of protest that we found interesting. Ours seemed to develop a coherent sense of togetherness, inspired by our linking use of the materials.

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Reflection on our Contact Improvisation classes

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Reflection on our Contact Improvisation classes

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Our contact improvisation (CI) classes led by Simonetta Alessandri have given me an understanding of how to connect to others and to myself. We often start classes on our own, relaxing and moving different parts of the body focusing on rolling of the body exploring this in isolation of a body part (like just rolling your shoulders or head) and rolling your entire body. This process of 'getting into my body' helps me to feel more available to others when in contact as this can help to relieve tension in sore muscles and helps my anxieties about moving with others. Once we begin contact with a partner Simonetta both allows us to explore our curiosities and gives us ideas and techniques of CI to follow. Once Simonetta saw a general sense that we were not fully listening to our partners movement and responding but rather moving around or 'escaping' the movements our partner created. I have found this aspect in myself and with others when I've danced in CI jams before, it can feel like you are being ignored or made to feel passive which is not a connection I want to either give or receive. Interestingly Simonetta gave us this problem as a task, to not listen to our partners and make decisions around them and not with them. With my partner I found it opened up much more freedom in how we moved as we weren't trying to 'get it right' we were trying to get it wrong. This allowed much more confidence and curiosity in how we moved and also gave us something more clear to avoid doing when we changed to listening to our partner. From a choreographical stand point watching others dance this task made the movement look interesting as it created a strange effect of contrast as two people are moving in contact but completely ignoring each other. In this video me and a partner demonstrate this exercise; we move between the ideas of listening and ignoring (I am the one wearing a green top and dark blue trousers).

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Contact improvisation formed in 1972 by American practitioner Steve Paxton has greatly impacted the world of dance and my personal understanding of true relation in movement.

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How contact improv relates to me and inspires me in my creative practice.

being apart of a varitey of workshops in contact improvisation had impacted how I dance with others outside of CI and also how I dance on my own. I have been lucky to work with lots of different teachers of CI but, as with many practices, I feel that the more I learn the more I know there is so much more to understand.

Charlie Morrisey
Nita Little
Rick Nodine
Richard Parker

The first workshop I went to, led by Charlie Morrisey, was very overwhelming in an intensely engaging way. I felt I understood it so well and was keen to explore and learn; I quite like to look back on this initial feeling of understanding because as I went on to learn different techniques and ideas about CI from teachers I felt more lost and couldn't find that playfulness and smoothness that I first had - In one of these sessions Charlie summarized something Steve Paxton had said about CI, that you don't need to learn CI you already know how to do it. While there are many techniques and general practice needed to develop in CI I could see the truth in that statement.