And another
By Ian on Tuesday 11 November, 2008 | 4 Responses |
A new question for week 4:
As well as the work in the studio you have had the opportunity to take part in classes and discussions? What new insights (if any) have these given you into movement and process?
Tags: 4. Week four/ Ian Bramley
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Tuesday 11 November, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Taking class as a preparation for the day has been of real value. Working with ideas and images provided by someone else has given other ways in. There have certainly been times during the project when I have struggled to find my imagination, and then a discussion or image from class gives a spark of thought that can generate ideas for the day.
It’s always valuable to experience other thoughts and ideas, it can so often build and devlop your own.
Monday 17 November, 2008 at 9:29 am
The morning class and the talks has been a very valuable contribution to the work for me.I was absolutely mind blown by Jonathan Cole and the way we understand or not understand movement in space and how many pathway that can take to get to our mind …I ll probably find myself going back to that at some point. Susan and language was another surge of information described in such a clear way that had a direct effect on my code and my movement .I heard again and again the phrase ‘dance is a language isn’t it’ but i loved the definition that she gave when asked if our portrait looked like language’..a non random succession of distinct units’
The morning class is my body tuning in with the work the choice of teachers has been great: …they all opened more physical questions and routes through the body.
Sunday 23 November, 2008 at 9:27 pm
One of thing I have reflected on during this project is how much dance involves the mind – how much my thoughts influence the quality of my movement, or how my mind is working and communicating to my body when I dance.
So in class I have reflected on how my mind is working, and how different teachers activate my mind differently. There seems to be a different kind of effort going on for me, depending on how a teacher describes and shows movement.
The talks have also touched on this. Jonathon Cole described people who had injuries or impairments to how their mind transmitted information to their bodies, and so had to make extraordinary efforts to move around or perform actions. Susan also spoke about the effort involved in learning to speak: how children have to learn to use tongue, lips, mouth, vocal chords etc for the physical act of speaking.
Tuesday 13 January, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I felt that the morning classes really helped the process as we had a lot of diverse somatic information to inform and act as a counterpoint to the creative process. It allowed me to embed in my dancing self from where movement and my movement response emerge. I guess an insight in this area is more an affirmation that I need to drop into that sensation based level of experience to work creatively, even if that is then involved in an interplay with my thinking and conceptual self.
Discussions where deeply valuable, and I like how they were interwoven through the project. I often found that Sue would bring in an idea or reflection that would open up a whole new avenue and line of questioning in the process, which was wonderful. There was a strong sense of deepening into a body of practice that was very layered and, by its nature, a living and continuous investigation.
The lectures, for me, were like provocations, in the best sense. Very stimulating bodies of knowledge were shared and we were able to draw parallels or links, as we liked and in our own way. We didn’t formally relate the information to our practices but did make connections in quite open-ended discussions with the practitioners. It was interesting to simply let that information be there and to allow connections to occur without forcing them.
I was most struck by the idea of ‘zen-like oblivion’ that Jonathan Cole referred to, which I relate to something akin to a notion of a fully realised dancing state. (I wonder if this is something we can ever ‘achieve’? Or just something we sense and catch glimpses of?). Jonathan described how when experiencing pain, that is the whole focus of our consciousness. We are entirely identified with the pain: we are the pain. He went onto describe the moments in physical activity when the thought process and the physical act can conjoin into a similar state where we and the activity become one thing – such as in running. He referred to this state as the ‘zen-like oblivion’. This really excited me as the process in which we had engaged included a lot of thinking and questioning of our movement that for me can at times take me out of my physical expression. However, this idea allowed me to see a ‘zenith’ of the process where the clarity of thought and intention and its physical expression (and that interplay) can become interdependent and perhaps even integrated.
In other words, I found it helpful to use this idea to conceptualise a potential culmination point in my process where thought and action where integrated (but not necessarily merged).