Music

Even though I studied music growing up (piano & music theory) I was introduced to a broad range of music through dancing. I was fortunate to have a teacher who had eclectic taste, drawing from classical, jazz, different cultural styles to the most contemporary music—a mix of time signatures and instrumentation which helped me to colour the way I moved. Now as I teach I try to do the same, to source a spread of musical accompaniment to shift out of our habits and to try on other flavours, detail, nuance.

So, as requested ...thanks Leyla :) ...here's my playlists this trimester:

Week 1/2
Fire —Des'ree
Big in Japan —Tom Waits
The Point Beyond Which Something Will Happen —Single Gun Theory
Thirteen —Julian Barnett
Sunny —Dusty Springfield
Darwin Star —Des'ree
Quiet —Panoptique Electrical

Week 3–5
I Want It All —k. d. lang
Justo Agora (Brasil) —Adriana Calcanhotto
Worlds Keep Spinning —The Brand New Heavies
Army Dreamers —Kate Bush
Nierika —Dead Can Dance
Light Out At 11 —Baby Animals
Glycerine Queen —Suzi Quatro

Week 6–8
Falling Water —Matthew Halsall & The Gondwana Orchestra
Aethenaeum—The Necks (extended warm-up track week 8)
This Masquerade —George Benson
Ride On —Little Axe
Erotica (Confessions Tour Live) —Madonna
Tell Me —Laleh
Unisex —B(If)Tek
We Float —PJ Harvey
Djobi Djoba —Gipsy Kings
Sweet Design —Sia

Week 9–11
Kothbiro —Ayub Ogada
African Journey —Baraka soundtrack
Out There—Dave Graney
Lost in the K-Hole—The Chemical Brothers
Musicology —Prince
Walkie Talkie —DJ Shadow
Burning Down The House —Tom Jones & the Cardigans
Sweet Design —Sia
Man's Dance —Counterfeit Gypsies
More Than A Woman —Bee Gees
Scatter Frost Like Ashes —B(If)Tek

Riding the phrase

Imagine that the movement phrases exist in the space, like invisible radiowaves, traces... and we merge in and out of them. We have physically moved the air and left traces of our bodies as we dance so in a sense we have carved them into the three-dimensional space. This imaginative idea helps us to visualize the pattern of each phrase—it's pathway, levels, intensity (a stronger movement might imprint more heavily like pressing more deeply with a pencil to make a darker mark)—it becomes a way to remember a phrase and move more confidently within it, supported by a framework outside yourself.

And it also brings attention to how we move together as a group in the studio...and how we support each other with our witnessing when we are not directly involved in dancing the phrase. Being able to enter the phrase at any point is a good survival strategy, a way to continue rather than stop if we forget a section. This keeps the flow and energy moving for the group and cultivates positivity (to feel confident in your dancing by moving on and not worrying about missing a detail here or there).
Moving around the phrase as you watch others provides energy for those dancing, through eye contact and proximity, and being able to exchange smoothly from observer to dancer (passing the baton) cultivates your timing and spatial skills.

It can also be an engaging choreographic idea. Have a look at this section of
"Physical Business" (1994)
choreographed by Helen Herbertson for the Danceworks company and see this idea of moving in and out of a movement sequence (also see myself and Shaun dancing).

Feedback and reflection

There are a number of ways to get feedback on how we are 'performing'

• video (watching images of ourselves moving)
• peers/witnesses (verbal feedback on what others see)
• tactile (specific information via touch can direct our awareness to particular areas of the body, to assist alignment, activate a specific muscle group, release an area of tension)

Feedback from sources outside ourselves can help us to become aware of habits or tendencies in our bodies that may be less efficient or potentially harmful, and others' expertise may offer ideas or strategies for maximising our potential as expressive artists

BUT

you are unique and you are the best person to tune in and reflect upon your own body

This is an ongoing research project.

Our bodies are in a constant state of change—as we age, as our environments and tools shift, as experiences impact upon us physically and emotionally...

If you spend time focussing on your body, listening to it, exploring its range and shape, 

acknowledging what feels good or what feels uncomfortable,

you will be able to tune into specifics and experiment with shifts in how you hold or move particular areas of the body

So how do we 'spend time' when we have back to back classes or parking problems or injuries or one of the many issues arising in our broader lives?

Here are some of my strategies for surviving as a dance artist, for getting the feedback and reflection I want and the practice time I need:

• get into the studio earlier ...they open at 8am at Deakin so if I get up and travel a bit earlier I not only have time to warm-up physically and tune in my attention, away from the exterior "stuff" and into my breathing and moving, but I miss the worst traffic and can easily find a car park 
• have a buddy or buddies to practice with ...arrange time together in a studio where you dance together, witness and/or video each other, chat
• take up offers ...make a time to chat with your colleagues or teachers outside of class/work 
• try different ways of working ...this is like physical and philosophical cross-training...e.g. a yoga class might help you deepen your attention to your breathing which also calms the mind and opens the body; a climbing gym can quickly identify how the arms and legs should work in partnership as well as giving you the adrenaline buzz of working at height; a vocal practice can open your breathing, activate endorphins for feelings of well being and stimulate nuance in your physical rhythms 
• set some goals—long and short term which are achievable and schedule them—this also means examining how you use your time...is there a balance between your work, social and rest time? (see my jpegs below on goal setting & time management)
• Congratulate yourself on "turning up"—use affirmations to positively reinforce your goals and change your behaviour to achieve them—and listen to positive feedback. Negative feedback is not only not useful (it is usually about the other person's issues not yours) but weighs ten times heavier on our minds (again see the affirmations below).

Before beginning

Before beginning the dance

consider

the simmering of attention

the gathering of interest

and how this prepares you physically

—the quickening of your circulation, blood pressure, muscular tone—


and how this prepares you mentally, emotionally, socially

—respectively acknowledging your presence in your present.


It is the "upbeat"or anacrusis, that which precedes

the intake of breath before the action

the opening of your attention to your body today, here, with these others

the relaxing into the myriad of past events that have brought you to this moment



It is the house lights going down and the curtain going up

It is your walking into the studio and beginning to warm-up your body

It is you already "dancing" as the musical introduction plays and you move into the space

"A river of internal movement flows constantly in me and is the underlying generator of the form that is then perceived by the viewer." 

(Eva Karczag)*

*Reference: Tufnell & Crickmay (2004) The Widening Field. Dance Books: Great Britain.
about "arriving"

Moving through planes

I've been talking about the shifting directions of movement through the three planes—sagittal/wheel, vertical/door (also called coronal), horizontal/table (also called transverse).

Rather than slicing the body into sections I like to think of the body as moving within circles of motion, with the movement between all these planes making up a sphere, our kinesphere, which is why I have been using words that imply movement in those directions, the tyre wheel, the helicopter, the knife-throwing or german wheel.

                               

This idea reinforces the knowledge that our bodies are curved rather than straight, and helps us to stay pliant in our approach to our alignment and our dancing. We live in a built environment of boxes and lines...houses, cars, devices...fixed, straight lines and surfaces which do not match the reality of bodies and environment. So, I like to keep connecting to the idea of the flow and circulation of continual motion, like the flow of oxygen through the bloodstream moving throughout the body, like the tides rolling in and out, like the air currents that circumnavigate the globe.

Then, when I am dancing I feel supported by this idea of circulating and shifting between planes like rolling around within a sphere...sometimes close in to the body, sometimes larger than the room.

There is a functional aspect here physically as well. By feeling the connections between these planes I can achieve balance and control. 

In a balance, like tree pose, I am able to sustain and control my balance with ease by applying the three directions of movement simultaneously—the vertical down through the supporting foot and up through the top of the head, the horizontal with the pressure of the foot into the thigh and the palms into each other, and the sagittal by drawing the navel to the spine or activating the front abdominal muscles.

The same principles apply in the turns we have been doing on one leg in turn-out (the low turn in the "Worlds keep spinning" phrase and the turn on rise at the start of the Baby Animals phrase) but the arms are extended to the sides to trace the helicopter plane.

Physical Architecture & Imagery

I find the use of a combination of particular imagery (imaginative visualisation) and tactile information (directed touch with a partner) can assist structural alignment, balance and movement range. Here are a number of images and partner exercises I will at some time use in class.

The flow of energy down the back of the body and up the front of the body.

I often imagine that I am standing half under a waterfall so that the water is flowing down over the back of my body and legs, 

and drawing a zipper up the front of my body

This corresponds with the real physical forces acting on the body, namely the pull of gravity (compression) and the tensile upward thrust of the arches of the body (foot, pelvis, rib-cage/shoulder girdle) through the long bones to spine to head.

(Todd, 191)

With a partner we could trace the pathways of the fascia that interconnects to encase and support all the bones, muscles and organs in the body. We can follow down the "superficial back line" and up the "superficial front line"

and we can follow the spiral line and feel how the sides and front and back of the body intersect

(Clark, 74)

Arches and bridges in the body

I let my imagination move into the interior of my body, to visualise my structure in comparison to architectures I see in the world around me.

I visualise the body as the Eiffel Tower, 

the arches in both planes 
(fwd/back and side/side) 
creating the thrust upward 
to support the narrowing spire of the spine

Multi-directional support

I also imagine myself inside larger structures or forces as a way to achieve balance, support and/or release...to be part of the bigger picture and feel the integration of the whole body at once.

 ...supported by the multi-planes interacting...feeling the longitudes and latitudes...the rooting down under the earth and up into the stratosphere, the support of the air around me...

inside a three-dimensional sphere (kinesphere) 
as in Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man"

imagining myself connected into the longitudes and latitudes of the globe of the earth 
—the longitudes running down past ears, through shoulders, hips, knees, ankles; 
the latitudes running through the skull (ear to ear), the rib cage, the pelvis

I also refer to the planes in relation to the movement sequences: forward/back as the sagittal or 'wheel' plane; the vertical side/side as the 'door' plane (frontal/coronal); and the horizontal as the 'table' plane (transverse).

To visualise opening in the joints in the body, my favourite image is to imagine my laying torso (in constructive rest with knees up) as an airport main runway, the edges of which run through shoulder to hip, knee, ankle middle toe...and my arms (at diagonals to my laying body) as two taxi-ing runways leading to the main runway...

I imagine each joint lit up as night markers for the runways

Recommended Reading

Todd, Mabel. (1968) The Thinking Body: a study of the balancing forces of dynamic man. Brooklyn: Dance Horizons.

Clark, Bernie. (2016) Your Body, Your Yoga. BC, Canada: Wild Strawberry.

"Established" level technique—areas of focus & the notion of "style"

In this "established" or intermediate level of dance technique my focus for teaching is to offer other perspectives on dancing—specifically how to consider the interaction of the senses in our ways of moving, learning, and living.

—how a visual image might offer new insights on anatomical function and structural alignment;

—how tactile information (touch/sensation) can deepen or augment a visual image;

—how sound and rhythm/pulse connect to breathing, and to our underlying instincts and emotions...

This level of technique differs from the advanced level in that I may not cover as much material, i.e. spend more classes working with the same sequences or teaching shorter, less complex sequences. I may introduce material that is more moderate in its shifts between planes/levels and in its demands for flexibility, control and nuance (stylistic detail). However, all my material to varying extents concentrates on musicality and rhythmic variation, drawing on visual imagery and imaginative ideas,  and bringing attention to how we use our vision and our three-dimensionality in our dance performance.

Dancing is a personal statement and a cultural act—who we are and where we have been (or long to go) resides in our bodies and contributes to our individual "style."

My dance "style" is a hybrid fusing contemporary dance, physical theatre and post-modern aesthetics. There is a deep underpinning in my movement vocabulary of my own musicality and love of rhythm/syncopation (extensive background in tap-dance and music practice and theory) and my pioneer modern styles dance training (Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey via my University teachers) mixed with my interest in the everyday in movement (have had direct experience working with Judson/Post-modern greats Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, Lisa Nelson, Eva Karczag).

In a teaching context I try to engage and inform students on a range of levels, re-articulating ideas from different perspectives (visual/imagery, kinaesthetic/tactile, aural/rhythmic, anatomical) to broaden their access to or ‘ways in’ to my dance material. In a choreographic context I am interested in extending this approach to facilitate a creative exchange with my dancers, one which enriches my choreographic process and which can support each dancer’s performance narrative.

I have felt a significant pull toward Indian culture, specifically to yoga practice. I was introduced to it at University (my dance teachers) along with jikyu jitsu and qui gong and have been practicing more intensively (i.e. 4-6 times per week) over the past 10–12 years. As my physical practice deepened so has the mental rigor and breathing. I have also spent a considerable amount of time in India over the past ten years and other traces of that culture have seeped in. I studied some Bharatanatyam (Indian classical dance) and Kalari Payattu (a South Indian martial art form) and have found the detail and specificity of gesture and the directness and strength both a challenge and a place that I could enter into fairly easily. The uprightness of Indian classical dance is almost diametrically opposed to my style of rolling, release and floor work but there is also a theatricality and virtuosity that appeals and which sits well with me. I have always been strongly influenced by an eclectic range of musical styles (Celtic also features in my repertoire/heritage) and my trips to India have built my collection of Indian music (Sufi, classical and Hindi/Bollywood). When in India I taught contemporary technique and choreographed a contemporary work on Indian dancers and I think it is the combination of ‘living’ in a culture and having to work out how to collaborate artistically across cultural landscapes that pushes your expressive capacities—you have to analyse and communicate (and often question) where you’re coming from with your western aesthetic, and you have to find ways to meet their physicalities and rituals (of which there are many!) creatively and sensitively.

Whereas your "introductory" level classes may have been about finding basic commonalities with your fellow dancers—of alignment, strength and stretch, use of space and time—now I encourage you to consider your individual aesthetic and potential, your particular inflection in how you interpret and perform the material—to investigate your uniqueness.


Images: Dianne as a tertiary dance student, Adelaide, 1986; dancing with Mallika Sarabhai, Ahmedabad, India, 2006.

Connections

In these last few weeks of trimester I am making connections

connections across the body

—between the shoulders and hips as the larger joints framing the torso, working in opposition or counterpoint to balance the body, or as gateways out to the limbs which, when released, amplify the range of movement out through the limbs and through space

—or the idea of working with all 5 limbs as a collaboration...arms, legs and vision...all emanating from the pelvis/saccrum

—or recognising the continuum of movement through and across the different spatial planes (wheel/sagittal, door/vertical, table/horizontal)...the sense of being contained and fluidly shifting between these circles of action, like the electrons around the nucleus of an atom


connections in the choreographic material

—recognising the evolution of material... sliding out onto the side of the body from a low kneel becomes a sliding out from a spiral/squat, then a body slide from a fouette in the air landing in a deep lunge

—finding the connections in rhythm, accent, impulse, angle, shape

—building the longer "Sweet Design" phrase by looking at the potential entry and exit points for editing phrases from class together...opportunities issuing from landings/placement, spatial position, momentum...

connections in space and with your fellow dancers

—an attention to the shifting fronts, being able to transfer material to the other side (from R to L, first to second side) through strategies of mapping relationships between body and direction/room

—dancing with other bodies safely and dynamically by both understanding the trajectory of the material and staying tuned into your peripheral vision, sensing your position in time and space in relation to and supported by the others dancing with you (including those who are watching/witnessing you)

Focus

I  mentioned "focus" as one of the areas I would give attention to in my classes:

I suggest that you can consider your focus, where you look and what you are seeing, as another body part that can move out to connect you to a distant part of the space and which falls back into the body as light or information through the lens of the eye (refer to Lisa Nelson article "Before Your Eyes"). Here is where my work with video becomes the metaphor—softening or sharpening your focus affects the detail of the facial musculature, noticing how you can see from other angles and distances and considering how you are seen from all angles and in particular frames (i.e. not all the body at once). 

(Blog entry Three main areas of focus)

This week (week 8) I am introducing a "focus phrase" (to Nick Cave's Spell track). In it I am bringing attention to your vision as a kinetic phrase, to consider not just what you are seeing but the line, timing and quality of your vision as the choreography—the pathways through space, at different distances from you, and the shift of your focus from sharp to blurred. 

Because I am a screendance artist, I think about the dance material cinematically—

• imagining seeing landscapes or other locations rather than the studio walls (I pan from the ocean/horizon to the cliff I am standing on as I look from forward-mid to right side mid)

• playing with timing as I would in the edit suite (a jump cut from the distance to the right, in to my R shoulder)

• activating the musculature around my eyes and considering the mechanics of my retina, lens, optic nerve like a camera as I play with softening or sharpening my focus (zooming in slowly on my fingers as I draw them from outstretched arm in to my eye)

Faldinghurst

My 2015 screendance Faldinghurst is a re-visioning of vision. I wanted to remind the viewer of the screendance how “seeing” feels. Through a cinematic play with focus, depth of field, I believed it possible to affect the viewer’s physicality—encouraging adjustments in your optic mechanism and the muscles around the eyes through visual shifts across space and plane, from foreground to background, left to right, down to up, pulling the viewer in and out of the frame. I was looking to upset the viewer’s balance, to shift their relationship to gravity and expand possibilities for “seeing”—to consider ‘the physicality of perception—the way we feel ourselves in the present’ (Dove 2006: 64).

The Faldinghurst experiment proceeded in this way. Firstly, I asked dancer Gülsen Özer if I could make a film with her at her farm residence in the hills on the outskirts of Melbourne. I asked her partly because I wanted to continue the connection that I had set up in the 2014 practice sessions at St Johns hall,155 and partly because I wanted to have a new screendance to submit to the Light Moves Festival156 by the end of May. But mostly I asked her because (besides needing a body other than mine) she has a capacity to fill a stillness, to inhabit her body attentively before the moment of impulse. She also has access to this geographic location—a landscape promising spatial depth, texture, autumnal colours, rural artifacts, and the traces of a culture lost or remote. She and I both understand that dancing the location is a way to understand it, decode it, inscribe it, and that ‘movement is a translation of space’ (Deleuze 1986: 8).I also wanted to see how my research, this improvisational practice, might be effecting my screendance practice—a development I was also tracing, sharing during my 2014 field trip.157 The score I gave Gülsen was about occupying the frame, attending to the relation between us, as dancer and camera, a shared passing of time and noticing of sensations...temperature, moisture, terrain, frames, textures, traces. The score I worked with was to find frames that satisfy my aesthetic158 and then play with the edges of these points of view—geometrically (composition within frame, negative/positive space, planes/lines of movement) and viscerally (moving in and out of focus within shot to expand and contract the focal length in the viewer’s eye and to physically effect the musculature around the eyes).

 (extract from my PhD thesis)

Sweet Design phrase

Today I will start teaching the Sia "Sweet Design" phrase which we will add to over the next three weeks. I plan to film these in Week 11 as solos (or duets) for your final assessment.

You can find the phrase at this link

Sia

The first 10 x 8 counts is the original phrase, then it will vary to the video adding some of the other material we have worked on this trimester. The first side (L) runs from 00—40 seconds, and the second side (R) runs from 1:27—1:55

and PS...Here is a link to the phrase with our 2017 additions

2017 extras 

So crack out the unitards!

Strategies and styles

We learn using three main sensory receivers—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (VAK).
We mostly use all three modalities but one or two may be dominant so I try to find ways to present class material using a mix.

For the visual (my dominant preference) I describe movement with other visual imagery, demonstrate with my own body, video demonstration and feedback, get you to draw pictures.
For the auditory, I use music and my voice to cue timing, information, qualities, I describe what I'm doing, I ask for questions, I encourage you to feedback with each other.
For the kinaesthetic, it is about getting into the movement material and learning it by doing. This is why I sometimes give a scan of the material by demonstrating a complete phrase before breaking it down. I also incorporate various tactile exercises, often in partners, so that physical information is transferred by touch and sensation.

Last week I asked you to draw one of the sequences, to graphically notate it. You were creating a visual map to help you learn the spatial pattern, while also attending to listening and following the timing/accents with the music in real time, and physically drawing the tactile qualities on the piece of paper.

Here's some examples placed next to each other.

It was a strategy for learning a phrase from a range of angles.
I would encourage you look at different strategies for your own learning...try drawing or notating a phrase, video it in class for playback and rehearsal outside of class time, work with a partner on a phrase and use touch to indicate an impulse for or direction of the movement...

Breathing

Breathing is our most vital activity...it sustains us...it is what keeps us alive.

I often talk about remembering to breathe in class...more than that, to consciously work with our breath to access the dynamic range of our bodies. Releasing breath to release tension, to open joints, to soften into the floor, to propel us through space.

In yoga practice, the cultivation of breath, or pranayama, is one of the eight "limbs" or stages of focus. It often takes much longer to find, than finding the "poses" or asanas, probably because the breath is so connected to our emotions. Look at the patterns of breath when we are anxious or fearful, the way it is more rapid and shallow.

Right now, move away from this screen, or put down your device, and take five long slow breaths.























What happened?

You took the time to notice your living, breathing body.

You may have let go of muscular tension, of thinking, of propelling yourself into the places where you are not and need not be (in things past, in expectations future, in spaces virtual and impersonal).

You opened yourself to the potential that can sustain you as a dancer and as a human being, the realisation that your breath is oxygen entering your bloodstream, moving around your body, and moving back out into the air....air that moves into other bodies, plants, weather patterns, tides...that, through breathing, we are connected to everything and it sustains us.

Air is a matrix that joins all life together.

"About 1% of the air we breathe is made up of argon, an inert gas. Because it is inert, it is breathed  in and out without becoming a part of our bodies or entering into metabolic transformations... these argon atoms mix with the atmosphere and spread around the planet in such a way that each breath you take includes at least 15 atoms of argon released in that one (of your breaths) 

a year earlier."

(David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, p. 37)

Every breath covers the area of a tennis court, 40 times greater than that of the skin—moving through the film of the 300 million alveoli of the lungs.

(Tufnell & Crickmay, Body, Space, Image, p.23)

Dance Lineage — the passing of movement memory from body to body

With Trisha Brown leaving this mortal coil last week, my thoughts turned again to my/our family tree of dancers.

Russell Dumas, who you worked with last week, worked with Trisha Brown. He also co-founded Sydney company Dance Exchange with one of my teachers, Nanette Hassall, who had danced in the Merce Cunningham Company. Nanette founded the Melbourne company Danceworks, which I was a dancer in under the Artistic Directorship of Beth Shelton and Helen Herbertson. Helen spent some time studying with Trisha Brown and brought something of that aesthetic into her work with Danceworks. She also brought Lloyd Newson, Artistic Director of London company DV8 to work with us which also influenced the aerial/climbing works (Physical Business and Vagabonds and High Flyers) that Helen and the Danceworks dancers collaborated on in the mid-nineties.

While I undertook my Dance Degree in the 80's (SACAE/Adelaide University) my teachers included: David Roche, who danced with Pearl Lang, who had danced with Martha Graham; Simi Roche who was accepted into the Martha Graham Company; Steve Paxton (founder of Contact Improvisation) with Lisa Nelson (Editor of Contact Quarterly); Elizabeth Cameron Dalman who was the founding Artistic Director of Australian Dance Theatre; Deborah Hay with whom my dance colleague in Danceworks, Ros Warby, works with regularly.

So when you are dancing my material you are also dancing the traces of all of the above...
There are physical imprints that stay with us and which intertwine with our personal experiences/aesthetics to create our own particular ways of dancing. So you have a great legacy supporting you...have a look at some of their bodies of work to see the connections (see the links I have inserted in this blog).

You could also say that the studios we work in hold those traces.
In 2005, while I was Artistic Director at Dancehouse, I made a film/community project called
Dance Path. It was a video collage of the living history of Dancehouse with twenty-two independent dance artists dancing their recollections of practicing and/or performing in the studios there. It includes the above mentioned Helen Herbertson and Ros Warby, as well another Deakin face, Shaun McLeod.

"Dance Interrogations" at "Ten Days on the Island"

This week I am presenting my dance and screen work "Dance Interrogations" in Hobart as part of the Ten Days on the Island Festival. The work began as my solo in an underground tunnel at the 2012 Adelaide Fringe, then a blacked out hotel room at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe, relocated into a train carriage at the 2013 Melbourne Fringe, and built into a two-part site specific work adding a duet with Melinda Smith in a hallway in the Abbotsford Convent in 2015.

Between 2013–15 the work formed the performance research of my PhD at Deakin University—”Dance Interrogations—the body as creative interface in Live Screen/Dance.”

The title has stayed as my duet practice with Melinda Smith continues to develop and in 2016 we secured Australia Council and Creative Victoria funding, and Footscray Community Arts Centre in-kind support, to develop the work, specifically building in harness/aerial work to build Melinda’s role and vocabulary. We were then invited to be “movers in residence” for the inaugural Salamanca Moves festival in Hobart, where we won the A.W.A.R.D. show. The award included a grant to return and be a part of the Ten Days on the Island program in March 2017.

http://tendays.org.au/event/dance-interrogations/

It has been an interesting collaboration with Melinda, who has cerebral palsy, over the past several years. It brings up lots of thoughts and strategies in relation to how we can work with/in our bodies.  In relation to dance technique I have found that working in duet with a dancer with a disability has opened up new artistic terrain for me as a dancer—inclusive strategies are not about working in a limited range or "dumbing down" physical virtuosity...they offer expanded views and new possibilities.

Melinda reflects on the process

The dance class as a whole event

I approach each dance class as a performance, a narrative, a complete story.

As I move through the material I look for connections, physically and intellectually—considering its unfolding like scenes in a novel or film.

I see the introductory warming up as a laying of the land—the introduction of characters, the mapping out of the location, getting a sense of the style (the period, the culture, the temperature)

As my body warms up and as I gather information (learn sequences) I begin to come into contact with other people and locations.

The action develops and the possibilities complicate to move me through different planes and at faster speeds or using more intricate language. I come across obstacles, need to find strategies for negotiating the new as my body moves in and out of the floor, skims through space or pushes up into the air.

And as I slow into the final stretching and cooling down of the class I get a sense of return, feeling the passage of that journey through my body, considering the shifts that have occurred as I resolve into rest.


There are a number of ideas or metaphors you could apply to your "dance class as a whole event"

—the passage of a lifetime

—the passing of seasons over a year

—a film narrative

I once used "the 12 stages of adventure" as a model for the structure of a dance piece and then my Masters exegesis (see link below). It is a pattern/progression I heard a film director referring to once as the pattern you can see replicated in many adventure film narratives.

1    The place where you are—something is missing
2    The call
3    The response to the call
4    Meeting with the mentor
5    Crossing a threshold into a new world
6    Tests, allies, enemies
7    The approach—facing the fear
8    The supreme ordeal
9    Reward
10  The road back
11  Resurrection—another ordeal
12  Return with the elixir

http://www.academia.edu/22032987/Cutting_choreography_back_and_forth_between_12_stages_and_27_seconds

"Advanced" level technique—Three main areas of focus

Moving into an "advanced" level in contemporary dance can be about picking up more complex material more quickly, and performing material with high levels of control, flexibility & nuance (stylistic detail).

For me, the following points cover the sorts of ideas/approaches that I think "come up" in my dance material

1. Detail/Cross-patterning 
This is about instrumentation, looking at the intricacies possible in the articulation of body parts and their relationships to each other. It is a zooming in to find detail while at the same time keeping the whole body in the picture. It is a consideration of the multiplicity of the micro—the potential to articulate each joint of each finger or to activate subtle shifts of angle and impulse in the spine. I often make phrases that layer and counterpoint upper body and lower body patterns in ways that not only fine-tune the physical instrumentation but also work on neural pathways to improve coordination and memory.

e.g. the "Celestial Gestures" phrase (named for the music Celestial Blues and the incorporation of hand gestures) which will continue to build a gestural language upon the moving foot/floor patterns. It is also a cross-cultural patterning, drawing on Bharatanatyam (Indian Classical Dance) mudras on top of leg work that has more Western hip hop flavour.

2. Phrasing and Musicality 
I am strongly influenced by music and like to draw on an eclectic mix of styles, tempos and time signatures. How we use time can colour the quality, character, dynamic of our moving. Working in irregular time signatures is another cultural education  that can broaden your dancing palette. Amplifying variations in speed can build physical control, the ability to change and shift across more extreme ranges. You've probably already noticed how I will often use musical composition as a visual metaphor—your legs carry the bass line, the foundation; the torso, arms add voices, melodies and harmonies to this rhythm; where you shift your focus or your breath can be an embellishment, a cymbal or a horn blast. In Labanotation, dance notation that is also recorded on a stave, this idea of the layers of the body as parts of a musical composition is echoed.

3. Focus/Performance

This is both about seeing and being seen to, as Deborah Hay says, to "invite being seen."
I suggest that you can consider your focus, where you look and what you are seeing, as another body part that can move out to connect you to a distant part of the space and which falls back into the body as light or information through the lens of the eye (refer to Lisa Nelson article linked below). Here is where my work with video becomes the metaphor—softening or sharpening your focus affects the detail of the facial musculature, noticing how you can see from other angles and distances and considering how you are seen from all angles and in particular frames (i.e. not all the body at once). More than just relating to the face and eyes, how can you activate different parts of your body by considering how a viewer is seeing them? How can your back smile, or your stillness speak?

Lisa Nelson article

Welcome to contemporary dance technique

Welcome to contemporary dance technique with Dianne Reid.
(This blog is for my current students at Deakin University but it can also be a resource for anyone)


I may have already met some of you in my previous classes but there seems to be less and less time in a trimester to really get to know each other—for you to understand where my particular approach or style has come from (my history and my current practice), and for me to understand how best I can support your growth as dance artists and creative practitioners.

So I thought I'd create this blog for us ... as a way to share more information outside of class time and better inform our working together in the studio.

Firstly I want to pose the question: Why do you dance?

and more specifically...
1. What do you love (admire or enjoy) about your own dancing?
2. What inspires your dancing? or What do you aspire to?


Here's how I answered that question recently...

Why do I dance? Why wouldn’t I? I can’t imagine not dancing. 

It has just bubbled out of me—how I feel, images in my head, 

dreams about places and people and my relationship with them 

have always expressed themselves through my moving body. 

My hands sculpt the air; I paint with the brush of a leg;

a melody runs up my spine; and snapshots develop on my face. 

From an insistent compulsion developed a persistent decision 

to always be involved in dance, to work at play.

Dance was the vehicle for my speaking, commenting, 

imagining my life 

but also a way to come close to others. 

The relationships you develop in the dance studio are deep because they are deeply connected to breath and touch, 

to our most intimate states. 

If we could bring the whole world into the dance studio, 

into their own breathing and sensation 

we could get on with living (generously) with each other. 

I see dance as a means to fully experience the world, 

our relationships and our imaginative, creative potential. 

When I dance I shake out all the places I have been—locations, scents, sensations, rhythms, words, desires, fears, actions, thoughts—and expand the sense of myself. Dance builds community. It tells stories, forges pathways for groups to move through the world together—to explain phenomena, to find food and shelter, to mate and reproduce, to sharpen their senses and stimulate euphoria, to consider things from other angles. 

It is both pleasure-giving and problem-solving. 

This image from my recent performance with cellist Jo Quail is also an example of what inspires my dancing...her music, and the frames and light within the architecture at the Abbotsford Convent.

More about my dancing and thinking here

http://www.hipsync.com.au/diannereid/blog/