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CoCo Loupe
MFA Project Analysis / Comprehensive Question #3
07 May 2006

In The Clear:
Studio Practice, Choreographic Process and Creative Research

Prologue

You have to spend time…

…placing the foot somewhere, tossing an arm, shifting the balance,
shifting a limb, adding a curl, a tie, teasing out the answers to how
fast and how tense and what next, when join, when exit or pause…
watching and allowing the mind to roam and consider and take
inventory, to hum with decision, next, change, pause, repeat, test,
test, feeling the heart beat with the possibilities, feeling the internal
eye on the alert, sense tuned in to the seconds of this, that, here or
maybe there. The alerted senses operating, finding each moment,
holding the moment until is perceived, keeping the accumulation of
moments until something is happening, something starts to kick in -
the dance begins to squeak a little interest at you.

Susan Rethorst

In The Clear, simply put is a dance. However, for me it is a product of a break with habit, traditional composition methodology and creative stagnation. For years I built dances according to devices borrowed from music composition theory, and while that process proved fruitful as a way to hone my crafting capabilities, I had a nagging suspicion that by repeatedly using this model I was churning out work that was overly academic and only sometimes provocative. The conceptual ideas that I used to spark movement invention and form, no matter how interesting or unique, seemed to lose their edge when I began to develop and design them into full length pieces. I realized after many days and months of agonizing over my predicament that I could not expect each new piece to have its own true identity if I continually subjected the new material to the same old rules.

A very simple idea occurred to me: if I keep engaging in the same process then I can expect to keep getting the same results. In short, my dances looked similar and I decided that in order to launch my creative work into personally groundbreaking directions, I would need to involve myself in a new process. In conjunction with the fact that I was habitually using the same devices to alter and develop movement, I was also rushing through to the end of a work. I would start with a phrase of movement and immediately begin to vary, embellish, extract, mix, splice, and scramble material into loosely related sections and then group certain ones together based on quick intuitive decisions and call those configurations a finished dance. I never spent time with the actual movement material in order to learn about its qualities, properties and dynamics. I created variations by applying an external tool before the internal physical and metaphorical properties of the movement had been explored. With this realization I decided that in order to break with my own creative habits, I would have to actually get into the studio more often and practice and explore the basic language of the dance before considering how it would develop into a final work.

This conclusion seems obvious at first. Of course choreographers should spend time with their materials, i.e., the body, the movement, the music, the space, the dancers, when working on a new dance. However, what is not so obvious, from my perspective, is that most dances are built quickly and with a familiar set of tools and preferences. There are plenty of reasons for this phenomenon ranging from limited resources (money, space, dancers, venues) to concert deadlines, assignment deadlines and the overall culture of fast and mass consumption. Although these limitations exist in varied degrees across the professional and academic world, they do exist and they force choreographers, aspiring and seasoned alike, to compromise between thorough exploration of their craft and producing art in a timely manner. After making dances according to this "make it - show it - get a review/grade - move on to another project" system for quite a few years it was my desire to escape these limitations and find a way to subvert the deadline-based model of dance making. My hope was to perhaps make a dance like I had never made before and to discover another process that would work better for me as a dance artist.

By stating the above I do not intend to cast dispersions on the state of affairs in the dance field. That would be fodder for another discussion. In fact, I am sure there are some who would argue that the rushed and ongoing nature of life in a global and technologically enhanced world feeds dance making in diverse and exciting ways and I would tend to agree with them if the conversation remained that simplified. Additionally, it could be debated that movement artists who are industrious, clever and hardworking enough will still find ways to make successful work regardless of the limitations stated above. I would conditionally agree again and state that they do continue to contribute revolutionary work to the dance field and it is each artist's right to work in whatever way she finds most conducive to her creative output. Granted, some choreographers create more quickly than others and in some cases this speedier process produces their best work. I, on the other hand, felt that in hastily throwing dances together I was only making generalized statements and not fully experimenting with the potential of each piece. Again, my observations are related very specifically to my process and how I see the dance field from my point of view. With that said, I will return to discussing the strategy by which I hoped to make a new choreographic process for myself.

Once I had identified what I thought to be the main limitation of my process (time constraints and lack of deep knowledge of the material), I decided that the simplest way to fix the problem was to set aside time in the studio to physically repeat whatever movement I had created specifically for a new work. The hypothesis was that human movement is inherently meaningful and that by spending time analyzing the kinesthetic biofeedback of the movement, I would naturally associate those sensations with my own experience as a human being. These associations would in turn allow ideas to emerge that would then be translated into choreographic development. I knew from the beginning of this process that the possibilities of interpretation were infinite and that intuition would guide the better part of the dance making, but I was convinced that conversing with the material on this internal physical level would lead to discoveries that designing from the outside via compositional devices would never accomplish. Thus my MFA research officially centered itself on the concept of physical repetition of movement material specific to a particular choreographic project and its impact on choreographic choices in the development of full-length choreographies. This engagement in repetition would be called, for lack of a better term, "practice" and the reason it was not called "rehearsal" is detailed in the following explanation.

While thinking through this theory, it became apparent that the generally accepted model of weekly rehearsals that lead to production would not suffice. This process was going to require more time in the studio and I felt that the time specific to "practice" could not be combined with time specific to "rehearsal." I separated the two because in "practice sessions" I wanted to be able to freely associate and translate physical, emotional and intellectual stimuli without the pressure of designing or crafting. I wanted to be able to extract certain things and focus on them, add other things and feel the ramifications. I essentially wanted to give my body, mind and senses ample time to consider the movement and its associative qualities. On the other hand, rehearsals would be used as opportunities to apply the information garnered from the "practice sessions" to the actual crafting of a dance. Consequently, in the practical application of this research, I designed a new pre-production, choreographic model: repetitive practice plus rehearsal. Because I was working alone, initially the model seemed simple. However once I assembled a cast, issues around who would participate, to what extent they would participate and why they would participate began to emerge.

I invited four OSU students to be in my MFA project; Emily Bass (junior undergraduate), Amy Campbell (sophomore undergraduate), Jennifer Howard (junior undergraduate) and Jeffrey Fouch (second-year graduate.) I chose them for several reasons. While they are all very proficient dancers and highly expressive performers, they all had very different physical styles and capabilities and I was interested in working with performers who had distinct movement identities. Moreover, I knew from observing their own choreographic works that they all had very creative minds and would be willing to engage in this process with me. I did not want to work with performers who expected me to show them exactly what to do and how to do it. I wanted them to enter into a physically-based dialogue with movement in the project and be able to address aesthetic and developmental ideas along with me. Upon reflection, I can say with conviction that I chose the right four.

When I started working with the cast, I still did not know how I was going to construct the actual process. I considered doing practice sessions on my own and bringing that information to the dancers. I considered asking them to do practice sessions as well but only for building their own familiarity and intimacy with the material and not for any conceptual or choreographic exploration. In this case, I would have asked them to simply repeat the movement over and over and allow the movement to become second nature to them for the purposes of making rehearsals more efficient and the material more physically accessible. I then considered having all of us engage in the practice sessions with the same agenda; to explore the material's qualities and allow those sensations to drive associations, interpretations and changes that would or would not be used to help make the final work.

The latter seemed overwhelmingly complicated and I grappled with the issues of ownership. If I allowed them to bring in ideas from their practice sessions, how would I reconcile them with mine if they were not related? Could I call myself the choreographer if I asked the performers to compose movement based on their practice session discoveries? What if at some point one or all of them decided that none of the movement was relevant and decided to change the whole phrase until it was unrecognizable? What if one of them brought in movement vocabulary that resonated with my aesthetic sensibilities and I wanted to use it but another brought in sincere contributions as well but those did not help to develop the piece in the direction that it was already going? The questions mushroomed into full-blown, silent, anxiety attacks that confused me to the point of disillusion. After all, all I wanted to do was to make a dance like I had never made before and involve myself in a deep creative adventure. Did I have to take the dancers along with me?

Happily, in the end I decided that yes, they should come along for the ride. I was very candid with them from the beginning by disclosing the fact that I had never done this before and that I was venturing into completely foreign creative territory. Essentially, I explained that I was attempting to revolutionize the way I create dances and that the result at best would be a splendid creative endeavor for us all or at worst an excellent collective learning experience. After making sure that we were all on board and willing to test this theory with full commitment, I shared my concerns about ownership and creative contributions. I stressed that all ideas and creative energies would be considered with respect to the work itself and that I wanted us to approach this process as a collaborative team. I also stated that I desired an open dialogue about the development of the work and that at any time we should all feel free to state our opinions but be open to the possibility that some material would be used and other material discarded according to how I perceived the larger work taking shape. All four generously agreed that this sounded exciting and from the very beginning sincerely dedicated their personal insights and physical creativity to this project.

I then elaborated on the general principles of the hypothesis and as a group we discussed several strategies that would help us all connect to the research. We decided that we would all keep journals in which we would record any and all information that seemed relevant to the process and we would intermittently share our entries with each other if appropriate. We assumed that recording our thoughts during practice sessions would prompt their usage in the rehearsal studio and our assumptions were correct. We also designed a schedule and protocol for practice sessions and rehearsals that we felt would be enough to help us accomplish our goal of making a dance but not belabor the act of exploration.

It was decided that each of us would self-schedule and direct two, thirty-minute practice sessions a week. I would observe their first couple of sessions in order to answer any questions and/or clarify the conceptual matter of the research. I would also schedule times to video some of their sessions for documentation purposes. We also decided to meet for two, two-hour rehearsals per week in order to begin the actual making of the dance. All of this turned out to be the easy part. What followed was full of complexities that overwhelmed me with inspiration, questions, fear, conviction and more questions. What I soon came to discover was that I was a bit presumptuous in thinking that I would make a dance. Ultimately, the dance began to make itself, but that was long after I hurdled some other unforeseen obstacles. The first obstacle was the fact that I had no movement to offer to my able and willing collaborators as a starting point for "practicing."

This statement may seem ridiculous but in the case of In the Clear, I did not have a preconceived concept with which to work. I was not following a narrative or making a political statement and I had no "inspiration" that was compelling me to make a new work. In a sense, I had no movement to explore and I agonized over how to start. Should I just walk around the studio and hope that that walk would become something else? Should I start with types of movement I enjoyed executing and analyze the way that they inspired me kinesthetically? Many other possibilities raced through my mind. Moreover, I realized that I was about to throw away everything I knew about making dances and in that void I was afraid that nothing would replace that knowledge. I did know one thing however. I knew that I had become obsessed with the idea of spending time with movement - any movement, and I had faith that whatever became the physical action of the process, if I spent enough time with it, I would receive information from it.

Following that hunch, I decided to simply string together a long sequence of movements that eventually ended where it began so it actually looped back on itself. The "original phrase" was about 2.5 minutes long and consisted of all types of movements: leaps, turns, twists, gestures, kicks, slides, locomotion, stylized, pedestrian, floor work, percussive, sustained, stillness, wiggles, large, small. I had no concept of what it all meant or whether or not any of it was worth keeping but I knew if I wanted to test my idea of repetition and translation I would have to let it remain intact and allow the process to uncover its identity. I subsequently taught the phrase to the four dancers and we all began to do practice sessions and rehearsals.

When I first began to put the idea of repetition and its relationship to choreographic development together, I became curious about where the actual ideas would originate and how they would reach my mind, influence my design choices and return back into the physical lexicon and macro structure of the piece. I began to research ideas surrounding creativity, repetition, embodiment, difference, biofeedback, creative processes, movement and meaning, physical metaphor and kinesthetic sensation. I was initially encouraged by the quality of literature on these subjects but was soon dismayed to find that hardly any of it had been correlated to movement invention and choreography, or that I could not find much written about these concepts with dance as the basis for discussion. To me, all of these ideas seemed inextricably linked to the choreographic process. With that in mind, I chose to filter the information through a dance-maker's lens and I soon became doubly obsessed with my research. Not only did I have the raw materials of the movement and my body to use in the studio for information, I had philosophical and scientific concepts to push and nudge my perceptions of my own creativity.

Before any of the aforementioned ideas became more or less concrete in my mind, I envisioned the mechanical components of the movement material as the sole source for information about possible alterations and development. I thought that if I listened closely enough to the muscle contractions, joint manipulations, equilibrium shifts, skin stretching, and weight in relation to gravity that the movement itself would spark new ideas about its potential for physical variation. For example, I may have put a jump after a hand vibration but I wondered if I let the hand vibrate long enough would my body ask to go somewhere else. I assumed that proprioception and kinesthetic sensation would be the main sources of creative information and I found evidence to support this notion. A very simplified explanation is offered by Theresa Silow in her dissertation, The Kinesthetic Sense: Exploring Sensation, Self-Emergence, Awareness and Stress Negotiation Through Somatic Practice, when she states to her young son, "That, which tells you where your arm is, is your sixth sense, your kinesthetic sense. Your sixth sense tells you how your tummy feels, it helps you remember the movement of your fingers when you play the piano, it tells you how your body wants to move when you are dancing" (Silow, 19). In more complex terms she elucidates the concept of the kinesthetic sense with the following passage:

Information received by the kinesthetic sense makes up the language of sensation. These stimuli travel up through different somatosensory pathways in the spinal cord and become recognized as very distinct or more diffuse kinesthetic stimuli. The variety of these impulses and the combination of the stimuli make up the nuances of our sensing: movement of the arm, warmth in the heart, fluttering in the diaphragm, tension in the neck, heaviness in the shoulder, smoothness on the skin, nervousness in the stomach. These silent words are continuously spoken (Silow, 25-26).

The "silent words" that she mentions were the exact pieces of information I was trying to extract from the movement material. Initially, I did not equate physical sensation with the "silent words" but eventually I would recognize this internal language as the way that the dance was speaking about itself.

With these basic concepts of kinesthetic sense, internal dialogue, and proprioception I continued with my practice sessions. I shared pieces of information about this research with the dancers to let them know what I was encountering philosophically and to help fuel their explorations. I asked them to let the information seep in to their studio practice as much as they felt appropriate and this is where I saw a shift in participation levels take place. I, the choreographer, was physically engaged in the research as well as actively seeking information from other fields of study to buttress and infuse my physical practice. The dancers, on the other hand, were in the studio, living with the movement but dealing with a much more narrow base of knowledge - the movement and themselves. While my associations were vacillating between my personal connection with the material and larger scientific and philosophical constructs, the dancers were looking inside their own experiences for clues to how they would eventually translate and interpret the material. This proved to be an excellent balance of modes of inquiry. I was developing a larger picture of the research and they were inventing the details. This proved to be a very fortunate but unexpected turn of events.

Several other pieces of research launched my thoughts about this process forward. I cannot remember if I had the questions first or if I found the information and then began to formulate questions. Whatever the order of influence, I began reading about bio-feedback loops, repetition and difference, translation and the ability to sense and capture knowledge simultaneously while moving. I considered these topics essential to my research because ultimately I was investigating how the body moves and what information is gleaned from that movement in order to make creative choices.

Intuitively, I knew from being a dancer for so many years that no matter how hard I ever trained, I could never execute any movement the exact same way twice. The repeated movement may have appeared to be a perfect duplicate of the original and it may have even felt superficially like an exact copy. However, because a living, changing body is the medium for dance, a movement executed in one moment and repeated the next is actually being reproduced by a different body - a body with a varying levels of oxygen in it, a different pulse rate, a constantly shifting equilibrium and a new set of information based on the first execution's feedback. Based on this thought, I deduced that if I repeated the same movements for long periods of time that I could expect differences to exist between each repetition. I also assumed that within those subtle differences I would find information for choreographic development. I intended to rely on fortunate accidents, missed connections, varying degrees of energy and fatigue, and fluctuations of intention, motivation and embodiment to provide material of a different but related nature to the "original" movement.

At the time I did not connect these thoughts to higher philosophical concepts. I was simply dealing with the anatomical structures of the body while in motion. However, as I searched for information to illuminate and diversify my approach I realized that I was involved in a much broader inquiry that I had first thought. This realization crystallized when I encountered the ideas of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in a book written by Rebecca A. Martusewicz. She states that he "focuses on the interplay of repetition and difference alive in all creative processes " and "insists that the energy internal to repetition is difference. In other words, he sees in this relation a destabilizing force, an affirmative energy necessary to all transformation" (Martusewicz, 14). I recognized a similarity between my assumptions about the idea of developmental information coming from repetitive practice of movement in the following statement by Deleuze:

The first repetition is repetition of the Same, explained by the identity of the concept or representation; the second includes difference, and includes itself in the alterity of the Idea…One is negative, occurring by default in the concept, the other is affirmative, occurring by excess in the Idea…One is developed and explicated, the other is enveloped and in need of interpretation…One is material, the other spiritual even in nature and in the earth. One is inanimate, the other carries the secret of our deaths and our lives, of our enchainments and our liberations….
(Martusewicz, 20).

The connection between this philosophical treatise and my perception of the physical creative process did not become primary force behind the creation of In The Clear. Rather, it provided another entry point into the work and a substantiation of my previous hunch about my hypothesis. From the time I became acquainted with Deleuze's theory, my practice sessions were infused with a curiosity of how one repetition differed from another and whether or not that difference was persuasive enough to instigate alteration within the material.

Additionally, throughout the course of the project I continually found scientific research that paralleled my inquiry - although it was usually based on visual and/or linguistic modes of constructing meaning out of internal and external stimuli. However the basic principles of the research could be aligned with my concerns about finding information through kinesthetic stimuli. Thus, the concept of biofeedback loops became another layer of influence in my process.
Of particular importance was Erich Harth's The Creative Loop: How the Brain Makes a Mind, in which he comments on the "ubiquity, of feedback loops" and explains that "what is received at any one brain level depends on what goes on at that same level, and what is sent to the next level depends on things happening at that next level. The mechanism is one of self-reference." He goes on to suggest, and this is what is crucial in the connection to my research, "ways in which these self-referent loops contribute to some of the qualities we associate with the human mind: consciousness, creativity" (xiii). This concept proved vital to me as it provided another way of understanding the function of practice sessions.

Without concerning myself with the anatomical structures and physiological functionality of brain circuitry, I used the broader concepts Harth introduces as another basis of influence for this work. With this additional information, my inquiry became even more layered and multi-dimensional. For beyond explaining efferent and afferent pathways that conduct electrical impulses from brain to muscle and muscle to brain respectively, Harth speaks of the artist's practice of transforming that information by externalizing it through making multiple copies of it (75). He writes that it is "instructive to look at the procedure employed in some of these creative acts. An artist may have an idea for a painting, but he may not immediately go to the canvas. Instead, he often begins with a series of sketches" (75). I immediately equated sketches in his explanation to the practicing of movement material in my process.

Particular to dance is the fact that nothing besides video or notation holds one movement execution constant in order to compare it to another subsequent execution. Because movement execution is ephemeral and disappears upon completion as far as the eye is concerned the only "sketchpad" the choreographer has at her disposal is muscle memory and the lingering sensations associated with the kinesthetic event. Admittedly, in a dance studio there may be mirrors and the choreographer will have reversed, fleeting images of her body moving through space and these can be considered visual sketches in their own right. However, these similarly do not last outside of the body for long-term consideration because the mirror is not a recording device. So again, the kinesthetic sensors are responsible for providing the information a choreographer needs in order to reflect upon the product - the actual dancing and the larger dance to which it is related. The following passage by Harth provided insight:

In every creative act we observe this bootstrap process in which nascent ideas are externalized and then taken in again by the brain to be reexamined and modified in a creative loop…[…] But sketchpads and keyboards are relatively recent acquisitions to aid our creative activities…[…] There are internal sketchpads - the LGN is one - on which higher brain centers can project their
creative ideas by top-down controls, so they can be contemplated, judged, and perfected. The internal sketchpad is the peripheral end of a creative loop (75).

What I found interesting was that I had constructed the original phrase in the fashion of a loop. The material ended where it began so that it could be repeated easily without stopping and reinitiating. So in essence, I had created an external loop to be considered by the internal ones. However much this can be interpreted as serendipitous or synchronized is left open for debate but I took it as a sign that I was definitely testing the boundaries of my creative intuition. It also gave me another way to explain and elucidate the overall concept of this endeavor to my cast.

Next, in an attempt to place my work in the context of the current field of dance, I revisited the writings of Deborah Hay and Susan Rethorst. The philosophical and scientific information was helpful in order to help form a language around what I was doing in the studio, but I wondered what the meaning of this new dance would be and how the meaning would emerge from the act of practicing through repetition. I chose to look inside the field of dance for this information. I also had come across several of these choreographer's ideas in previous research that I hoped would help me sort out some difficulties I was encountering in the practice sessions.
The main obstacle in the practice sessions was related to executing movement and simultaneously reflecting on it or associating meaning to it. The two activities seemed to be diametrically opposed. I would often have to stop moving and remember what I was thinking while dancing. I initially thought that this was a sign of failure and a shortcoming of the whole endeavor. However, I soon discovered that the more I practiced, the more readily images, feelings, and thoughts could co-exist with the physical sensations of the movement. It did not always happen easily (depending on what state my body and mind were in during the sessions), but over time a certain amount of perceiving and interpreting came with the physical executions.

I also knew, through my own reflections and conversations with the dancers, that the practice sessions at times felt like a form of meditation and deep reflection - a time for the body and the mind to be empty of noise but somehow subconsciously converse with one another. The only twist was that the body was engaged in motion rather than quiet, contemplative stillness. In an effort to buoy my spirits about what was happening I remembered reading about Deborah Hay's process. In the forward to Hay's book, My Body, The Buddhist, Susan Leigh Foster writes the following:

As part of her training, Hay projects the existence of an observer who is watching her exploration of bodily cellular consciousness. Hay further projects a second observer who watches the first. Hay's moving body is thus watching itself moving and watching itself watching itself. Many theories of consciousness do not permit body to be consciously aware of its own activities while in motion. Many forms of prayer and meditation, even Buddhist meditation, encourage practitioners to sit and be still. In defiance of this opposition between action and reflection, Hay asserts the possibility of a consciously aware and critically reflective corporeality (xviii).

This evidence made me appreciate the complexity of my research and gave me permission to allow the natural phenomenon of the fluidity of the body and mind connection to inform the entire process. It also made "not knowing" permissible and allowed the mysterious nature of interpretation to take precedence.

So whether I was prepared for it or not, translation and interpretation came to the fore. I had the physical material available to repeat and analyze; I just had to make decisions about the larger context of this work. I could have constructed the material and its variations into a formal study of movement in space, through time and via dynamic exchanges of energy. This thought crossed my mind but it seemed like a short cut to what I was truly trying to accomplish. I felt that I had to mine the movement for more than just its physical properties and do more than simply apply what I already knew from textbooks and years of experience about macro structures and form. In the practice sessions, I was already working from an internal place for movement invention and variation. To simply return to designing the dance with an external model like motif and development or theme and variation would have neutralized the whole project. So "From where was the structure and meaning going come?" I asked myself. It had to be translated and interpreted from the information, complete and/or fragmented, gleaned from the practice sessions. The individualistic readings by the cast and me of the lexicon and its related sensations would have to be the source.

It was at this point in the project, when I had to start structuring the parts into a whole, that I realized that the philosophical and scientific components of the research were going to have to fade into the background. They would always be there as reference points as to why I considered the movement in the original phrase in certain ways. They would also continue to provide alternative lenses through which to look at the overall structure of the piece; but on the whole, it was time to allow my intuition as an artist to guide me. The words of Susan Rethorst became a secret mantra:

A single decision/response can feel inconsequential and arbitrary and make you think you'd better back up and discover in language why you're going to do that particular thing instead of any of the infinite other possibilities. But if you watch yourself make 500 decisions, you will see interests and patterns and issues; those same things are by extension operating in each decision…..that which is the intuitive imaginative self is interrogating and making a world, using equal parts circumstance and choice, responding to and being effected by, what is found there and what is internal, both (Dailiness, 2).

Had I begun the process with the original phrase and simply launched into making the dance right away, without the practice sessions, intuition would have guided me nonetheless. Whether or not the resulting dance would have been successful cannot be known but I can confidently assume that it would have been a completely different piece. However, a by-product of the practice sessions, besides allowing for concentrated consideration of the movement's physical properties and their associative powers, was the fact that the dancers and I knew the movement deeply and intimately. So completely, in fact, that a very complex directive in rehearsal such as "Do the opposite of that" took very little time and consideration. We were in tune with what the movement material was to such an extent that thinking of it in very abstract and diverse configurations came somewhat naturally to all of us. I briefly explain this here (I will go into more details later in this discussion) because it was the ability, on the part of myself and the cast, to transcend analytical thinking barriers that allowed my suggestions and requests in the rehearsal studio to find fertile experimental ground.
In order to transition this discussion from the ideas upon which this process was founded to an explanation of the practical implementation of them, I will transcribe an entry from my process journal below:

Found that most of the places that experimented with sensation and kinesthetic vs. contextual info was when I was stationary and evenly weighted b/w 2 feet. The development manifested in more gestures in the arms/torso/legs but not necessarily in anything that moved about. Mostly about finding the possibilities of gesture or subtle shifts in pelvis height or rotation. Also, found myself getting into a curious character. Curious in two ways: she's curious and inquisitive and she's curious and strange/mysterious. I took off my rings at the turnaround and put them back on and then lifted my head and started laughing as if I knew something secretive. Emotions are kind of scattered and mixed and intense. Is there something about renewal or redemption in this? The gaze up, the vertical stance, the boiling of the torso to upright position (Loupe)

This entry is a glance into the interrogatory nature of the practice sessions. It also exemplifies the kind of information that was used in rehearsals to prompt choreographic experiments and inform the way in which I structured sections of the piece.

Specifically, after a practice session that yielded information (like the entry above), I would then sit and reflect on the possible ways to illustrate these ideas in choreographic terms. Usually, I would formulate physical experiments for the next rehearsal that I thought would elicit material related to the conceptual nature of the observations. The first attempts were fairly ineffective, producing material that either did not resonate with me or simply did not hold together as anything out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, they provided opportunities to try and discover useful questions that could be used to provoke the creation of provocative content. Once I began to lock into some of the overall qualities of the movement material and began to notice trends in the way I was interpreting those qualities, strategies for extrapolating that information out into choreographic development became a bit easier. The questions I had for the dancers and the ways I wanted to craft rehearsal experimentation became better defined.

One of my favorite anecdotes about this phenomenon of producing choreography via the recognition of pervasive physical components of the phrase coupled with metaphorical translation of those components is when I discovered "the spirals." After many practice sessions and quite a bit of rehearsal crafting I was still at a loss as to what the overall tone and structure of the piece was going to be. I was starting to get glimpses of context but any progression toward an overarching theme was proving to be fairly elusive. Consequently, one day I decided to, rather than investigate the material at the micro level, attempt to recognize what was physically happening throughout the phrase. Was there anything that was continuous or unrelenting about it that I had missed?

Simply positing the idea revealed something quite extraordinary. Nearly every action had a dipping, rising and twisting quality. Furthermore, beyond the detailed, individual actions, the entire phrase wound around itself spatially. It transgressed levels and described multi-planar ellipses. The whole thing was spiraling. I could see the gestalt. This thing that I was working with was a huge spiral with many smaller spirals within it. This observation spawned a plethora of associations about the world that I was creating and the people (the dancers) that existed in that world. Another of my journal entries explains:

There is a space b/w action, suspension, resolving and reinitiation that is the key to this whole thing. The waiting between the things. SPIRALS. Over 30 spirals. 3D body, contours, CLEAR contours. In a spiral there is an initiation, a sweep and a return. Can this be extrapolated to the larger piece? CLEAR - between 29 and 48 spirals. Counting the contours or the spriraling torso/arm/hand /legs (Loupe).

I continue to speculate and interpret meaning in the following entry:

The spiral (ubiquitous nature of) has shaped this whole project. The nature of the spiral. The way that you can never see the whole thing. One side is always "shaded" because the 3D body or pattern is always approaching you or retreating away from you. These people in the piece are metaphors for that. The way they interact and place themselves in space is or has an unseen, unknown aspect. The meaning is elusive because the action is either happening or fading at different times and place and the players keep changing. There is a mystery -a mystique about them and what they are doing…..(Loupe).

This recognition and association was the fulcrum upon which the entire piece then balanced. The piece began to truly take shape. From then on, when I watched the individual pieces that I had created in rehearsals, I saw opportunities to fulfill the aforementioned context by linking them together or pulling them apart and mixing them in particular ways. I felt like the dancers and I had accomplished a major goal - to find the raison d'etre of the whole by giving the parts time to "speak" of their essential nature.

In The Clear became an interior view of human interaction that exposed mysterious interpersonal anomalies that led to expansive and dramatic consequences. The four dancers became distinct individuals who, by alternating between hiding and revealing their intentions, attempted to get what they wanted from the other individuals. Their personalities became woven into a spherical tapestry of action/reaction and cause/affect. I found this astonishing and exhilarating because as stated before, when I started this process, I had no preconceived notions of what the piece would be about or how it would unfold. However, in the end, a fully developed, evocative dance had emerged. I had definitely made a dance like none I had made previously.

In conclusion, I believe that through this practice-based inquiry into an alternative choreographic process I have found a procedure that I can follow and apply repeatedly without the downside of getting the same results. I base this belief on the experiential evidence of this process - I now know that a dance can speak to me of itself rather than me externally forcing meaning and form onto it.

I also witnessed the way that practicing movement and associating personal history with its sensations changed the way that the dancers embodied the material. They contributed a great amount of choreography to the project and it was almost always useful because they inherently knew how to formulate and create ideas within the emerging context of the piece. This was because through the practice sessions they had all found a secure connection to the material's properties.
This observation allowed me to think about the larger ramifications of this process. I believe that performance mentoring and coaching is greatly enhanced within this model. The dancers are literally investigating the dance as much as the choreographer; thus rehearsals are highly productive and the unfolding of structure and overall context is deeply understood by all. Furthermore, beyond performance values, this process engages the physical body and the mindful creative intellect, thus providing an excellent alternative approach in the teaching of dance composition. In no way should this approach negate more traditional methodologies but I think it can supplement and complement the existing knowledge base related to dance composition pedagogy.

Lastly, in the largest picture, I can imagine allowing this strategy to engage choreography students in a more reflective physical practice of their art form. Although I do not employ such a tone of indictment when I think of it, Deborah Hay summarizes this notion when she writes:

How many dance students dance alone uninterruptedly for at least forty minutes daily, outside of rehearsing, choreographing, or physically stretching? Why is this not a four-year requirement for every college dance student? How else can a person develop an intimate dialogue with the body (1)

 

Epilogue

It is impossible to separate movement invention from spontaneity
and chaos. The blip of the unexpected and serendipitous is fodder
for all movers. Once a new movement comes into being, the
quest is to do it again, get it in the bones, let the muscles embrace
it, and then add it to all that came before and all that will come
after in the encyclopedia of movement vocabulary. It is this
unforeseen thrill that drives movers on their journey. […]
This "a-ha," this moment of discovery, fuels the unstoppable.
For movers can't stop. They are driven by the incalculable
rewards received from their tangible, corporeal experiences.

Diane Vivona

Works Cited

Harth, Erich. The Creative Loop - How The Brain Makes A Mind. New York. Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, 1993.

Hay, Deborah. my body, the buddhist. Wesleyan UP. UP of New England, Hanover, NH. 2000.
Loupe, CoCo. Choreographic Process Journal. 2005-2006.

Martusewicz, Rebecca A. Seeking Passage: Post-Structuralism, Pedagogy, Ethics. Teachers
College Press, New York. 2001.

Rethorst, Susan. "Dailiness." Lecture handout, Current Issues. Instructor, BeBe Miller. OSU.
2005.

Silow, Theresa. "The Kinesthetic Sense: Exploring Sensation, Self-Emergence, Awareness
and Stress Negotiation Through Somatic Practice." PhD thesis. The Ohio State
University, 2002.

Vivona, Diane. "The Body Odyssey: Considering Movement as Research." Movement Research
Journal 27/ 28 (2004): A7.