The dancers have suggested that, as
performers, they feel they have a particular insight into the perspective of
the protagonist in Fly. For
example:
-
they find it hard to embody 100% ambition
because it feels more authentic to admit that they feel some level of doubt,
however small
-
they seek to please me (as choreographer), or to
do the task ‘right’, as they think I want them to do it. For example, when I
set up a task in which I asked the dancers to embody 100% ambition, several of
them said something like ‘I suppose that would be like just running forward,
initiating from the pelvis or the whole body’, but because I didn’t explicitly
say that they could choose to simply run forward, none of them did it. Even
though we are improvising in workshops, and we are dealing with an imaginary
situation in which there are no life-threatening limitations (i.e. I’m not
really taking the dancers outside to a cliff edge and asking them to jump off),
the dancers still feel that they need permission from someone else before they
can do anything that either feels like it is ‘breaking the rules’ of a movement
task or going against what they would naturally do in that situation. (I’m
generalising here, as some individuals do find that they can bring themselves
to do this – everyone responds differently of course)*
-
they feel an affinity with the act of
‘rehearsing’ or planning the jump as a way of enabling themselves to get to the
point where they can make the jump in reality – the central character in Fly makes a pair of wings to help him
fly, and does so “lovingly”, indicating that he has given the process time and
attention. Through active preparation, there’s a sense that the individual is in control of the outcome of what they are about to do (the decision to jump therefore
dictates the shape of the overall journey), and that’s a big part of being able
to visualise how you will reach that outcome. In terms of the film I will make,
this suggests that maybe it would be appropriate to see the end first, although
I am not certain about this yet.
*These observations indicate the significance of the way in which I set
up movement tasks and when and how I choose to explicitly ‘give permission’. I
had thought that the dancers would accept they had permission to respond
however they wanted to tasks because of me explicitly saying that in
introducing the workshops and because of the way in which we all worked
together to nurture a supportive, exploratory, non-product-orientated
environment. However, it seems that this is something that needs to be reiterated throughout the workshops in order for it to
be more fully taken on board by the dancers (as before, Csikszentmihalyi describes that a
flow state can be “made possible by the clarity of goals and the constant
availability of feedback”). Although they do not necessarily
feel the need for constant positive affirmation from the choreographer or
person giving external feedback (see previous blog post), they do need continuous feedback, which in
turn leads to their clarity of understanding the purpose of what they are doing.
This may become particularly relevant as/if we go on to ‘set’ movement
material, when I will want to encourage the dancers to continually rediscover
that set material in order to keep it alive and responsive in the moment. As
the dancers discussed this week, setting material has its place because, for
example, “set material can focus your [many possible] options, therefore
enabling you to go deeper or further”. Setting material, whilst also continuously
receiving feedback about that material as it becomes set, enables the dancers
to “pick up on the bits of the movement they didn’t fully realise” and to “constantly
build” on the information, including being reminded to constantly stay on task,
and to respond to the initiation points in their movement in a genuine way.
The dancers described that their ability to feel flow when working with set material
depended on how well they knew that material to begin with, and on how precious
they felt about that material (once again, this would be a result of the
particular way in which a movement task and the overall working environment was
set up, and the way in which I expressed my expectations as choreographer). I
was reassured to discover that there could be a place for set and unset
material in this particular film (choreographically, I like to work with both),
as long as I am clear about why I am using each kind of material, and share
this (through an ongoing feedback process) with the dancers, therefore
facilitating their agency/autonomy within what they are doing.
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