Workshop Three and Four

Workshop Three and Four:

This workshop was created to start the process of material; I chose to use this as a starting point for movement with my group of dancers. I carried this out over two sessions, one as a group and then one as a duet so that I can practice this concept, value, in more than one variation.

My personal values: I made this decision to work this way because of my own personal values, I believe that you can begin to choreograph and play with movement without having to do tasks or previous workshops leading up to one section of material. I do use those methods within my work but contrary to many choreographers or dancers, I find my creativity at the moment when I can see the dancers bodies and space.

Of course, there has to be an intention, restrictions, clarity of roles and more to be able to devise material, however, being able to trust yourself and if you have explained why this is how you are choosing to work, the style and quality of movement you want so that the dancers have all the information they need, then I believe that this is a valid way of working.

Values that I have embraced: Forsythe has similar values that he took from the classical ballet and modified, how you can have the outline of the traditional steps and work with them so that they are still there but not done in the way you expect. This could be also seen as deconstructing ballet and the value system it has to produce an altered or new version.

"I mean, how you engender line, and the qualities you imbue this engendering moment with, are up to the individual artist. That's what creates distinct performances. It's not just creating distinct performances. It's not just creating a line; that's sort of primitive. In fact, Improv Technologies is very primitive. And was never intended as a choreographic method. It was only, finally used to capture improv. It was meant so that, if you were in a research phase and you had moved without rational intention, if there was a category you were working on, and you wanted to notice what you had done, you could use those particular techniques, those tools to help you recapture what had happened, in some way or other. And, especially since I was working with ballet dancers at the time, it was very useful, because people were thinking in a fairly geometric- inscriptive way." then continues to explain how "That's not the final goal-the final goal is something else-but you use it. It's a tool." (Whittenburg, 2012).

Outcome: Reflecting on these phrases I can go through see my intentions that brought about my choice of movement and how I thought about creating the material. Going from the classical ballet positions and shapes, I then manipulated and explored how they can move to disrupt this, whilst still having recognisable movement that can be referred to ballet technique.