Impulstanz Workshop with Nita Little:

Practical Synchronicity - Adv, 14.20-16.50 Week 2

Inquiry

Dancing is inquiring, Dancers are researchers. Keep engaged in inquiry while dancing.

It happens / takes place on 2 sides.

Remain with the constancy of curiosity.

Inquiry needs gaps , a space of not knowing.

You have to be at home, otherwise no one is there to ask the questions.

If you know what you are going to do next – don’t do it!

If you know what you are going to do in the next moment, you are making chunks out of time. During these chunks you are not attentive to the here and now anymore. Therefore make thinner slices out of time to be able to take in more information at each moment.

Attention

Pay attention to attention.

The word “attention” can cause a rigidness - in memory of schooldays, when we were told to pay attention. Nita understands attention as focused awareness. Though the focus doesn’t have to narrow, instead can widen with attention.

Don’t identify with your “skinform”, but identify with the space of your attention. Attention doesn’t happen in the brain but in the whole fabric of your bodymind. Attending to skin and space. Seeing all, with skin.  

Peripheral thinking

 Move at the speed of your attention and your partners speed of attention.

 Attention can and should at moments spiral inwardly, just as it can spiral outwardly again.

To be able to stay with attention, you have to change your attention from diffused to specific, internal to external, enminding and being enminded, prioritizing different impulses and allowing for gaps of not knowing.

 Shape shifting = changing the size of your attention

 Attention to space exercise:

Walk around making yourself bigger: 5cm, 10cm, in all dimensions, as large as half the room. Observe each other in groups of five.

TM: I found a big difference between projecting outward (what I learned as “stage presence” ) and simply paying attention to the space around me. Projecting feels harder and less permeable then spatial awareness. Projecting also takes more energy and is less responsive to signals coming back to you. 

RvB: feel/touch-kinaesthetic awareness in relation to the other perceptions. I felt myself growing in all directions (up/down, sagittal, sideways). Taking space, and being in the space without becoming smaller. Dancing together in a shared space. Inviting yourself not to become smaller/shrink, and also minding that you do not take away/eat space from the other. 

 Sending and Receiving

Exercise:

Say your name in the big circle and pay attention to being heard.

Saying hello to someone with your attention, at first without looking at the person, later allowing for visual cues.

 Observer/dancer Duo:

Touch your partner with your attention in both roles and be responsive to her touching you. Change roles in shorter and shorter intervals until both happen at the same time. After a while join another duo to become a quartet.

 TM: I felt like bathing in my partners attention – very liberating and energizing and stimulating in both roles. Observing with my whole body not just the eyes. When joining the other duo I experienced something new: feeling what is necessary at the moment, but not solely from a compositional point of view, but from the “mindbody” attentiveness. I experienced that through my staying in one place, I supported the fastness of my partners feet – and he felt the same. Being responsive to your partners attention gives you feedback on what you are doing at each moment! And: in a group you have to enmind your partner(s) with your actions to invite their response, otherwise you stay in a vacuum inside the group!

Enminding

A word created by Nita analogous to embodiment. She understands the body always as a bodymind and attention as a tactile sensation. Enminding means to touch someone/something with your attention, without having to physically touch them. It happens from performer to performer, performer to observers as well as observers to performers. 

TM: I find it also to be a very useful word and concept in the teacher/student relationship. As a teacher of technique classes I find myself often in the position of guiding my students towards a certain movement quality or specific steps. Usually this is done through demonstration and mimicking. The idea of enminding the students creates a more reciprocal association between students and teacher. Also, as choreographers we enmind the audience through the choices we are making regarding the movement material, the group formations, the dramaturgy of a piece etc. The dancers (can) enmind the audience in the live moment of the performance.

Diffused and focused

Exercise practicing diffused vision versus social vision (eye focus): walking  close to each other in big group (Simone Forti calls this a “Scrumble”) and using diffused vision and social vision. It’s much easier to avoid bumps when using diffused vision.

Diffused tactility in duos: dance using diffused tactility with prioritizing specific moments, making choices all the time. The key is to constantly oscillate our attention between focused and diffused – an important skill for ensemble work.  And our mind has a great capacity for quick switches between diffused and focused attention.

There is a possibility of being overwhelmed by the diffused state – switching to a more focused attention can help to prevent that.

TM: In our duo we experienced a firmer muscle tone when we switched to specific tactility which produced a different quality of tactile impulses. We probably got caught in one state rather than switching.

RvB - Nita: 'You are the dance'. Connecting to space with a diffused state, allowed me to connect to my dancing partner more as being one of (not in or with) the space. I clearly sensed my chest opening up, with a weighted attention that invited me to be more in the moment instead of anticipating the next event. Teaching LMA, this also confirmed that Space Effort (Direct / Indirect) can be very much a kinaesthetic action. A felt presence that is sensed as direct or more encompassing. 

"Politics"

Dancers are artists of experience and should be more present with their knowledge in the sciences. For science is mostly about things (nouns) rather than actions (verbs) – eventhough we are called human beings!

Research

Dance is action-based research. 

Being together in difference

You can dance with a partner without having to become the same, but remaining responsive to the quality of your own attention and your partner’s attention. Being together in difference means to resist the strong pull to be the same.

Exersice: Solo – be attentive to space

Duo - be attentive to space and to embodying your partner and being responsive to your partner.

TM: It felt like dancing in the landscape of her dance. Wonderfully rich and free. Then we were asked to make social eye contact and the magic of the dance between diffused and focused attention was disturbed.

 RvB: Sensing weighted limbs as I moved - listening and moving together without expressing the same qualities. 

Perception of time

When you condense the perception of time, you can move more in the moment. You perceive more. You dance with more safety towards the others and yourself. This perception of time thickens the space between. Richer with moments that can be responded to. Sensing thickened space that contains movement/moving. 

Ensemble Improvisation

Exercise: Touch the whole surface of your partner’s body. Listen to your partner listening/receiving your touch. If you know what you are going to do, don’t do it. Also: say yes to what is going on right now.

Group Improvisations in four groups:

Oscillate between the specific event you are in and what is going on in the whole space. (This correlates with the switching between diffused and focused vision and attention).

Allow yourself to be vulnerable/permeable to be able to be danced – rather than making the dance.

Recurring Closing ritual in the circle:

3 breaths together, 3 claps of the hands, touching the earth gently – like the belly of a pregnant woman.