When I grow up I'm going to be an improviser

I know, famous last words, I was saying in Retrospective last year "I'm not sure if I'm a dancer anymore, but I do call myself an improviser."  This after about six years of struggling with my love for improvisation (and contact improvisation) but an education in which "you're improvising!" was a reprimand and a performance culture where improvisation is often taken as a shorthand for laziness.

When we were working on Retrospective, my dear friend K pointed out that I might be claiming improvisation as an identity because while there are many criterion for technical dancing which I prefer not to be judged by, I could noodle around but not be judged for not improvising!

But the more I see and experience, I am humbled and delighted.   I don't know if I merit the label "improviser" - but when I grow up I want to be one! I feel reassured that I won't run out of things to work on for another 20-30 years at least.

Here is my knockout list so far:

1. Yvonne Ng - I saw her perform at the Grey Festival in Singapore 2010, during my final year at NAFA.  I knew from that moment that I wanted to make improvised solos.
2. Rick Nodine and Simonetta Alessandri at the LCI celebrates Chisenhale fundraiser - 3 DAYS after arriving in London, Sep 2014. Knocked my socks off.
3. Table of Contents (Siobhan Davies Company) at ICA Selfridges, 2014.
4. and tonight... Sten Rudstrom at Trip the Light Fantastic Toe!

Why I dance III

This morning I finished my yoga practice and realised that I have come to these interrelated body practices - dancing, yoga, improv - probably because I have needed them so much.  They have been literally exercises for the physical but more importantly for the mental aspect.  My practice has gotten me through a lot of challenging and stressful times in my life.

I had to learn patience with my body... and having an older and inflexible body in professional training needed a lot of patience, and perseverance! It was patience with my body that got me to learn patience with myself, and finally patience with other people.  Not just the kind of patience that prevents me from losing it and being nasty to people, but a patience to try and hear others out even when I really don't agree, and understand why.  I still have my temper and my moods of course; they will always be a part of me.  But I do find that I want to bite people's heads off less often.  And I can recover my emotional balance more quickly.

Both in my improv practice and yoga, I am dedicating time to observing and listening.  Not just with eyes and ears, but with touch, smell, awareness of space, time, energy.  Maybe that's why I never watch TV anymore - I prefer to spend time listening to my breath, my time, or other bodies'!

In a way this lesson worked in the reverse to the patience lesson.  It was through other bodies in contact improv that i discovered what it was to listen and to be present.  Not in the combination, not in the corrections, not in my expectations or anticipations, but just here and now.   Realising that this made a huge difference for how I worked as a performer and particularly as an improviser, and that it is also perceptible to other dancers and my audience.

An amazing question that I received recently was "how do I know I exist?" In fact it came incidentally twice, in the two unrelated great workshops that I took in April with Karen Nelson and Joerg Hassmann. (How's that for a sign!) Both Karen and Joerg talked about how other bodies and encounters allow us to discover ourself.  So observing and listening came to me from the outside... and I am now learning to apply it to myself and my body.

In another context completely (group therapy facilitation practice!) I also recently received the idea that we go through cycles of experience but we benefit most when we take the time to integrate them.  I guess this is a moment of integration.  I don't know how long I'll be here, when I might move on or need to retrace my steps.  But for now I have a sense of gratitude for what I am receiving.

It's making me enjoy my practices more and more. Hopefully they also make me a better dancer and artist, if incidentally.  I suspect that in these very small ways, they're also making me a better person.

#whyidance - I had a vague memory that I'd been writing on this title some years back.  Looking through my old entries, I have been doing this even more than I thought!  So I've created a new tag if you want to look back in time with me.

EnricKoan photography 2011.

Contact!

I am home, and in contact! I'm working on two dancing opportunities here and in KL in the next 2 months:




Contact Improv Singapore Community JamsI'll be facilitating a series of contact improv jams in the next two months, starting with 19 May Sunday, 10am-12noon at Frontier Danceland. The jam will start at 10am with a warmup to awaken body and mind. Open contact improv jam until 12noon. All levels welcome. This session will be facilitated by Sze. Random music welcome, please contact sze (bluestocking65@gmail.com) to put your music on the playlist. Suggested donation of $10 for jams - proceeds to our CI Singapore Community Fund and to our hosts. For info on further jams please join our facebook group.

Venue:
Frontier Danceland
BLK M, 90 Goodman Art Center #02-51/52, Singapore, Singapore 439053
View map · Get directions
BLK M, 90 Goodman Art Center #02-51/52, Singapore,
Nearest MRT: Mountbatten. Frontier Danceland's studio is located at the second floor of Block M, Goodman Arts Centre.

Contact Festival Kuala Lumpur

The dancing continues a few hours away at Contact Festival Kuala Lumpur at the garden studio of Rimbun Dahan, from 22-30 June 2013. Yong Wei from Singapore will be leading an underscore practice over the weekend of 22-23 June, where we'll be linking up to the Global Underscore for the first time in Asia!
Followed by a week of workshops by Genevieve Cron (France), David Lim (Malaysia), Vangelis Legakis (Greece/UK), Yu Yen Fang and Yu Xiaochu (Taiwan), with a public presentation on 29 June 2013.

What is a triangle II

My last five days now have been spent in Coventry, immersed in Tuning Scores improvisation work with Karen Nelson.  (a workshop organised by decoda in Coventry)

One of the first few exercises had the initial 12 of us working around a large studio space with our eyes closed - a cornerstone of the sensory heightening in this work - when Karen said "now make a triangle".  What was that?  How would we find that without sight, with so many people, and the confusing immediacy of touch, sound and intuition?  After the exercise ended, Karen said, "Give me a title for what you just did." One dancer volunteered, "what is a triangle?".

The questions continued.  How do you know you are dancing? Can you walk forward, with backwards eyes? How do we know we exist?  We learned to make suggestions to the group as we danced, and worked on listening to the calls and to our senses and our desires and expectations.  Pause. Reverse. Replace. End. Begin.  A multitude of instantaneous decisions and interactions.  So much information around us, in every instant. How do we survive this world?

These five days in, I know my improvising will never be the same again.

There is such a richness in this practice of sensitization and questioning. As individuals we take in snapshots of inspiration from time to time, and live in a world constantly filled with many other people. But in how many of those moments are we actually existing together, in connection? I realized today that this work is one of those pathways that allows us to cultivate the present.  When reaching with intuition and an activation of as many of the senses as we can muster.  Calling out our desires and curiosities to ground our attention and to allow us to enter into each others' perception and experience.  Allowing us to be present in a common reality with ourselves and connected with others - moments otherwise so fleeting and often unacknowledged.

Right now there is nothing better than having no idea what is going to happen next.  "A funeral," said Karen, "for our desires."  It is a work that takes practice - for people like Lisa and Karen, a lifetime.  It is fun and at times playful but it is also exhausting work and a commitment to be alive, to be awake and to be together with other people.  At the workshop, Charlie Morrissey recommended this article by Lisa Nelson on how we look at dance - and how we dance as a consequence.  Before your eyes: Seeds of a dance practice.

What is an end?  I am growing to love how the idea of an "end" is a marker that holds time.  It draws our attention to see a possibility of finite-ness, or the space for new beginnings.  In our lives, we identify things as "end" because that's a test of how much we want to be able to stop time.  Or how much we wish we could force it to continue as it was before. Continue it does, but only in a way that we have no control over.  We can only respond.

For the first time, on the last night that I am here, I am noticing the sound of the train going by. Tomorrow I will be in a new place.

(some little edits from what I posted a day ago.  blogger's license!)

what is a triangle I

This is one of those moments!

I am never going to be the same again.  My dancing and my living has taken me into another place, another phase. I am older, I am changed, I am new.

I could feel the change coming in the last month  in France.  Focus was back on tour. 9 shows from the South-west, to the Ardeche, Lyon and Paris.  Format-wise, little has changed.  On the road rehearsing, eating, sleeping as a trio.  In its shape the show isn't so different from what you might have seen in Avignon or Singapore last year.  But in its execution we are all profoundly different.  A year later, each of the silences has found its sense, the lines their parallel and our words their rhythm. 

The biggest difference for me was that Ole did work some changes into my opening solo, which is now a duet between me dancing and him whipping the wind out of the Kaossilator gadget.  It's been a year that I have been searching for that improv solo, tormenting even at times when we were not performing. I was sure that despite all the work I devoted to it, it was my most forgettable moment on stage and I dreaded it. Then finally, Ole gave me some new ideas the day before we opened in Paris. I wasn't sure when we went out and sat on stage in the fog, but once I started moving that night, I knew that it had been found.  The sense of finally having found what I want to say and digging into the space between me and the audience to hold it.  Each night, it grew.