Mon 17 Jul 2006
simon really is able to pump out those posts, eh? *grin*
this morning paea and played with a simple dance task in improvisation. we looked at the terms initiate and respond. this began as an alternating solo task – with the each of us responding to the previous. after four 5 minute solos we stopped and discussed the situation. the structure we established allowed an accumulation, so that in each succeeding solo there were traces and remenants of the previous solos. one of the words i wrote while watching paea dance was repurpose. in responding there is, amongst other things, a range from the simple mimetic to the complex reinterpret – the word repurpose seemed to fit somewhere in between those two end points. the idea being that to repurpose a movement or phrase was to retain the essence of the material but imbue it with the interest or influence of your own dance. in watching it seemed clear to both paea and i how there were threads coming through from each subsequent solo.
we also discussed how broad the term respond is. there’s such a wide variety of elements that this term could cover and how you could implement it.
we then shifted into dueting keeping a focus on the modes of initating or responding. for me this immediately opened up a whole new range of questions. the distinct modes become more and more blurred through dueting. an initiation becomes a response becomes an initiation and i think you get the idea…
we also decided to video this dueting for use in the flips. look out, there’ll be some up here later today i’m sure.
finally, there was a moment of experimenting with using a tripod as a mini crane and also as a simple steadicam. paea and i are planning on making a little dance film and, after watching Fearless on the weekend i was inspired by those sweeping overhead crane shots and wanted to find a small scale version for us to use! the clip is below, tripod angles, and is a little dark.
