Mon september 24 D/D notes

Monday 9/24 D/D notes – Damaris

Evening Format:
6:30 – 7:15 Sitting and Personal awareness practice
7:15 – 7:50 Solo Quads (1/2 hr improv)
8:00 – 10:00 Exercises

BD (on influence in the quads) One of the underlying themes is that space is full of stories, that it has presence.
Set intention to do that; look into space, trust what you see is true.
4 solos quads are four separate worlds, distinct, but they’re a part of the whole. Yielding to simultaneous expression when it happens. Heaven, Earth and Man principle. Not a lot of previous set up. Synchronicity happens.
Be clear about beginnings and ends. Sometimes “middle” is helpful, but sometimes not needed, I can hold my large attention. Declaring Beginning, Middle and End is generous to others. Allows others to see intentions clearly.

(Discussion in response to the spontaneous entering of another person’s solo and partnering)
Breaking rules/adaptation/a new homeostasis.
An urge, an impetus (it can be demarcated when it’s expressed), a new piece of language that wants to spread through the culture. An essential way to harmonize with something new. Curiosity. Vibrational urge.

The soloist is being seen and is communicating. In this case with a composing and active audience. There is a curiosity and desire to commune with what is new, “Ooo, that ice cream looks good!”, a richness.
Inner focus in kinesthetic response.

O As soon as space is demarcated I want to respond to the container.
O A tension between defining something quickly, intelligence of organically finding it, but enough to contain the journey. The ripple, the woof as the “new” action permeates the old rules.

BD I am attached to, and ask that we enter along the edges to participate in the quads. Allows for the world to develop without trespassing. At times in the past the quads have been done in a circle, it allows for a more village art. Proscenium arouses something different in us.

The intention is to raise the level of attention in the whole room, the audience as well.

Kinesthetically, aurally, one could be receiving and sensing the environment and/or one could choose to respond to it.

Exercise
BD Instruction:
Go back to solo work. See yourself in the quad as a compositional element. You can take in objects.
The space map is in solo quadrants.
Each quad is a world
The first person who enters the quad is the dominant force if another joins, 2nd enters, 1st hold solo space and 2nd works off 1st in influence, all that 2nd does is “because of first”.
Look into space, where do you see yourself arising?
(Tyler “words monologue – text” with Christa)

Post exercise discussion:

O Well, for me it felt like too much chaos in the space. I wanted to hold space so I did not enter.

O Well for me I bet if we just let it “play out” it would correct itself?
BD Aesthetic/system/intelligence. I invite this notion of the group/individuals taking the directorial eye and this notion of duration. A vision of something perhaps layerable. Back to the question of sustainability. Being attentive to what’s arising and not have a bias towards or against it (ah, patience). What will that bring us? Sustained ambiguity.

One of our missions:
We are coming together to share something with others. The digestive process takes time, but then you make something (you shit it out?) Attune ourselves to when conceptualization starts accelerating.

Coaching solos exercise
As a bridge to directing. Letting the other’s coaching wash over you.

BD with Bobby enacted a “quick little model” of solo coaching. Soloist began solo, after they got established coach called beginning. Coaching included directs such as “gaze other places than straight ahead, find repetition, stillness. Could you add in some text, or tell me a story?” Coach also called middle and end. Then coach and soloist talked about what happened. Then ensemble got up and partnered together, simultaneously switching as coach and soloist. Discussion in-between – this was important.

BD Let’s not unpack this yet, this coaching solos. Wait one week. What is the “fallout” from the activity?

Housekeeping
Faculty concert has been postponed ‘till the spring.
Our last session together for the semester is 12/3 not 12/10. We will invite MFA to watch on 12/3. Perhaps we might have a one-day intensive the weekend before the semester starts?
Sat 10/26 Desolate Delight dinner at Erika’s 6pm
Sun 11/18 DD brunch at Cara’s

Mon september 17 D/D notes

Monday 9/17 D/D notes – Damaris

Evening Format:
6:30 – 7:15 Sitting and Personal awareness practice
7:15 – 7:50 Solo Quads (1/2 hr improv)
8:00 – 10:00 Exercises
Enter an empty quad from the wall. Take a solo in an empty quadrant; improvisational dance solo. Alone/Together, Playing with, exploring what you are drawn to do.
One clap all together at tend to mark the end and to offer it up.

“Beginning again and again,
Continuous present,
Using Everything”
Gertrude Stein

Discussion on taking Influence:
Taking in the quad, improvisational

Q How does narrative in the quad solo affect the movement choices in the other quads-range of choices? Monologues and echoes in quads.

Q What is the line between relaxation and rigor?

O Very quickly it doesn’t feel like solo practice any more – “permeable, influence” – yet still feels more personal than group improv.

O 3 in quads seemed to make the quads more relational, 3 is powerful and took over the space.

Q Value – empathetic and receiving influence. What is the difference between a value and an aesthetic?

BD
remembers summer dance lab; Solo quads and then invited entrance and exits into quads. The person who was holding the solo was the lead and still in solo, the one entering did so with an allegiance to the soloist.

Are we holding something or letting it go?
A place of solo definition, a place to be completely individuated and “something else’, what is “that”?

I’m in my quad with kinesthetic delight advancing to relationship with space. Then in the proscenium form of the quads, as in spatial relationship – I am in relation to others because I’m in a quad relating to space.
Boycotting not denying influence in order to re-establish your individuated space, not done aggressively. Working our awareness, maintaining the integrity of our quads kind of like meditation. There is a desolate quality. Communicate to audience and allows for unplanned connections.

The organic evolution of things as well as aesthetic.
We could choose to have a strict, narrow definition of quad solos, or we could choose to have an extremely radical view of quad solos. Instead a certain sensitivity to how/when it morphs. There is our attention. What makes the organism stay alive/awake?
What makes it possible to be seen when shared with others? My job to be local in quad solos maybe others outside can SEE the swarm, that’s not my job.

The eyes with direct looking individuated. A tool to call upon, a language to call upon a flock, herd and swarm. Even in these forms there are subtleties.

We returned to the place that we were craving as an organism. Inner focus supports the ripple effect.
Someone who has experienced it from the inside want to be a coach? No.

What’s the laughter? A vibrational release. A yield that happens, choiceless almost, no longer independent – you can’t help yourself.
You yield to it because it’s what we do.
Yet, there are individuals within a group experience who don’t experience what “the majority” experienced. You can honor and hold your experience as different. How?

The ensemble is becoming it’s own leader – a quality of it happening tonight. Outside coaching.
Flock
Herd
Swarm
Crowd
What is the difference?
The choice of kinesthetic delight drawing my choice VS my neighbor. How it organically developed.

HOMEWORK: Look for an actual herd, flock, swarm and try to figure out what they are doing. Leadership? Go to the source.

Plying with improvisational structures to let aesthetic appear using different dimensions of brain and awareness BMC and hang out in your low brain.

Mon September 10 D/D notes – Damaris

Monday 9/10 D/D notes – Damaris

Mythology
The wave sound (Miriam)
Proud Mary (Katharine)
The questions beneath the questions (Barbara)
The laughing goose on it’s back (all)

Spacious/not too much space.
The culture of seeing each other, finding out who we are, the culture develops from that. All balck also set the tone, showing up and doing the discipline.

Solo Quadrant form
Beginning, middle, end, 4 quads. Not pre-planned. Clap at the end to offer up the work/the practice.

Working from: Image, kinesthetic delight, pu influence, text, revisiting (callback) elements that resurface, repeats in the solos, rythms. Direct addresses grab the eye. Mirroring, flocking.

“Text is vibrational and although perfromed in a solo we hear it all together.

We’re beginning to talk to each other. Subversive, inderect talking to each other and directly talking to each other – 2 distinct separate disciplines.”

HERDING, SWARMING, FLOCKING form
We’re in training vs giving a menu.
Anxiety can be a flag to notice something.

Form 1
The swarming herd, allow the concept of flocking to expand beyond the person in front to include those nearest you.

Notice the
desire for unison, getting into performance head when leading.

Q - Confusion over which thing is the driving motion that was causing the swarm – the direction of locamotion? The gesture? The breath?

Form 2
In two groups you can move your place forwards and backwards, sense perception moving to the edges of the body, explore moving far apart.
Surrendering to creating one mind on the spot. It doesn’t have to make soemthing, it just is. A unity not a unison. Perhaps there is a spectum to exact unison.
Q – is facing the group pushing the boundries of the group or individuation?

Q - It seems more difficult to find group mind with the smaller group.

Q - Retrieval of movement, gesture, etc seems to bea language we can rest in.

The role of coach
Tyler coachewd two rounds of swarming/flocking.
Coaching as a way to support solos?

NEXT WEEK:
Continue next week to let this ripen, coaching the swarm herd, folks can bring in sound environments.