Identifying, Shaping, Scoring

As the process reaches an end point, I have come to a new depth of understanding of my material, my themes, my resources and the method I can begin to work with in shaping a score for the finale solo. Being immersed so deeply in my body and reaching a point of objectivity with my self-portrait, where I can freely move between witness and presenter, I have arrived at a place of acceptance and understanding of my self, my art and the path that I am carving.

    Working in trio’s, mover A was given a theme and intention for mover B, devising  a movement score and drawing on mover C as the resource. Each taking turns in this process so that in the end we had three movement scores and themes to work with. By chance I found myself working with two others with whom I had previously worked  well with and what unfolded in the course of the afternoon was stunning. My theme, as having materialized throughout the training was unfolding to the world and carving a path. My score; to spend 5 minutes exploring the movement of unfolding to opening, and the next 5 minutes, opening back to unfolding. My resource was mover C and I had complete freedom in how I utilized her. Beginning tightly curled on the floor, I directed mover C to mirror my movements as a means to enable me to see myself and be in that safe space of unfolding. As the movement progressed and my body slowly opened, I realized that what I needed was a dynamic and contrasting series of movements that took me out of my safe and familiar space of slow, contained movements. And thus, under my instruction, mover C sprung onto her toes and exaggerated all of her actions, spinning, jumping, thrusting, moving in and out of the space and using directed force upwards and outwards. I was there, open, chest expanded and yet, now I had to move back to the nugget of folding in…a place that my body did not want to go back to, so I directed mover C to become an obstacle for me to retreat. We were fully immersed in the dance of resistance and fighting, she tracking my every movement and I, resisting her embrace, worked furiously to deny her a part of me until finally we became tangled in a wave of surrender and receptivity. With her arms around my body supporting me, she let out a mantra, repeating and repeating and I found myself receiving support from another, fully accepting that I needed that support to help me up, to enable me to grow. And in that beautiful still moment I knew then that I could never return to the curled up position that permeated me, I had no desire to retreat to that place and so I let myself free of my support and danced the danced I had always wanted to dance all my life; the dance of expression, vulnerability, strength and femininity.

Digging Through Thoughts

According to Daria Halprin, the 5 part process (Identify, Confront, Release, Develop, Drop) is effective in any order. One may immediately confront a feeling entering into the body, release, drop then re-enter into the identification process. Similarly, one can work through the entire process from identify to drop in that order. The value of such a intricate model is to facilitate CHANGE and Development in the body and one’s movement repertoire. According to Gestalt therapy, for genuine and sustainable change and growth to occur one must integrate body, heart and mind with a deep connection to sensory experiences.

My own experience of the five-part process this week was interesting and yet again, unexpected. Beginning the week with a nostalgic sense of calmness and clarity (release), I had a phenomenal dream that helped inform the continuation of my Abdomen explorations.  Facing a washing machine  (a metaphorical symbol of my stomach), I pulled out all of the clothes, speaking allowed ‘I do not need you anymore’. As the water slowly leaked out, I stood, empty, quiet, clear and grounded. The following day in the opening movement score we were asked to choose three body parts and explore their relationship to the abdomen. Beginning on the floor I tuned into my body with deep slow breathes that tingled all the way down to my legs. First connection; abdomen and legs…extending and contracting, I wriggled and slid across the floor as a confrontation began to surface (stage one of the 5 part process). What I discovered in this confrontation was a sense of disparity between the top half of my body and the bottom half and a stagnation of the breath flowing freely to my legs. Next came the release (stage three) as my body begun to find a new movement pattern. Now on my feet , I was spinning and jumping feeling the breathe INFORM my legs, thus initiating a period of stillness and relief (part 4- change). Moving to the drawing pad, an interesting image came out full of fire.. red, black, strong lines in explosive directions and a snake weaving its way on the paper: an image I felt during this confrontation. What begun as emptiness and a sense of resolution on Monday transcended deeper to a residing layer of confrontation later in the week; a latent pocket of emotion that could only be perforated through moving into stillness. The perfect illustration of the cyclical, and dynamic nature of the 5 part process!.

Box of Secrets

The first drawing of the week is of the abdomen…to my surprise and somewhat puzzlement, what drew me was a box of signs, codes, symbols - a box of secrets; my mystery…memories reminiscent of childhood - a boat, a garden fence, and seemingly random symbols - a road veering in two, a box of questions marks dancing in the space around my even larger box, a huge heart, lots of arrows and a plethora of blue, the sea…movement, transition. Following a movement score to tune in to the breathe and the feeling of the abdomen, I wrote a short story, a kind of realist fantasy. Walking into a cave full of white light, I stood immersed in my ethereal emptiness…I was the cave and the cave were I… finding myself in the sea, floating on my back, I watched the abdomen objects from my picture swim past me. Feeling wonder and stillness, the sea became my home, my sanctuary - my box of secrets a mystery to me. What do they symbolize?, how does there very memory affect what is happening on a deeper level in my body? Throughout the training we have been learning how to ‘read’ our pictures, how to move with our pictures and how our pictures can inform our lives; what is missing, is there a symbolic key?, a sense of tension,  negative space, and how colors, force and detail can connote feelings, emotions and even sensations. Whilst it is important to offer a sense of separation with the picture (not conceiving is as an’ exact’ or ‘true’ representation of the self), it can provide clues to work with in the life / art process. The abdomen holds many of the bodies vital organs and is imperative in absorption of nutrients, processing and eliminating toxins. Seeking a relationship between these organic functions and the emotional bridge we must shift to the metaphorical resonance to gain a fully understanding of our art / writing / movement practice. To give a taste….separating necessary from unnecessary, contracting and releasing, assimilation and rejection, discernment sorting, umbilicus nourishment, gut feelings - the list goes on. What became apparent later whilst exploring my relationship with my own picture was the exclusion of vital organs and the realization that I considered the abdomen as the stomach! This was an interesting find having worked with emotional  and physical ‘issues’ with the stomach before and feeling a deep rooted need to cleanse this area…..my box of secrets and lodged memories bleeding into the continuation of the week with poetic velocity. Part 2 shortly!

De-Centering

How can one be authentic in one’s movement explorations, responding to internal impulses, staying present to one’s stories whilst retaining a state of objectivity? De-centering from our own emotions with sensitivity and awareness can enable the mover to become more fully present to one’s bodily sensations, falling into the space of the unknown. In such a space, magic happens as the body finds new pathways from the emotional subtext of the mover, particularly when experiencing a cathartic release. De-centering as a movement resource also helps us to be in a real experience when multi-narratives and truths exist. Determining how to live and move with ourselves in these multi-narratives becomes a key question in movement therapy. Can I express my happiness with the knowledge that it has difficulty emerging through the body? How can I track this process of getting it out? For tracking becomes a important tool here in shaping the development of the movement and releasing the emotion that lay beneath it.
De-centering also enables the mover to witness her / his own material with fresh eyes, gathering further resources to transcend beyond the movement pattern and open the body vocabulary, enabling one to become more embodied. My own de-centering experience materialized today as I experienced a thread of multi narratives whilst working with a movement exploration between the arms and pelvis. Working with the floor, my arms making large and forceful spiraling movements  allowed me to travel through space in a way that I didn’t believe possible for my body. What started as a fervent action simmered gently into slow, sustained movements, inviting me into a space of quietness. As the fight between the left and right and the pelvis and arms dissipated, I felt a sense of acceptance and surrender to my body and my multi narratives - my belief patterns circling through and out of me and my energy carrying me forwards…

Puppet on my Strings...

Working with the Pelvis this week threw up some unexpected feelings and emotions. Nervously anticipating the study of this body part, I had geared myself up for a flooding of emotion in this somewhat ‘tender’ spot, yet, what has materialized is a shift in feeling and perspective from earlier movement practices utilizing the pelvis. Working with subtle tilting movements of the pelvis, we explored the range and releasing techniques of the Psoas muscle that crosses the pelvis and attaches to the Femur. What became evident was the range of movement that the pelvis has and how it connects to and affects the mobility of the entire body.  Located in the middle ground between the expression of the upper body and the directional focus of the lower body, the pelvis acts as a kind of container for emotions and feelings of ‘holding on’ or ‘gripping’.  Affirming the somatic viewpoint that the catalyst for change in one’s life is through the body, we explored the full range of the pelvis through a series of hour long scores. Number one: using the pelvis to move through space, paying attention to which movements are repeated and how the rest of the body responds to such movement. Working in groups we wrote aesthetic responses to each mover, sculpting a direct response to how we were affected on three different levels; seeing, feeling and imagining. This is an incredible effective and potent way of delving deep into the material, training one to become highly sensitive and trusting to an immediate response. As one group member wrote of my pelvis work:

                                Twisted lady carefully rocking and rolling

                                her body into reddish blooming...

       

Initiating, Supporting, Witnessing

Following the arms and hands mythology, today’s score was to support and respond to our partners dance through mirroring, contrasting and challenging the movement. The theory that lay behind these movements scores, and indeed sets a basis for the training itself, is that the wider one’s repertoire of movement, the wider the range of emotional material and thus creative choices. Certainly, the act of supporting a partners movement  provides new resources for the dancer to work with, enabling them to develop a movement  and stretch their creative capacity beyond that which is patterned or ‘normal’. This step into the unknown of the body's wisdom is both exhilarating and overwhelming. Our trio started with myself as the initial mover, partner A as my movement support and partner B as my voice support, of who’s job it is to respond to my movement and offer direction in places where my movement becomes stuck. Slow, silent directional slices of my arms quickly morphed into frantic surging of the right arm and chaotic jumps in the air with the reddish reasoning of the right leading…partner A entered and exited the negative space and confronted me with her own mirroring of my body and together we were dancing in each others chaos…at the same time partner B with her highly trained voice was offering warped, eerie sounds that resonated from deep within her throat…as the movement developed into even more momentum, her voice drew me along and she quickened into a frantic beat box that plunged deep inside my body. In this moment of bursting chaos between the three of us we had reached a point of understanding - both partners knew instinctively what needed to be done to offer resources to develop my movement, stretching me physically beyond the constant struggle between left and right…what next?!

Unmasking

The most revealing score of the training so far. After an initial 30 min warm up using the head and face and the metaphor of mask and unmask, 15 movers stood in a line, facing the witnesses and performed a solo piece, a story of the head. What happened was a extraordinary enactment of internal struggles, processes, stories, patterns, emotions both tender and traumatic that were expressed using the internal (eyes closed) and the external (eyes open) environment. Without the entire range of the body to rely on, what emerged was a raw unmasking of the self and a sense of pure curiosity, as if I were seeing my body in all its entirety for the first time.

Finding Balance...

A long, busy day with a lot of movement and witnessing. Revelations were made, and barrios were crossed within the group and on a personal level. Beginning with a hr long movement score, exploring the relationship and transition between standing up and standing down (not sitting down), we were asked to apply the three movement principles that we chose yesterday; tiptoeing, striding and kneeling whist exploring this transition. At first it was demanding on my calves and toes, yet to fully wake up, then something shifted as I began to explore what it felt like to stand up and down on one leg, moving in as many different positions and at as strange angles as possible - now the focus shifted to becoming a game with myself. How long can I balance for, to what edge can I work with and what is happening to the rest of my body when I play here? Where is my weight distributed and at what point in the movement does it tip - can I re-align myself to make the movement more efficient somehow? What other body parts are supporting me in keeping my balance? And most revealingly, what do I rely on, in my body and in life? As if deliberately interrupting my play, a voice asks, what movement do you need? (thus, what do you need more of in life?)Ahh, I sign in surprise and relief as furious kicks take over my body, propelling me in all directions with differing intensity. I need to push, I need to kick, I need to assert…And as I close my eyes with this furious kicking I imagine all the red seeping its way out of the right side of my body, my anger, my sadness, as my left side supports me, and I finish slowly, with a sliding of my toes, my body whispers, sliding out, sliding out…

Contacting…Connecting…Emerging

My first contact improvisation class in SF, its original home. To summarise; listening, awareness, meditation, receptivity….The focus of the class was knowledge - how much does your partner know when you connect and dance together, how much can you give, are willing to give and how much can you receive? I find contact improvisation constantly fascinating and intellectually stimulating; it requires focus, awareness, receptivity and internal strength with external softness. Positing the question, can the body find a balance between reacting and responding, the mover is invited to explore how the body informs one’s knowledge of one’s life. This of course, is a subject of constant flux, dependable on one’s emotional body and its physical openness and that of one’s partner. The beauty in this form, is its very quality to confront and corrode such barriers, to challenge issues of personal space and invite trust into oneself and one’s partner body.Amazing!...

Beginnings…

Arriving here in California away from the beaucratic zigzag of HK, I feel a sense of utter relief. As my last weeks were filled with validating my identity; bank balances, numbers, figures, codes, security devices, visa’s, I felt a growing sense of frustration of being  distracted from what I was about to embark on; of feeling outside my body when all I wanted was to be IN my body. And thus I arrive here, in beautiful Marin county, feeling like I am returning home…

Stepping into Mountain Home Studio,  I felt both overwhelmed and excited to be finally standing in Anna Halprin’s studio amidst the redwood trees, breathing in the magic energy with the knowledge that 50 years earlier this was the spot where dance was taken into the expressive arts . My body, soft, tired but receptive as to what may happen in the next three months, finding ease and clarity introducing myself in the opening circle through movement rather than stories of my ‘home‘ and ‘job‘, the body expressing the metaphorical self and the path to embodiment beginning…