Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Manchester Metropolitan University
Eyes Closed Rehearsal - improvised performance
Eyes Closed Rehearsal is part of an ongoing research process, and is articulated in my choreographic piece ‘Eyes Closed Rehearsal’. The work/process utilizes improvisation tasks to develop set material, specifically improvising through scores where general movement qualities and spatial arrangements are set, as well as, exposing rehearsal methods as performance. My interest is to explore performance virtuosity, and compositional methods.
From engaging dancers nationally and internationally in this process, the following questions emerged:
• What makes a moment spontaneous?
• What is the impact when the performer emphasizes choice in how they place set or improvised material in time, considering expression and nuance?
• How can the performer avoid the automatic execution of material, but focus on performing movement as for the first time?
• What brings a moment of movement to life in performance, aside from technique and training?
In order to answer these questions I organized the Process/Product dance festival (March, 2013) focused on the exposition of process as performance to gain the insights of other practitioners. The festival was focused on practitioners exposing their processes and included a performance of ‘Eyes Closed Rehearsal’.
Since the festival I have been developing specific coaching frameworks to support the dancers performing my work such as:
• Asking the dancer to become aware of how they let information in when dancing in front of an audience, whether making choices in real-time, or dancing set material.
• Asking the dancer to consider that the execution of form is not as significant to many audiences as is the thinking process that occurs when a dancer is actively letting information in while performing.
• Asking performers to question differences in performance context between rehearsal and event: considering the performance moment as live notation, or live writing.
• Asking performers to invest in the unpredictability of live movement and simultaneous audience engagement.
