Research into independent projects begin. We continue to explore the nature of 'the task', how does it differ from an instruction? how is it related to a larger theme/idea/concept 'methodologically' not just descriptively or demonstratively? For the purpose of the group's experience, at this stage we are setting general questions about creative processes to prompt work-investigations towards a pool of shared experiences that will then become specific and individual, some sort of creative-social-research pathogenesis...
I ask them to devise a task, from an idea that is beginning to take shape, or a further development of something from the past two weeks, or a counter proposal.... but they will give the task to another, not explore it themselves. By asking them to pass the task to someone else I am asking them to stop and consider the language used to set the task (how the choice of words affects this), what the task imposes on the other, what choices it opens up. Then, to witness the effect of the task as a way to become aware first hand of the relationship of concepts to an immediate practice, to also see the effect the task has on a 'body' (not just see the movement it produces), from this, only then elucidate what may be a second stage of development from 'within' so to speak.... Each team works half an hour on each task, before switching....
A bit of all this is allowing ourselves to be lost...so as to enter fully into this idea of the re-search... and its consequent find.... both objet -- sujet trouvee.... at the end...origin.
As a challenge, for the final stage, I ask them to bring the evolution of the task back to themselves, to be the agents of the second stage of evolution but taking the information from the previous stage to bear upon it,. That is we are dealing with issues of methodology not of aesthetic judgement, the point is not to do the task as I would have wanted it to happen, but to allow the clarifications/modifications to take us somewhere new, perhaps....to take us to further understand how we are beginning to articulate both physically and conceptually a process...that is important, we are not dealing with 'style', but of method of practice, these are related but not the same, a distinction missed in all aspects of choreography from criticism to pedagogy...
Towards the end as 'homework' for Thursday's session, we try to connect to some of the issues of session 1. Then we look at 'yesterday bearing upon today'. Today we are looking at how 'today bears upon tomorrow'. Again, may seem simplistic but is actually at the heart of the intentional arch that has been the subject of so much dance phenomenology debates and an inevitable/necessary question if one wants to reflect on an emerging method of practice.
I ask them to devise a task, from an idea that is beginning to take shape, or a further development of something from the past two weeks, or a counter proposal.... but they will give the task to another, not explore it themselves. By asking them to pass the task to someone else I am asking them to stop and consider the language used to set the task (how the choice of words affects this), what the task imposes on the other, what choices it opens up. Then, to witness the effect of the task as a way to become aware first hand of the relationship of concepts to an immediate practice, to also see the effect the task has on a 'body' (not just see the movement it produces), from this, only then elucidate what may be a second stage of development from 'within' so to speak.... Each team works half an hour on each task, before switching....A bit of all this is allowing ourselves to be lost...so as to enter fully into this idea of the re-search... and its consequent find.... both objet -- sujet trouvee.... at the end...origin.
As a challenge, for the final stage, I ask them to bring the evolution of the task back to themselves, to be the agents of the second stage of evolution but taking the information from the previous stage to bear upon it,. That is we are dealing with issues of methodology not of aesthetic judgement, the point is not to do the task as I would have wanted it to happen, but to allow the clarifications/modifications to take us somewhere new, perhaps....to take us to further understand how we are beginning to articulate both physically and conceptually a process...that is important, we are not dealing with 'style', but of method of practice, these are related but not the same, a distinction missed in all aspects of choreography from criticism to pedagogy...Towards the end as 'homework' for Thursday's session, we try to connect to some of the issues of session 1. Then we look at 'yesterday bearing upon today'. Today we are looking at how 'today bears upon tomorrow'. Again, may seem simplistic but is actually at the heart of the intentional arch that has been the subject of so much dance phenomenology debates and an inevitable/necessary question if one wants to reflect on an emerging method of practice.
