Relationscapes
Improvisation and Instant composition workshop
Feeling familiar with not-knowing, approaching our body as a fluid archive, using habits as a compass for navigating into unknown territories, perceiving each incident or accident and distraction as motivating forces are some of the principles which compose the context and content of the workshop.
Description
In this workshop we work towards building the compositional and the improvisational mind. By activating the compositional mind, we reflect on what has been done, sense the relationships, the vibrations and the rhythmicity of the surrounding human and non-human beings and take decisions on the spot about what will happen next in the performance. The improvisational mind generates the movement material and positions the movement in relation to the gravity, time, and sensations. The compositional and improvisational mind are in a dynamic, dialectical relationship which leads to on-the-spot decisions that will shape what comes next at the time of the performance.
The workshop is divided in two parts. Firstly, by focusing on the improvisational mind and approaching the dancing body as an archive, we become aware and unfold our dancing habits using them as a compass for navigating into unknown territories. We play with different approaches of sensing time while dancing (fragmental, linear, non- linear, distractive experiences of time). We delve into the musicality of our body and use our breath, speech, inner talk as means for altering our rhythmicity and surprising ourselves. Finally, we give time for waiting and finding movement into stillness; a way of practicing listening and decision-making at the time of performing.
In the second part, we activate the compositional mind. We execute instant composition performances, blending all the materials that we have worked with. We create score-based choreographic structures for our dances and use them as a base or, in other words, as our spine, home and/or reference point, in order to move, stop, listen, go beyond, mess them up and/or go back to them.
The objective of the workshop
is to train ourselves to be more perceptive, more conscious, to respond to a wider variety of stimuli. We open up our dancing body to perceive, to pay attention, to sense, to feel the more subtle ones, the nuances. We become aware of the invisible mechanisms that make us identify and follow dominant sounds and actions, which we have been conditioned to respond to. Finally, we may start noticing the unnoticed and let our bodies and our dance be influenced by it, understand how we already are influenced by it, follow it and interact with it, tracing a path together.
*The title and a part of the concept of the workshop Relationscapes is inspired by the book of the political philosopher and practicing dance artist Erin Manning ‘Relationscapes, Movement, Art, Philosophy’ (2009)
The workshop Relationscapes is one of the outcomes of my artistic research that I executed in the context of my Master studies in ArtEZ, University of Arts. My research was about the principles of instant composition practices, the intersection between camera and dance practice through the lens of instant composition, and a score-based approach to instant composition performances. After experimenting, questioning, failing, reflecting, making performances, and having a profound collaboration with the instant composer Julyen Hamilton and his dance company Allen’s Line, I came to the formulation of the improvisation and instant composition workshop ‘Relationscapes’. Here are some materials which inform the workshop:
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Movement Poetics, a series of scores for movers
a book written based on my research. More info here
An insight on some of the scores with which we play during workshop
