Group Forms Week 2

(Technically this is week 2 - but it's week 1 of assignments!)

Every week in Group Forms with Crystal Perkins, we have a field observation assignment that we then turn into a score. We bring the score in on Tuesday and direct it on a group of our peers. Every Thursday, we have a 30 to 60 second "movement bank" due to show in class.

Field Observation #1

This assignment was to go outside (or on the Internet because it's cold) and observe a group of animals that travel in flocks, take our observations, and turn them into a score to direct for our peers. I decided to observe dolphins and found this video on YouTube.

When I directed my score, I had my dancers stay low and mushy to the ground while traveling toward the downstage corner in a pack, to be "below the water," and then arc up through the space (with their head, their arm, their foot - whatever they felt like) one, two, or three at a time to "break through the water." I was interested in seeing that instead of staying in straight lines as I had depicted on my score, the bodies of the dancers weaved through each other. I thought it was quite lovely and am pocketing it for a later work.

Movement Bank #1

Our assignment for our movement banks this week was to create 30 to 60 seconds of material to be utilized in a canon.

Once we got into the studio, we were put in pairs to discuss what kind of canons we wanted to use our material for - my intention was to canon the space and the timing. After that we had to throw together an 8-person group dance using all of our canons, each of us directing our section of the dance and stepping out of it when it was performed for the other group.

I got a little frustrated when generating my movement bank because I have been working in Comp 2 with Susan Hadley, Music & Comp with Daniel Roberts, and now Group Forms in breaking my habits - I really like standing on two legs and I really like standing on one leg, but I don't do much floor work because those movement patterns and mechanics aren't as deeply engrained into my body yet. I'm currently navigating within myself how to break old movement patterns (or at least find new ways of approaching old movement patterns) and offer something new to myself and my dancers when I make.

I also find that something that makes me tense is time management. I kept trying to politely push my group forward through the assignment of creating our canon piece because I was getting stressed about how much time we had left before we had to show the other group. This is something that I've noticed in my own rehearsals as well in the past - I have a hard time sensing how much time it will take me to direct a certain chunk and so on. I'd like to develop this sense more as I move forward.

Finally... I'm now considering a question that Crystal asked at the end of class, which I had never really thought about before. "What is canon?" I'd always been exposed to it as one dancer doing the phrase, the next dancer starting the same phrase two counts later, the next dancer starting the phrase two counts later...

Perhaps a canon can be something else. Huh.