Abstract
Breathe in. Center yourself. Move one foot forward. Take a step. Breathe.
Inner motivations turn potential ethical action into kinetic reality. All shapes, sizes, ages, and colors of people live, move, have the starlight of bright being.
Breathe in. Take another step. Go faster. Annnd….on your own time….Runnnn!
In contact improvisation, norms of human kindness rule. Even swift, strong contact is gentle. We build on others’ movements. Connections ‘go someplace;’ once done, they go peaceably to earth.i
Rest, breathe, begin again. Now bring someone with you. Keep moving, together or apart.
We will invent dances and learn dances from elsewhere. Letting others’ dances be inscribed upon our bodies, taking their rhythms respectfully into our souls, helps us comprehend new ways of doing, via empathic absorption. After a brief warm-up using movement from two folk styles and one Western style, the class will construct three short phrases, then discuss leadership experiences in making and performing them. The first will be done as a group. The second will be done with partners, each triad seen by the rest. The last will be done in individual/coach pairs.
Physicalizing a leader’s initiation, realization, and completion of a phrase or task aesthetically informs both the dancer and the observer, patterning for them ‘how things get done’ with others. Watching and describing movement teaches audience/participantsii through imagaic engagement.
Positive, supportive feedback will continue throughout class; modeling initiative and courage while attending to group needs—learning the work of a leader—is the point of the workshop.
Endnotes
i Summarized from teaching statements and conversations with J. Wolfe, O. Besançon, and others, 1970s-90s.
ii See Hodge, F., Play Directing, (Focal Press, orig. ed., 1971), pp. 9-13, for a diagram and further discussion of this concept. Blatner’s work, Acting-In, on Moreno’s creation of the field of psychodrama, is also significant here.
Start Date
28-3-2018 11:10 AM
End Date
28-3-2018 12:00 PM
Presentation Type
Workshop
Full Text of Presentation
wf_yes
Dance as an Ethical Icon of Moral Action and Communal Responsibility
U-Hall 3-087
Breathe in. Center yourself. Move one foot forward. Take a step. Breathe.
Inner motivations turn potential ethical action into kinetic reality. All shapes, sizes, ages, and colors of people live, move, have the starlight of bright being.
Breathe in. Take another step. Go faster. Annnd….on your own time….Runnnn!
In contact improvisation, norms of human kindness rule. Even swift, strong contact is gentle. We build on others’ movements. Connections ‘go someplace;’ once done, they go peaceably to earth.i
Rest, breathe, begin again. Now bring someone with you. Keep moving, together or apart.
We will invent dances and learn dances from elsewhere. Letting others’ dances be inscribed upon our bodies, taking their rhythms respectfully into our souls, helps us comprehend new ways of doing, via empathic absorption. After a brief warm-up using movement from two folk styles and one Western style, the class will construct three short phrases, then discuss leadership experiences in making and performing them. The first will be done as a group. The second will be done with partners, each triad seen by the rest. The last will be done in individual/coach pairs.
Physicalizing a leader’s initiation, realization, and completion of a phrase or task aesthetically informs both the dancer and the observer, patterning for them ‘how things get done’ with others. Watching and describing movement teaches audience/participantsii through imagaic engagement.
Positive, supportive feedback will continue throughout class; modeling initiative and courage while attending to group needs—learning the work of a leader—is the point of the workshop.
Endnotes
i Summarized from teaching statements and conversations with J. Wolfe, O. Besançon, and others, 1970s-90s.
ii See Hodge, F., Play Directing, (Focal Press, orig. ed., 1971), pp. 9-13, for a diagram and further discussion of this concept. Blatner’s work, Acting-In, on Moreno’s creation of the field of psychodrama, is also significant here.
