Tag: improvisation

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Teleological Posited Goal

“Investigation…uncovers what is going on independent of any consciousness in the objects in question, while on the other hand it discovers in them new combinations and new functional possibilities which need to be set in motion in order to realize the teleologically posited goal.” pg 11-12 The Ontology of Social Labor 3. Labour by Lukács.

This to me sounds like the experimentation phase of improvisation.

Also had the thought that improvisation has no teleologically posited goal. Unless it is scored and that is the teleologically posited goal.

 

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Improvising the technically pedestrian choreography

“While improvisation initially offered Jones a reprieve from the demands of technical training…” – page 115 from I Want To Be Ready by Danielle Goldman.

This quote refers to the choreographer Bill T. Jones. While it may be true that improvisation did offer Jones a respite from the rigors of technical training, I find that this statement sets up, or rather is indicative of an old and antiquated antagonistic binary about improvisation and technique.

I would say that good improvisation requires technical training.  The opposite of improvisation is choreography.  And to do choreography doesn’t require technical training but merely memory.

A dancer’s relationship to time, i.e., improvisation or choreographed, has nothing to do with technical training.  Choreography can be technical or not, improvisation can be technical or not. Though, I would posit that untechnical improvisation isn’t improvisation, but merely futzing about, regardless of how enthusiastic it is. Choreography, on the other hand, is merely remembering a sequence of events.

Technical, pedestrian, improvised, choreographic…one does not imply the otherScreen Shot 2015-11-19 at 6.29.36 PM

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Visual Presentation

“I think that, maybe unlike a lot of other improvisational people, I’m very visually oriented and very interested in presentation.”

from Kent De Spain’s thesis quoting one of the dancers in his study

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Vowels

There is no “i” in choreography.

Improvisation begins with “u”.

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Three Principle Senses of Choreography

Within the scope of theater dance, one finds three principle senses of choreography: the set of embellishments left to the individual artist to select from during an improvisation; choreography as a process of setting movement to then invent original material from during an improvisation; and choreography for its own sake that is brought to a high level of performance.

-a slight rewording of Curtis Carter’s three principle senses of improvisation. From pg.182 of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2000.

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Is CI a Cunningham chance operation?

‘The dancers are called on not to express a particular emotion, or set of emotions, but instead to develop refined coping mechanisms for creating continuity between disarticulated movements while remaining sensitive to their location in space. They must keep time without musical cues; sense the presence of the other dancers on stage; know blindly proprioceptively, what these other dancers are doing; and adjust the the timing and scope of their movements accordingly, thereby expressing the “human condition” at hand. All this work is “expressive”-it belongs to the “category of expression”-insofar as it is demanded by a human situation on a stage and insofar as human situations on stages (or otherwise) constitute an embodied response to the present moment, an embodied response to the utterly unique conditions of existence at one given point in time.’ – Noland, C 2010, ‘The Human Situation on Stage: Merce Cunningham, Theodor Adorno, and the Category of Expression’, Dance Research Journal, 1, p. 55

In this quote, Noland is referring to Cunningham dancers dealing with the re-ordering of set phrase material.  When she writes (or otherwise), she could be referring to a contact improvisation jam.  I think it is a very apt description of an silent CI jam. In CI jams, dancers are constantly “using refined coping mechanisms for creating continuity between disarticulated movements while remaining sensitive to their location in space.”  [Though, how much contacters are actually aware of the whole space is open for debate! IMHO]

What people do at CI jams is, I would say, “an embodied response to the present moment, an embodied response to the utterly unique conditions of existence at one given point in time.” [Though, how much is actually an embodied response and not actually another iteration of habit is also open for debate. IMHO]

Are Cunningham choreographies that are governed by chance operations a contact improvisation jam?

Are contact improvisation jams a piece of choreography by Cunningham?

Paxton danced for Cunningham, after all.

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Heart and Soul

Paraphrasing Schuller and Duke-

‘”Improvisation is the heart and soul of [contact improvisation].” However, [contact improvisation] is not the heart and soul of improvisation, and they are definitely not one and the same.’ – John Henry Duke, Teaching Musical Improvisation: A Study of 18th and 20th Century Methods, pg. 16