Tag: improvisation

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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

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response

“…the technique of Contact Improvisation, which prioritises the understanding of movement as response to direct physical stimuli through sharingweight with a partner(Novack 1990)”

the quote above is from Sophie Lycouris’ doctoral thesis.  And I think that this notion perpetuated by Cynthia Novack’s book is what is keeping CI in the dog house of dance. This book, I believe, seems to be the academic go-to for understanding Contact Improvisation. I wish academics would use a more updated notion of CI

And I think that the above notion of what CI is, is outdated and limited.  CI 26 years ago, maybe, focused on the movement in CI as a “response” to stimuli.  This is only half of the coin. The focus on “movement as response” is what I think Lisa Nelson has been quoted as referring to as CI not being an art form.

There is nothing in CI that precludes the dancer from creating movement before direct stimuli. I understand why the “response” side is emphasized.  Beginners all too often initiate movement without having the skills to execute their desires.  End-gaining in AT™ terms. But I fear that this is where most teaching of CI stops, at the listening and responding.

But that is merely the beginning.

So back to the dog house…by limiting CI to responding, practitioners give CI that limp noodle look, the “improvised” look. (Don’t get me started about whether or not improvised has a look. Does painting have a look?). And humans, being the animals that we are, assume a whole host of values when we see an iteration of something.  We, unless we know better, assume that everything of that thing we observe looks like what we have seen.  Think “first impressions”. If CI is noodley in one iteration, then CI is noodley.

This noodle-heit and then the assumption of cuddly hippie everything goes lackadaisical-ness ruins CI for the rest of us who practice it differently and desire to use the tool of CI for other aesthetics and logics.

(oh, Andrew.  Stop whining!)

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To paraphrase Duke paraphrasing Quantz

An increase in the number of people performing reduces the proportionately the freedom to improvise – Quantz

Quantz, Johann Joachim. On Playing the Flute. Edited with introduction and notes by Edward R. Reilly. New York: The Free Press, 1966.(First German edition by Johann Friedrich Voso, Berlin, 1752.)