Memory Travels

Class description

Where and how does our memory travel as we dance? How and what do we remember from experiencing or witnessing a movement, gesture or expression? Working individually, in couples and as a group, we will meander into our memories via set phrases, instant compositions and games. By creating and re-creating, we will look at what was - is happening while we are dancing, re-membering. Stepping into a dialogue with memory in its becoming, as it travels from present to past to present to past to...

Class structure

Warming up the perception, fine-tuning, activating mimetic sense

• as a group: walking exercises / games
• in duets: mirroring --> follower / leader; merging roles
• as a group: passing on a movement from one person to the next

Play and Replay: Researching processes of memorizing

• solos across the space, group / individuals repeat; in different variations such as

1. the whole group
2. parts of the group
3. solos
4. with music
5. change of facing
6. with closed eyes ...

Memory Accumulation: engaging playfully with one's own and other's memories

• improvisation of revisiting seen/  experienced events of the class, exploring the memory and how it relates to other people's memories, and the replays, recreations, interpretations of these

Aims

warm-up:

• opening vision, preparing focus on entering other's forms, qualities, details
• activating mimetic sense while getting the blood flowing, activating sense of weight, breath-flow, being in the present. 
• starting with short snippets and details as a preparation for extended 'scenes' to recreate.

overall:

• Observing and understanding
  • different layers of memorizing & remembering
  • own and others’ preferences / patterns / strategies
  • sensations, effects
  • one’s own relations to memorizing & remembering

• Developing a sense for the complexity of memorizing & remembering
• Exploring different options of replay
• Discovering other qualities, rhythms, dynamics, movements

Wrap-up

The class was followed by a moment for participants to put a few answers on sticky notes below questions communicated verbally within the class, as well as present on the wall of one corner of the studio:

patterns & strategies

-        what do you remember?

-        how do you remember?

-        where is your focus, what do you focus on?

-        what is your strategy? do you want to change it?

-        what patterns do you observe in yourself?

state / effect

-        what is happening to you?

-        how does this affect your body, form, your being?

-        what state are you in?

-        how does this make you feel?

questions/ observations

-        what questions pop up?

-        what functions? what doesn’t?

-        what does it do?

-        what does it stimulate?

-        what do you see when you observe?

Further questions as a foundation for, and / or given in the class, as well as stimulated by it in retrospect / post documentation

• what do you see?
• where does something begin?
• where does it end?
• what happens to you in the moment that you are trying to remember, engaging in re-membering?
• what sensations, emotions do you have? what thoughts?
• how precise can you be?
• what is precision?
• in how many places can you be precise at the same time?
• what is happening to you?
• how does this make you feel?
• what is present, what is past, what is future?

 and...

• How do I relate to something I have 'made' to be remembered and recreated by others / the group? How does this shift, enhance or change my memory?
• What is the role of 'memory' in the process of creating in the moment, as 'present' becomes 'past'?
• Allowing 'precision' for / in other people's memories: How clear do I have to be with what I am creating in order for people to have a 'clear' memory? 
• How does our memory change, in the process of re-membering?
• How is our memory affected by other people in the space, re-membering?
• What state does this lead people to? What kind of presence?
• How are people being affected by this work, how does it make them feel? How do they judge their body-mind-relationship?
• What does this work effect? What function could it have?
• Where could it go?
• What is the role of / potential for the development of empathy of a person in this work?
• How much does this work influence our capacity to memorize? How, in what way?
• Does it help to stimulate and enhance learning processes?
• How much does this work give us a sense of the malleability of memory?
• What state and sensitization is needed for this type of work?

Final discussion

The MA CoDE Teaching LAB took place over the course of 5 days and was inteded as a space to share and exchange on teachings amongst graduate and current students of the Masters in Contemporary Dance Education (former Masters in Contemporary Dance Pedagogy, short: MAztp) at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, included an exchange on each class.

Discussions on the here documented class were first held in small groups, the outcomes of which however, left hardly time to be discussed in the whole group. 

Some of the questions and observations that came up included:

• The wall of questions (sticky notes) had a positive resonance - as creating an environment that supports the class: creating an interactive environment.
• How can one prepare for this type of work? What is a state that benefits this type of work?
• This work can become very heady, but should not.. So what are ways to keep it in the body, to reinforce a 'body-mind balance'? How to open the whole perceptive apparatus, incorporating the whole self? 
• There is a lot of potential in making people aware of (individual - one's own and other's) learning processes: We hardly exchange on our individual learning processes and strategies, but it could make sense to exchange on these, to broaden our spectrum and learn about other people's learning strategies.
• Personally, I believe that this work has a lot of potential also in that it opens up our awareness of how we perceive, and how each individual puts their focus on different things, and thus sees (the 'same') things - in this context for instance a small movement - (sometimes very) differently.

Note: this class was the result of two classes held at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt, in cooperation with the MA CuP, entitled 'Lost and Found in Translation, Memory and Interpretation'.

Lateron, Memory Travels was held as a 4-day workshop at TanzSprint13, at the HfMDK Frankfurt in July 2013, the class at the Teaching LAB thus feeding in further feedback.