Early Warning System
History is a vast early warning system. -Norman Cousins, editor and author (24 Jun 1915-1990)
From Improvisation to Choreography: The critical bridge
These are some thoughts in response to an article by Larry Lavender Predock-Linnell and Jennifer Predock-Linnell, From Improvisation to Choreography: The critical bridge, Research in Dance Education, 2:2, 195-209. A link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14647890120100809.
I felt inspired to share a few of my thoughts about their article because I feel that the authors have limited notions of the possibilities of improvisation.
- “composing in the sense of shaping and forming movement material, and criticism—observing, describing, analysing, interpreting, evaluating, and revising both the work in progress and the completed dance.”
Using the two descriptions above I would say that improvisation can be viewed as simultaneously composing and critiquing a dance. The only element of critiquing a dance that it not possible while improvising is revising. Granted an action can be re-done, but the observers will see that, so probably not revising of material, but revisiting of material.
- The authors quote Nora Ambrosia – “‘Improvisation and creative movement are two dance genres that do not necessarily require participants to have a background in dance technique. … These two genres are focused on self-expression and self-exploration’ (p. 87).”
Here a bias. One, improvisation is not a genre. Choreography is not a genre. They are, I would propose, a temporality, a relationship to time of process of the creative act to when the products of the creative act are observed. (re: the three phases Exploration, Experimentation, Execution). And as being a relationship in time, improvisation is not focused on self-expression and self-exploration. Choreography also does not require a background in dance technique. All you have to do is remember what you did and do it again. Training/technique helps both.
- and this – “… that improvisation exercises do not sharpen students’ awareness in any lasting way either of their own aesthetic values or those of others, nor do they compel students (mentally or physically) to exercise and test their ideas about dance as art.”
Did the authors ever think to question their method of improvisation pedagogy and what exercises they used? I would say that improvisation affords the dance maker plenty of opportunity to test ideas about dance as art, by allowing her/him to simultaneously compose and critique work. Improvising in the studio also has the benefit of having an audience, i.e., adrenaline, thereby creating a situation that is more similar to an actual performance.
- “In short, improvisational work…generally does not develop in students the kind of critical consciousness that we think is imperative to their future success as choreographers.”
– see the point above
- “while the dance world (particularly in academia) has long been deeply invested in promoting the idea and value of self-expression…”
This quote to me shows one thing that is wrong with dance education. It is seen as having an end goal, not as a means for knowledge production or investigation. What professor of structural engineering or radiology would say that they are invested in promoting the idea and value of self-expression? Who wants a dentist that went into dentistry for self-expression?
- “dance—rooted in bodily experience, and committed to the idea of the body as expressive of the range of human feelings and emotions”
This is another example of limiting the possibility of what dance can be used for. I am not denying that dance can be used to express the range of human emotions, but there is so much more.
- “Because we think they should, we argue that pre-choreography training—i.e. training in improvisation…”
I would say that choreography can be used as pre-improvisation training. Choreography can be used to get a dancer out of habits of movement, as can improvisation (Re: Chaos dancing, fussy, neuro, etc). Both temporalities can inform each other.
By viewing improvisation as being in service to choreography, the authors, to quote Foucault, treat choreography as the “as the primary law, the essential weight of any” dance making practice. The authors attribute certain values to a relationship of time and unnecessarily limit the uses of dance and dance improvisation. They also have not investigated/questioned/problematized their relationship to and use of improvisation enough.
Matter Matters
What compels the belief that we have a direct access to cultural representations and their content that we lack toward the things represented?
How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter? [emphasis mine]
Why are language and culture granted their own agency and historicity while matter is figured as passive and immutable, or at best inherits a potential for change derivatively from language and culture?
How does one even go about inquiring after the material conditions that have led us to such a brute reversal of naturalist beliefs when materiality itself is always already figured within a linguistic domain as its condition of possibility?
– Barad, K 2003, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’, Signs, 3, p. 801,
Putting Words in Foucault’s mouth
And to those who might be tempted to criticize [improvisation] for concerning itself primarily with the analysis of the discontinuous, to all those agoraphobics of history and time, to all those who confuse rupture and irrationality, I will reply: “It is you who devalue [choreography] by the use that you make of it. You treat it as the support-element to which everything else must be related; you treat it as the primary law, the essential weight of any [dance-making] practice; you would like to analyse every modification in the field of this inertia, as one analyses every movement in the gravitational field. But according this status to [choreography] you are merely neutralizing it, driving it out to the outer limit of time, towards an original passivity. [Improvisation] proposes to invert this arrangement, or rather (for our aim is not to accord to [improvisation] the role formerly accorded to [choreography]) to play one off against the other; to show how [improvisation] is formed in accordance with the same conditions and the same rules as [choreography]; and how it enters the field of [dance-making] practice. – pg 174
Foucault, M. & Foucault, M., 1972. The archaeology of knowledge ; and, the discourse on language, New York: Pantheon Books.
Invisible conscious decision
“[Pollock’s] control became so adept that his critical decision-making process became all but instantaneous, and thus virtually invisible, inviting the erroneous observation that there was no critical or conscious decision-making process at work.”
– pg 203 from Larry Lavender Predock-Linnell & Jennifer Predock-Linnell (2001) From Improvisation to Choreography: The critical bridge, Research in Dance Education, 2:2, 195-209.
practice it differently
“…when improvisation is practiced as an end in itself it does not do much to develop students’ critical consciousness.”
– pg 204 from Larry Lavender Predock-Linnell & Jennifer Predock-Linnell (2001) From Improvisation to Choreography: The critical bridge, Research in Dance Education, 2:2, 195-209.
Maybe the authors should re-evaluate how they approach improvisation and practice it with the goal of developing “students’ critical consciousness.”
Seeking Change
“Improvisational performance in dance (like improvised performance in other media) fundamentally seeks to change the audience’s assumptions about what a dance piece might be.” Sophie Lycouris BA, MA, Destabilising dancing:tensions between the theory and practice of improvisational performance, 1996, pg 177-8.
I would propose that was merely one goal for western white concert dancers early on, when they “discovered/invented” improvisation.
Such a “goal” could be said to be the first step for many dance-makers. “Oooh, look at me I’m improvising!” Great, now what? What about improvising are you going to reveal to me? What are you going to do with it? Is it a means? Then what are you meaning? Is it a tool? Then what can you show me about the tool?
I think many people use an improvisational approach to time and the creative process for many other reasons. To ascribe a goal to a temporal tool seems a bit much.
See what is coming
To try to repeat an experience is mechanical sadhana, not spiritual. You have to keep the experience in your pocket, as it were, and then see what is coming today. You should not call back yesterday’s experience. That experience has become finite, because it is recognized. Keeping that recognition in your pocket, see what is coming in today’s practice. If you work like that, your practice is spiritual sadhana. But if you want to repeat today the experience of what was new yesterday, it is repetition; it is not sadhana – it cannot be spiritual. – B.K.S. Iyengar
Contemporary Documentation
