Improvisation Lab
Improvisation is the dynamic negotiation between freedom and restraint. Working with intuitive rigor, without the burden of creating something interesting or new, we allow ourselves to tap into our deepest creative and feeling selves. This can also lead to greater curiosity, helping us to find our true inventive nature, and awaken alternative processes and systems of creating. We will play with various modes of improvisational forms that include Tuning Scores, Forsythe improvisational technologies, and Mary Overlie and Ann Bogart’s Viewpoints to see what is emerging, what can be cultivated or refused, and how moving indeterminately can heighten atunement in the body’s states of being in the world.
Participants will experiment with random generators, drawing, speaking and vocalizing, tracking the mind while improvising, duration and boredom, and more. Ideas and solutions will materialize in the form of solos, duets and groups, expressing the infinite ways that movement and meaning inter-relate. We will interrogate existing pedagogies and methodologies of improvisation and dance composition (Viewpoints, Critical Response Process, Forsythe Improvisation Technologies, and the use of scores) and imagine ways to be more inclusive of any dance form, ethno-cultural histories, aesthetic sensibilities, and abilities.
