Nobody’s Dance Berlin February 2016
Facilitators: Alice Chauchat, Arantxa Martinez
Documentation: Nassia Fourtouni
Participants: Alexandre Achour, Diego Agulló, Eleanor Bauer, Zinzi Buchanan, Alice Chauchaut, Ewa Dziarnowska, Chloe Engel, Joséphine Evrard, Nassia Fourtouni, Zen Jefferson, Roni Katz, Inna Krasnoper, Arantxa Martinez, Peter Pleyer, Louise Trueheart, Sonia Noya, Félix Marchand, Jasna Layes Vinovrski, Susi Rosenbohm, Vera Piechulla, Joshua Rutter, Agata Siniarska, Ellen Söderhult, Karen Leren Wathne, Kasia Wolinska
Nobody’s Business in Berlin, DOCK 11
1st session: 15 February 2016
1)
Name: Singing to the bones, through the bones (How anatomical images affect perception and vice versa on the example of the bones)
Shared by: Vera Piechulla
Origins: 1. Using anatomical knowledge and images from medical school, using body memory
2. Inspired by a voice and movement workshop with Josephine Evrard, especially by two practices, one called ‘Voice Massage’, the other one ‘The Trees’ (2013)
3. The actual perception/movement practice that is shared came up in a group research within an anatomy workshop with Vera (2016). It has probably been practiced by many other people before.
Notes: The shared practice is an example of how anatomical images can affect perception and perception can affect the images. By images, she does not only mean visual images, but all kinds of representation of body structures in our minds. These images are closely connected to body memory and they can influence the perception of the anatomical structure as well as the perception can change the image. It is not at all about correct anatomical knowledge or accuracy of the images, but rather about associations, using all the richness of our imagery.
The actual perception/movement practice is framed by images of the bones. These come out of the practitioners’ memories and out of some theoretical input about the bones.
Directions:
– For three minutes, do automatic writing or drawing in relation to the bones, associations, memories of the bones.
– Does anyone want to share some memories, associations or images?
She gives two dead bones to the group to observe them as examples for images of the bones. Than she shows a printed photo of a living bone which looks totally different from a dead one. It is bloody. She talks about the material composition of the bones and explains the process of mineralization. The group discusses the need of the bone to adapt to the forces that are implied on it. These forces are not only gravity and muscle tension, bones also conduct sound waves. The sound waves move along the structure of the bone, they can vibrate and resonate in the spongy spaces of the bones which are filled with liquid.
– Let us work with the image of sound waves that are traveling along the bony structure of our body, resonating in the liquid phase of the bone, activation water molecules.
– Find a partner and spread in the room.
– One person is lying on the floor, the other one is sitting.
– The person sitting chooses a body part where you can feel a bone quite close under the skin. You put your lips on the chosen part (works better when covered with cloths) and produce a tone with your voice, sending it along the bony structure of your partner.
– The person on the floor receives the sound that is conducted through the bones and senses the vibration in the bones. You try to produce the same tone. So your voice and the voice of your partner can meet inside your bones.
– You can talk to each other, if you need it.
– Pass through different body parts: arms, head, trunk, legs, basically everywhere you can reach. Modulate the sound as you wish.
– The people on the floor can also move, to expose other body parts and to see how movement influences and changes the sound.
– The partner that started lying can be more and more active, the partner that started sitting does not always have to touch with the lips, you can touch the partner with other body parts to see where it resonates.
– Try to get to a continuous movement, letting the sound travel through your bodies. See how moving your body structures affects the sound.
– Switch roles and go through the same steps as before
– After getting to a continuous movement, fade out the sound, take your time.
– Slowly go away from your partner – now each one moves alone
– Try to move by the memory of the sound in your bones
– This is a dance from your bones, dedicated to your bones
– Take your time to find an ending of the dance.
– When you are ready, take your notebook again and do the same exercise as in the beginning, for two or three minutes write or draw, following your intuition.
– When you are ready, let’s come together for the discussion.
– Is there any image from before or after that you would like to share? Any sensation that you want to talk about?
Group discussion about how the images (shared or out of memory) affected the perception of the bones and vice versa. Or maybe there are no images any more, just sensation.
Duration: 1 hour and 15 minutes
2)
Name: Do/Diagram
Shared by: Joshua Rutter
Origins: This practice was developed last year during his studies (MA SoDA at the HZT) in collaboration with Oliver Connew. He was interested in finding a studio practice oriented around production of documentation.
Notes: Rather than the documentation showing a process, it is itself the outcome of the process. A practice that would produce something else than a dance. Which were the choreographic situations that he was passing through, as we worked in the studio? What are the operative principles in an activity that I decide is interesting enough to continue for some time, and that changes the way I feel or experience the world/myself? Can those principles/experiences be represented visually in a way that is clear and interpretable by another?
Directions:
The basic premise: Muck around in the studio until you find something interesting to do, then draw a diagram of it. An oscillation between doing and diagramming.
– At first, he explains the score by showing a drawing with diagrams and three books that were created last year
– Warm-up of the visual imagination: Drawing for 15 minutes the symbols that you choose from another map of symbols he proposes, where symbols from various civilizations were collected.
– Spend some time is space and then observe what you do and make diagrams and drawings of it (30 minutes)
– In the end, have some little exhibition altogether
How we organize space, time
Duration: 50 minutes
3)
Name: Moving with
Shared by: Felix Marchand
Origins: A practice he developed with Ayara Hernandez and is influenced also by Diego Gil. (2011-2012)
Notes: The purpose is to create a democratic dance, made of anything that is around.
Keywords: actualizing, not being attached, flow of information,
Directions:
– Walk in the space and think to open, to think where you are, seeing the group, the walls, the ceiling, open your senses, change directions or not, think of the stream of information, shifting.
– Every new information leads to a different action, so it is a constant shifting of actions, actualize every moment.
– Talking is also possible but try not to be hooked by anything – the same with content.
Duration: 20 minutes
2nd session: 16 February 2016
1)
Name: a warm-up
Shared by: Zinzi Buchanan
Origins: –
Notes: –
Directions:
– You will listen to three songs.
– When the song changes, you change.
– For the first song is hands
– For the second song you use your feet
– For the third song, she calls it ‘industrial bodywork’ – see the person receiving as an object and you think to produce
– To end, you do something nice for your partner
Duration: three parts of five minutes, plus an ending, 18 minutes
2)
Name: a practice of continuous talking and moving
Shared by: Ewa Dziarnowska
Origins: An adaptation of Janine’s Durning practice of Non-stopping, (choreographer and dancer from New York), She did that in a workshop, in the first version, they did it on their own and with a different time structure. But in Ewa’s version it will happen with a partner.
Notes: speed matters, try not to prepare, the aim is not to stop and attend to the moment, keeping the eye contact throughout the whole exercise is an option
Directions:
– Find a partner: one partner talks and moves, the other listens and watches
– 5 minutes of non stop talking
– 5 minutes of non stop moving (immediately go from talking to dancing)
– change roles
– supporting “feedbacking” practice: everybody makes a drawing of the structure of what has happened and talk (non-stop talking) about the experience for 3 minutes each in front of the whole group
Duration: ca. 30 minutes without “feedbacking” practice
3)
Name: Asymmetrical body
Shared by: Arantxa Martinez
Origins: A partner practice that she starts with Lola and she will connected with Alice’s practice-based
Notes: –
Directions:
– You warm-up the other body of the partner
– In couples, you prepare the body of your partner for something you don’t knowledge
– You try to avoid symmetry
– You assume the clothes of the partner as an extension-part of the body – don’t forget to use them too
– You can use anything in the room for your proposal
– Try to be precise in whatever you propose
– You finish the preparation (you have one minute)
– Now, the bodies that are prepared for action, are invited to move in space
– You finish your act (you have one minute)
Duration: 15 minutes
4)
Name: –
Shared by: Peter Player
Origins: It comes from the book ‘This very moment’ by Barbara Dilley, a teacher at Naropa Institute, a Buddist university in Colorado. The practice is about how to integrate meditation in dance.
Directions:
– 15 minutes sitting in silence (focus on your breathings, eyes open or closed, do not hold to anything – thoughts, emotions, etc.)
-15 minutes you do to yourself what you need to do
(come back to sitting and from this position you start the open score)
– 30 minutes open score
– There is a gong heard for the end of each practice – in the end there will be three gongs in order to end the practice and come altogether for sharing
Duration: 1 hour
3rd session: 17 February 2016
1)
Name: Swimming dragon
Shared by: Louise Trueheart
Origins: an adaptation of a chi kung practice she learned from Peter Pleyer
Directions:
– In a circle, you start with your hands in a triangle on your belly,
Duration: 15 minutes
2)
Name: a circle warm-up
Shared by: Alice Chauchaut
Origins: from the classes of Lance Gries
Directions:
Duration:
3)
Name: Female trouble
Shared by: Rony and Agatha
Origins: Inspired by Alice Chauchat’s “Companionship dance”
Notes: A performance practice (they prefer to use the word ‘performing’ instead of ‘rehearsing’), a reformulation (a term that comes from deufert+plischke).
Directions: dancing, writing and reading
– in trios
– rounds of 6 minutes
– one is writing, the second is reading, the third is dancing
– also, make it happen in a circle too (apart from trios)
– agreement that the language of the text will be in English
– for the reader: you read it aloud but you do not have to be heard by everybody
in order: 1) writer, 2) reader, 3) dancer (because we go from writing, then to reading, then to dancing) and then the person who was the writer is now a reader, the reader becomes the dancer etc.
Duration: 30 minutes
4)
Name: The selfie practice
Shared by: Louise Trueheart
Origins: It is her own practice, she wanted to find a way to work with the problem of filming yourself.
Notes: Being inspired by an article by Rachel Sime concerning three photographers https://medium.com/matter/selfie-fe945dcba6b0#.feaz4vu9y
Directions:
– The goal of the practice is to make a dance gift that you will send to a person of your choice.
– Open your device, press record and name the person for whom you are going to make the dance gift.
– There are a few techniques for taking selfies.
– Selfies are a lineage for her.
– The definition of selfie is photographing yourself many times, choose one and share it on the social media
– This dance gift is an instant production thing, therefore you will not have the time to prepare.
– She showed an example of a dance gift she has made for Diego (as a thank you gift for him participating in a funding campaign)
– You can use also the outside space, the bathrooms etc.
– You choose two or three people and you make a 5 minute video for each one.
Also:
– Avoid looking at your own image because it is not for you but for them. It helps thinking that you have eye contact with them.
– You can play with framing.
– Remember yourself when you were dancing as a kid in front of your parents and you knew that whatever you did you were beautiful and there was something exciting about that.
– Make sure you can film yourself and have music at the same time – even though music is not obligatory for the making of the video.
– Feel free to make any decision that will make you feel better – for example a costume, etc.
5)
Name: –
Shared by: Sonia Noya
Origins: Smash Berlin program and Alecio Castellaci
Notes: –
Directions:
– Find a pair.
– The aim is to stay tuned or connected with the other person without talking.
– Avoid deeply contact eye – the contact is better not to be through the eyes.
– If you are bored, let it go and stay with the body.
Duration: 40 minutes
6)
Name: The telepathic dance
Shared by: Alice Chauchaut
Origins: There is a relation to Authentic Movement with the difference that the impulses are coming from Agatha
Notes: An adaptation of the score for Agatha’s birthday
Directions:
– Agatha watches and all the people in the room dance a dance for her, for her birthday.
Duration: 5 minutes
4rth session: 18 February 2016
1)
Name: Helping game
Shared by: Susi Rosenbohm
Origins: Martin Clausen
Notes: You can also use it as a performance practice and think about compositional choices. Feel free to specify and change the rules.
Directions:
– Everybody runs and catches the others by slapping on the shoulder
– The person that is caught, lies down on the floor.
– You cannot get up by yourself, somebody else has to do it for you by helping you to get up
– If someone helps you to get up you can also choose to get the other people down by not moving
Duration:
– depends on the choices the group is making. The game ends when everybody lies on the floor.
– first round 5 minutes, second round 15 minutes (trying do it in silence)
2)
Name: Fucking the space
Shared by: Zen Jefferson
Origins: a practice that Zen encountered at a workshop in Ponderosa, from Jesse Hewit and Larry Arlington, four years ago (lineage: from Robert Stein)
Notes: interest on the evolution of sexuality, observations on the societies of bonobos, chimpanzees, etc. Book: Sex at Dawn by Cacilda Jethá
Directions:
– Move in space, with music
– Explore individual and collective energy (in relation to erotics or not)
– You can charge the space and you can also allow the space to charge you
Duration: 35 minutes + 10 minutes discussion
3)
Name: A partnering practice – looking at the double of a dance
Shared by: Alice Chauchaut
Origins: From Sara Gibbens, in a workshop that Alice was giving, and this was a response on
what if we were doubles of each other
Directions:
– In couples, one has to do a dance and the other watches, looking the double of that dance in another life
– it is a chain that always forgets its past
– You dance the dance that you saw and then you switch roles
– Use peripheral seeing, do not see directly on what they are doing
Duration: 30 minutes
4)
Name: Automatic talking practice
Shared by: Josephine Evrard
Origins: It comes from a sharing practice transmitted to Josephine by Christine Gutenberg who had mentioned that it is a practice that comes from Marina Abramovic.
Directions:
First part:
– One person is lying and talking for 10 minutes
– You start each sentence with the words ‘I am…’
– It can be a short or long sentence but the aim is not to create a story
– The second person is writing everything down.
(breathing-talking-meditation?) breathing through talking
– (in the end of the first 10 minutes) Stay with eyes closed and be silent (for the person talking)
– The person that was writing now stops and gives back the words
– Swap roles
Duration: 20 minutes + 10 minutes feedback
5th session: 19 February 2016
1)
Name: Practice to go
Shared by: Jasna Vinovrski
Origins: It is her own score that created five years ago. Usually she does this practice alone.
Notes: A warm-up that is about changing a mind set up.
Directions:
– Current proposition: In groups of trios – but you can also do it alone.
– Each person proposes three exercises in a row that already exist.
– They should be disconnected from each other but being transmitted as if it is logical that one comes after the other.
– When the third person finishes, everybody lies down on the floor
Duration: 45 minutes
2)
Name: Balling
Shared by: Diego Agullo
Origins: It belongs to a practice with the same name – a set of exercises that was created in the frame of a research on writing, the chapter of the book ‘Dangerous dances’ about the relationship between dance and danger.
Notes:
Studying etymology was part of his practice when he was studying philosophy. Diego was interested in bringing together the etymologies of these two words and in using danger in order to generate a dance to happen. In 12th century the word dance appears– nobody knows where it comes from, maybe from ancient French and means to tremble and have a shiver. The word ‘danger’ literally means ‘master of a law’. The word ‘dance’ was mostly used in amateur poetry in order to express the physical reaction when exposed to a dangerous action, the power of a lover in physical sense, (dan: master, lord, a master of authority), danger as what produces the dance – as a perspective. The Greek word means to throw with the intention to hit.
Contents of the chapter of the book:
Danger and Dance
To be in the power of a strange master – The domain of dangerous power – The dangerousness of love – Predictable dances
Ballein: to throw so as to hit
Throwing: the propulsion, the trajectory, the projectile, the target – Hitting: to attack, to attempt, to propel, to achieve – The displacement of a carambole
Words from the root ballein: Dance – Problem – Ballistics – Devil – Symbol – Metabolism – Embolism – Hyperbole
Directions:
– Take the Greek root of ballein and the action of literally throwing balls.
– One is standing blindfolded and the others are throwing the balls.
– When a ball hits you, you can stop but continue the dance.
– The moment to understand this embodiment.
– You decide how much you decide.
– You need to be blindfolded.
– The person who is blindfolded is the one who is leading the exercise.
Example: one person is blind folded – the others throw the tennis balls (for 3 minutes), then they stop throwing the balls and the person continues dancing.
– in couples
– for ten minutes, one is dancing the other is throwing the balls
– five minutes of keeping the dance to resonate
Duration: 30 minutes + 5-10 min discussion about what you would like to change
– try a different version
– in a group of four people
Duration: 10+10 minutes
3)
Name: Clouding
Shared by: Ellen Soderhult
Origins: her own practice
Notes: It is about whether thinking about a dance as an object or not, being self expressive or not. The proposition is about what if the feedbacking would be an attempt to develop that idea.
The main idea is to name a lineage, to retrace one line of the practices; how to produce a visibility of that line, instead of a specific origin. Jasna proposed a structure that comes from Anna Halprin and others: You pick up a stone and you talk and reflect on what has happened, for a minute. You do not address anybody, you can also remain silent, you can also speak in your language. In tribes also, there was the ‘talking stick’ that was used in order to facilitate communication.
Directions:
– Go through all the practices of the week.
– 3 minutes of being on your own and write down
– 3 minutes of silence
– 1 minute of each one speaking while holding a ball
Duration: 20 minutes
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