“Yes, And” to cross the divide
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. -Muriel Rukeyser, poet and activist (15 Dec 1913-1980)
A nice sentiment, but a rather negative anti-science tone, which merely continues the unnecessary and unproductive divide between the “hard” and “soft” sciences. Muriel could have written: The universe is made of stories AND of atoms.
The existence of stories does not exclude the existence of atoms. And vice-versa.
It is kind of a nice story, how the idea came about. As Kelly said, we have stories because we have atoms.
Aristotle and Improvisation
It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating. Art does not deliberate.
– Aristotle, Physics II.8, The Complete Works of Aristotle Vol. I. The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes).
If Art does not deliberate and choreography can be seen as a form of deliberation, is, then, choreographed dance not art?
Is the art that choreography generates, then, the un-deliberated performance of its execution?
Does this mean, then, that the purest artistic form of dance is the least deliberated, i.e., absolute improvisation, when the phases of exploration, experimentation, and execution collapse into a singular event, when the artist is deliberating in the moment?
A whole lot of dancin’ goin’ on!
I propose that there are 9 ways* to change the type of movement material with any given moment in an improvised dance.
If we are to take a dance of 10 minutes in length and say that the dancer can change the type of movement material every 30 seconds then there are 19 moments when the change can happen and have movement afterwards.
This means that there are 9 to the 19th power number of dances that are possible to create.
This leads us to
1,350,851,700,000,000,000
possible different dance choreographies if we are to look at moments of change in movement material.
*These changes will be elucidated later on. Stay tuned!