Comments on: Improvisation: partners, flocking, platforms

By: Michelle Taylor

Michelle Taylor — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:38:57 +0000

I really loved being able to explore the platforms and the different levels. It really helped me inhance the way i think when i choregraph. it was also really fun to see what other people thought of and branch off of there ideas. I also really liked when we made up the deuts and blended the two different movements between eachother. It was really fun to work with someone new and share our movement and then create a piece of work together and making something completely new.

By: Shannon Daly

Shannon Daly — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:42:28 +0000

I love improvisation because dance is not always choreographed. It is interesting to see another side of dance and the way it is so different from the form that everyone most commonly sees dance as a sychrinized movement but I love improv it lets you feel the music when you are coming up with a dance and shows more personality I think. Improv is used everyday too not just in dance so it is something fun that everyone can relate to, and I think the best part is that everyone when improvising does something different and that was shown with the blindfold activity when the leader had some kind of motion in mind as the direction they are moving or trying to get the follower to do a turn, but the blindfolded person does something completely different then what the leader had in mind, and that is what makes it so interesting.

By: Hilary Murray

Hilary Murray — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:58:27 +0000

I wanted to share my own experiences with flocking. About 5 or 6 years ago Lookingglass theatre did a workshop where they learned “North, South, East, West” or flocking, so basically I’ve been flocking for about 5 years now. It’s a very integral part of not only the education program at lookingglass, but also the main company. In fact, if anyone has seen Lookingglass Alice, the chair dance from the tea party scene is an example of how flocking can directly translate into original choreography. Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi who choreographed Alice (both the dance and circus aspects) got the idea to try flocking with chairs and each actor came up with one piece of the dance. Additionaly you can see in the finished product that they kept the turning of the diamond and the follow the leader aspect of the dance. I also worked on a show called Full Circle which was a collection of monologues tied together by the actors flocking between each monologue to set the mood of the piece, and in that case it was true flocking. It changed every night and was never set because our director wanted to use the flocking to really make us live in the moment of the play and increase our awareness of what was going on around us. I personally think flocking is really cool because if it’s done well and the group is really working together, the audience can’t tell it’s not choreographed movement because it’s possible to really move as one. Then later the next step after flocking is sequential movement which is actually so much harder than everyone moving as one because you have to remember what the person first in line did while doing something completely different and when you get into really long phrases of movement with no pauses it gets really hard, especially for the last person in line, to replicate exactly what the first person did. All in all, I think both of these exercises are particularly great team building activities, because you have to be totally focused on your group and really work together well to be successful and make the flocking look seemless. It’s also a great exercise for developing transitions. There’s nothing more frustrating in flocking than seeing the new leader completely change the movement with no connection to the previous movement and throw the whole group off.

By: Leticia Hernandez

Leticia Hernandez — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:16:45 +0000

The improvs were so much fun. I really enjoyed this because it was something far from what we normally do in class. I was both the leader and follower with the blind folded activity and I found it really easy to follow because I trusted my partner event though I didn’t know her really well, I knew she wasn’t going to let me fall. When i was a leader I found it a bit harder because I had to watch where I was going and that I didn’t make my partner crash. The hard part was always keeping contact with your partner, when i was a follwer, my leader lost the finger touch. I found it really weird but cool how my body automatically stopped without thinking about it. Flocking was ok, I didn’t like this one as much because we didn’t have enough room. The platforms was a cool activity to watch, and I thought it was really cool how you can do so much even though we were very restricted. Overall I liked these activities.

By: Kelsey Trotta

Kelsey Trotta — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:53:21 +0000

I’m a fan of improv in any setting, so I really enjoyed this session. I really was pleased with how we chose to work with each other, but I also found it interesting that we were still drawn to familiarity and were even more adventurous with someone who was familiar to us. Kind of a safety blanket in a way I guess. The platforms were fun too especially with the restrictions because they forced us to be creative with our movement. There seemed to be a lot of paradox in this unit.

By: Jackee Dupras

Jackee Dupras — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:46:58 +0000

I thought that this was really fun. I think it went well with our class because i notice that none of us were really jugdemental of each other we all really went out and did not care what others thought. I think tha is what made it so fun.
I really liked the platform situations. I felt it allowed us to engage and explore movements that we would not have been able to if we just did a floor improv.

By: Abi Drennan

Abi Drennan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:37:31 +0000

This is fun! I love improvising. You just get to be free, you often don’t have guidelines, and you can’t be wrong with what you’re doing. While improvisation is fun, it’s also hard to do. You can only do the same typical moves so many times. I also found that while I was sitting and watching others perform I was able to think of over things that they could do. However, when it was my turn to perform I was just like “duhhh…” That’s honestly why I started mimicking others, which thankfully worked. When the restrictions are put on, it’s fun because you get to try new things, but there might have been something I had thought of while sitting and then I didn’t get to do that.

By: Alexa Komnick

Alexa Komnick — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:05:04 +0000

The impulses that we had done with our partners really allowed for us to focus and concentrate on one particular body movement at a time. This made us focus on the exactness and different functions that body part was able to do. We were forced to think outside the box because we could repeat the same motions over and over again. I found the retrograding a little difficult because it was hard to remember the order and reverse the combination exactly as you had done it previously. When we collaborated as a group it was interesting to see the different types of impulses that we had come up with. The versatility was great and it proved to be challenging to combine several movements together. I really enjoyed this unit and I think it would be cool if it was applied to a piece with choreography.It would demonstrate body control and it would allow the audience to see exactly what was going on.

By: Kathleen Harsh

Kathleen Harsh — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:11:45 +0000

The improvisations we learned a few weeks ago were really a unique learning experience. I would nevetr think to approach choreography this way, so I think it helped all of us expand our idea of how to create a piece. Working with partners helped me realize the importance of staying connected to other dancers. Also, as Caroline mentioned, it was always exciting when a few dancers’ improv pieces worked well together. The platforms were another interesting way to form choreography. I am in Kelsey and Lauren’s piece which uses the platforms, and you can definately tell the work with the platforms in fourth hour dance inspired their choreography. Overall, I enjoyed these lessons as a different way to develop choroeography.

By: Kelsey Mazeski

Kelsey Mazeski — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:25:59 +0000

Looking back at our 4th hour classes I realize now that we learned a whole new way to choregraph. Movement doesn’t have to be this intricate thought out, never repeating sequence, (but at times it can be),but instead a dance can stem from a single concept or idea. I think one of the most important aspects that I learned was that it’s okay to repeat movement, especially if it’s retrgraded. That was a really new concept to me. Overall, those classes made me more aware of ways to choreograph. One phrase could be manipulated to be the only movement throughout a whole dance. A dance like that would be competely different and thought provoking for the audience. At first they might not realize that it’s basically all the same movement, but at the same time I don’t think anyone would grow bored watching it.