More on improvisation.
The other day the conversation touched the subject of training improvisation, or teaching improvisation if you look it from the other point of view. It made me think that during several years of practicing improvisation, I have put a lot of focus on the choice making process, building up tools and skills to inform and expand my choices in the (instant) compositional effort.
Lately I more and more find myself looking for a place where “I have no choices”, where I have the clear feeling of what has to be done in order to support and sustain the dance. In that place the choices are somehow inevitable and necessary, or imperative if you like. Creativity or compositional skills seem no longer needed, while what seems to be paramount is to have fine awareness and appreciation of the moment. In that place I am not the governor of the dance, but rather its servant, I am permeable, transparent.
So what is the practice needed to develop and mature awareness and appreciation? Is this something that can be taught?
The extreme situation of “no choice”, of being there. In the theatre, from a dramatic point of view, this situation is a kind of fighting for survival, where the characters are struggling to get what they want. A kind of animal survival. This is why I put so much attention to the action, the to poised and expressive body ready to burst. I always found a extreme beauty in the body tense, in conflict with itself, with the surrounding. But at the moment I somehow changed my opinion, and I realized that the most important moment, the instant that really have an impact of someone’s life is not in an action, but in an observation. A persons stops and suddenly, in the moment of suspension a realization happen. Therefore, lately I put attention on the moment of observation as the generator of the transformation. In the perspective of dance, do you consider the issue of observation as crucial? When you let yourself be danced, are you totally “absent”, do you observe what the dance is doing to you? Or you let yourself be captured and brought to another state of consciousness?
Senno’ come stai? Io sono appena tornato in Finlandia dopo un lungo viaggio in Svizzera e in Italia (Roma, Napoli, Firenze) e ora ho il magone……
Davide
Observation is definitely a crucial point, if I understand what you mean, it’s not far from what I called awareness or appreciation. I knew this concept was going to be challenging to explain, when Ana Isabel pointed out the tension between presence and transparency in a previous reply. As I see it, one needs the be fully present to achieve the transparency I tried to describe and when I talk about serving the dance in no way I mean being danced or going into a trance-like state or stepping into another state of consciousness. The stream of consciousness from which the dance originates cannot prescind from recognition, awareness, appreciation, observation of the moment. I find that essential in order to include the environment in which the dance happens and the audience that witness the dance.
Lately I more and more find myself looking for a place where “I have no choices”, where I have the clear feeling of what has to be done in order to support and sustain the dance. In that place the choices are somehow inevitable and necessary, or imperative if you like. Creativity or compositional skills seem no longer needed, while what seems to be paramount is to have fine awareness and appreciation of the moment. In that place I am not the governor of the dance, but rather its servant, I am permeable, transparent.
This statement should be cherished and contemplated upon. A place of ‘no choices’ – the presence unfolds not in ideas but in instances. A ‘choreography of revelations’ and no salvation in sight!