Dance and the Lived Body Related to My World

                I’ve never been fond of philosophical readings only because it becomes so time consuming.  I can’t just skim through and somewhat grasp what the reading is about; rather I have to truly understand one sentence before moving to the next.  The idea of dualism as straying away from the Cartesian thought from a soul and mind separation to “recognizing a dialectical and lived dualism” was difficult for me to grasp at first (Fraleigh 4).  Every time I read or hear the word dualism I automatically go to the Cartesian dualism idea, so trying to give this word a new meaning was highly frustrating.  This explanation of how phenomenological existentialism is different from the old way of thinking helped me to put these two terms into understanding.  It makes sense to me if I think about how one’s environment and past experiences can structure the way in which new happenings are experienced within the lived body.  A very elementary way of connecting this within my life was thinking about how I had always been taught that making mistakes and taking risks in class were unacceptable as a young person, coming into college my lived body took a long time to adapt within the idea that these aspects of dancing are good for me. 

                The idea of phenomenological reduction helped me in developing a first draft to my choreography.  ‘This involves “a narrowing of attention to what is essential in the problem while disregarding or ignoring superfluous and accidental”’ (Fraleigh 6).  Instead of allowing myself to be distracted by ideas or movement not related to my intention within the piece, I focused on only the idea being portrayed in the here and now.  Cool tricks and how to clean the piece were not on the forefront of my intentional consciousness.  Cleaning is for later, and cool tricks aren’t relevant to a piece of art pertaining to movement. 

                Through taking classes such as Somatics and Improvisation, I can remember being told to let the body take over for the mind.  The idea of separation between the mind and body as Cartesian developed dualism.  “As the existential phenomenologists emphatically reject traditional dualism, they reject instrumental definitions of the body” (Fraleigh 8).  I have always had trouble with grasping the concept of allowing my mind to go into a sedated state while my body works in its place, moving how it wants to move and not how my mind wants it to move.  There have been times when I felt this sensation, but I’m now wondering if you can every really separate the two, mind and body.  The idea of “the whole person as a minded body, not a mind in command of something separable, called body” makes so much more sense when thinking about dance (Fraleigh 9).   I can still see how the body could be thought of as an instrument for the dancing artist, but instead of the mind playing the instrument the mind and body work as one.  Even though the mind and body can play against each other at times, Merleau-Ponty’s statement that these two entities ‘“can never be distinguished absolutely without ceasing to be”’ (Fraleigh 12).  The mind needs the body as the body needs the mind; each one giving the other purpose.

                Freedom within this body having to do with phenomenological existentialism also gave me another idea when forming movement for my piece.  Even though I still have a lot of work do with my piece, I already have lots of movement to work with and edit.  Instead of being “limited by being this particular body, which is mine and mine along” I am able to create movement and intent for others to communicate for me (Fraleigh 16).  I now have other dancers to utilize in doing movement that I create but may not necessarily be able to portray as well as these bodies I have been given to work with.  “Embodiment is thus the ground for all experienced values, for both intimacy and alienation, freedom and limitation” (Fraleigh 17).  The intimacy and alienation from my body-mind unit is being used in the process of creating while I have more freedom and less limitation in one sense.  This is the sense of capabilities within my dancers that are not found within my body, yet I have to work on communicating the movement that is intimate because of my individual alienation.  I do not worry, however, that my creations will not come across as unique and true to my choreographic style because “all works of art bear the stamp of individual creation” (Fraleigh 22).  Throughout working with others in this composition class, I notice that some choreographers create movement that is similar to others.  Sometimes it’s a simple gesture that one takes from another or even an act of repeating a shape or skill, but I’ve noticed that this use of other’s movement or movement ideas is unintentional.  I used to fear that I would find myself doing this at some point, but Fraleigh’s statement above reminded me that even if something is repeated by someone, the creation of the art is always going  to be individualized by the specific choreographer to make it their own.

                After assessing the material I had given all together since day one on Wednesday I realized that I did not have a lot of continual movement other than that of the solo performer.  I hadn’t read the second chapter of this book yet, and now I want to try to embody the idea that “when I become my dance, it becomes consonant with my consciousness.  The difference between the dance and myself disappears” (Fraleigh 40).  I feel like I should try to embody my intent with movement rather than depending on costumes that I have in mind.  Now I’m wondering whether or not to make my intent so obvious through the medium of costumes rather than my movement.   I would rather the phenomenon of my dance be noted by its “discernible structures and qualitative characteristics” through the movement (Fraleigh 35).

                I learned some valuable information from the first two chapters of Dance and the Lived Body that I didn’t connect with myself until reading it over for a second time.  The philosophical nature of the intent was hard to decipher, but once understood it was easy to relate to the process of my choreography as well as performing.

Inspirational pictures to my piece:

Carnival Evening by Henri Rousseau

by Greg Simkins

by James Ensor

by Toyen Paravent

Whirlwind of lovers by William Blake

Reality?

                Throughout each study within this class I have used different stimuli to create my movement.  With this study I decided to create movement for movement’s sake.  The only stimulus that I had was my imagination.  “The conscious recall of suitable movements for communication of liveliness occurs within the imagination of the composer” (Smith 213).  With only the four movement qualities of light, heavy, direct, and indirect to give me compositional motivation, I found it surprisingly easy to create the phrases.  It wasn’t until trying to fit them together that it became difficult, especially with using the element of chance. 

                When I began creating the movement for the four phrases to be used in this piece, I had an idea of using one movement idea throughout each phrase.  “The composer, with this in mind, then begins to manipulate material to fit these conscious images, and thus start composing” (Smith 213).  Instead of having a lot of material, I wanted to simplify the movement.  After hearing the feedback from my class, I realized that this didn’t work choreographically throughout the entire dance.  Ellie made the comment that the direct section was very clearly movement that was made from my vocabulary, but that the other sections just looked as if I gave them improvisational words pertaining to the Laban dynamics I was attempting to portray.  This was true for the transitions between each section as well as the use of structure improvisation for the indirect section. The problem with this was that the transitions lasted longer that I had planned them to.  Instead of being invisible, the transitions took over.  The indirect section was also structured improvisation that was meant to use the indirect quality of focus.  I originally wanted the dancers to use only their focus to portray the indirect quality as they simply walked around the space and each other.  While this plan worked within my head, I hadn’t planned for the dancer’s to interpret the structure differently on the day of the performance.  This was a risk I hadn’t taken into consideration. 

                I decided to ask one of my roommates to randomly draw the numbers out of a hat to figure out what order my phrases would be put into.  My roommate said, “three, one, four, two” without drawing any numbers.  I then asked him again to please draw the numbers then read them to me.  As he drew the numbers out of the hat, it was the same order as he had said.  I would have thought that he somehow cheated and saw the numbers before drawing them, but I had written out the numbers on the paper myself and made sure that they couldn’t be identified by looking at them.  This was a weird experience that just added to the “chance dance” madness.  These numbers put my dance in the order of heavy, direct, light, and indirect. After randomly selecting my props to be put into my movement phrases I had a hard time making sense of them and connecting them without being cliché.  

                I felt like my group members who performed in this piece performed the opening section pretty well.  They had a “clear use of focus to communicate the dance idea” (Smith 180).  I wanted the floor crawlers to have their focus on the objects in their hands so that the audience would be interested in what the objects were.  After the performance, Professor Ellie made a note that when objects are small, the audience can’t see them unless they are introduced properly.  I know that she had made a similar comment the day before in reference to how well the introduction of a paper clip was, but I wasn’t thinking about my objects still being in the smaller sized category with this reference.  Due to limited time in rehearsal, I hadn’t seen Christina using the brush to brush Jake off of Amy to the back instead of where the audience could see the action.  Since this didn’t show up as a problem in rehearsal, I never thought to specify the placement of the action.  I would seriously take these ideas and notes into consideration if I ever decided to rework this piece.  The other two props within this section were a candle and a pair of glasses.  As the three surrounding the duet in the middle were making their way toward the middle I had them use their props to make noise.  The only problem with this was that while Christina and Isis were able to make noise, Yuki wasn’t able to with the eyeglasses.  I hadn’t thought that this would be a problem, but during the feedback someone had mentioned that it didn’t make sense for two to make noise when Yuki hadn’t been able to.  I also used Yuki putting the glasses on the back of Jake’s head as a way to remove the props from the phrase, but since one of my dancers didn’t give the remaining third prop to Jake, this didn’t make sense either.  If I could change this in the future, I would highlight Jake’s transition to give this idea more clarity.

                The direct, light, and indirect sections were all easy adaptations to the use of my props within the phrases.  During the direct section, I had selected my favorite sweater and Sudoku book.  Instead of having the props spread across the space, I decided to have Yuki use both of them so that the audience wouldn’t have a hard time processing what the props were.  I had decided to have Yuki put the sweater on her legs instead of just having her wear it as it would traditionally be worn.  I also played with facings and groupings with the other four dancers put into pairs with one pair facing toward one another and the other facing away from one another.  With the class feedback in mind, the audience felt that this section worked.  In the light section, the sweat pants were used as a barrier for three dancers while Jake performed the movement with the heating pad wrapped around his neck.  Because the cord was so long Jake was able to play with the use of his new attachment while dancing.  Lastly, the tennis ball, body spray, and socks were quizzical at first, but simple explanations led to the final section’s success.  For one, I know that Jake loves to slide around in his socks. Secondly, I know that he wouldn’t want to smell like a girl all day.  Lastly, I needed a counter balance for the audience due to the chaotic motion in the background.  The strongest feedback for this section was that the audience wanted it to last longer.