Houston-Jones’ choreography, while rooted in improvisation, develops the themes of connections that never quite happen, grappling and wrestling that seem inconsequential and ineffective, and support that disappears.
Why use the word while?Â
Oh, the Places you’ll go
This means that every act that is composed of A, is also composed of A’s predecessor and successor. – Phenomenology & Mind : Noema and Thinkability : An Essay on Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality by Lukasz Kosowski pg 67.
in other words:Â Where you are is determined by where you have been and determines where you can go.
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.
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. Â 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 other
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
Knowing
3D Binary
Where is your #dance located? Applicable to body, space, time and…
Vowels
There is no “i” in choreography.
Improvisation begins with “u”.
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.
An Nth defintion
Improvisation is a performance that tests a hypothesis.