Improvisation Distillation in the forest - Day 1
I came up with the idea of improvisation distillation as a way to motivate myself to dance, but also to investigate what my improvisational habits are and to explore the different ways I relate to music in my improvisation. My basic structure is to set up my phone on front facing camera (to make sure I’m in frame, to make sure it’s recording) and put on a track. I dance for the whole track with that set up. Then I move the camera, normally balancing it up against a tree or on some twigs, and pick a new song, and start again. The distillation part comes in with the editing. Initially I tried to pick one small section from each track, but then decided to be a bit more relaxed so as to curb some of the intense self critiscm, and essentially pick the sections where I’m doing something that I find interesting or emotive. I don’t really have a set idea of if there will be a finished or polished outcome, but I’m hoping that by engaging in this process I can start to easily recognise my habits and challenge them, as well as find new and different ways to relate to music. The editing process helps with this, and I’m finding I can very quickly edit out my filler, or habitual movement.
Here are my first thoughts reflecting on the initial experience:
Into the woods. It feels like this might be the right place for me. I carefully crunched my way through. 24 hour surveillance reads the sign but I felt very unsurveiled. I played my music and felt alive. I dueted with a tree. I channeled my inner witching femininity and I rolled around in the dirt. I felt free. I think I’ll return to this place where I can feel witchy and unsurveiled.
Music:
Them Changes - Thundercat Way down We Go - KALEO Tennis Court - Lorde Sugar - Stevie Wonder Don't Forget About Me - Alice Boman Way to be Loved - TOPS Philakanzima - Bongeziwe Mabandla
I don’t intend for these videos to be seen as dance films, but more for myself as a pick n mix of ideas and inspiration. The above video I kept the original tracks, which although segmented and slightly jumpy, highlights exactly how the music was moving me. I find this interesting to reference, and I can clearly see how the different tracks have a massive influence, not just on how I move, but the style of my movement, for example some tracks I really pick up on my street dance background and some tracks I tend to move more into technical movement. The music also clearly affects the pace of my movement.
Music is Way Down We Go - KALEO
Filmed on 27/5/2020
The floorwork in the forest was satisfying to explore and I think definitely, both figuratively and literally, pulled me closer to nature. I had to be so careful of my surroundings, and couldn’t rely on my usual floorwork patterns to move. I think also the pace of this movement is much slower, and there’s a lot of space within it, which is definitely different to how I normally move. Taking the time to be careful and calculated with this movement helped me tap into a type of improvisation that I don’t usually go for.
Music is Dermot Kennedy - Boston (music has been edited)
Filmed 27/5/2020
I really messed around with the editing of this video, playing with the music to keep it flowing and consistent. I would say about half of this video is me moving to the music in real time, and half of the movement is me dancing to a completely different track that I’ve taken the audio out of and restitched it around the Dermot Kennedy track. This process was interesting for a number of reasons. I enjoyed using the trees as my contact partners, playing with weight shifts and lability was really fun and something I want to explore further. Editing this together felt more artistic and satisfying than creating a grab bag, like in the previous video, but it also highlighted to me how easily movement can appear to be set to music that has no relation to it. This makes me think about how to be more specific with my musicality so that it wouldn’t necessarily be so easily translatable.
