#intmoddance

Performance reflection from Intermediate Modern Dance

Retrospective Essay

Locating the edge so that I can know where to construct my tightrope

This semester in intermediate modern, I explored the house of my body more than I have ever before in a technique class. I found that my apartment body has many more floors than I anticipated. It has been a fruitful and difficult fall, and the practice of going to class twice a week was both challenging and relieving. By the end of it all, the time and care I gave to this practice is very apparent in my body, the questions I am asking, and the ways in which I am feeling and moving through them.

Much of my exploration in this movement practice during the fall of 2019 has been dependent on my willingness to learn and speak the language of the floor. I have begun a process of understanding my consciousness while dancing and how my thought processes affect my movement. This semester I took my training wheels off, and threw myself around. If I might fall off the edge, I can locate it, and learn to balance upon it. In the last class recording, I was proud to see the most moments yet where I fell off my balance or danced too far over the edge and I lost the ground. I choose to see this as encouraging, it means I’ve been pushing myself towards this goal of being over the edge: I will have to fall over it to know where it is, so I may balance on its ledge.

I began the semester excited to meet and get to know my undercurve. She turned out to be very shy, needing much coaxing. This was a fact I had been generally aware of, but became very apparent as I struggled to get into the ground. While I battled my short achilles tendon, I found new and different ways to find the floor in my practice. I discovered a technique of imagining a few inches of floor space associated with the plane of the ground in either direction, so that going into and coming out of the floor might be a longer process than a simple flat one.

There is a pattern in the ways that I responded to the videos of class time. I am inclined to grasp onto the things I know I would like to do better. It is hard for me to recognize my strengths. My moments of suspension often felt artificial in a way that I wasn’t pleased with. I wondered what the felt difference was between movements that I watched and was proud of, and the ones I was critical of. The juiciness I was feeling didn’t seem to be translating when I watched myself after the fact. I was especially struck by how different my inversions looked in conflict with my felt assumption of how they were appearing. My hips felt like they were so much higher than they actually were, and I again learned that I need to push myself over the edge so I may figure out where it is in my body. What degree do I need to be feeling the dance for it to be perceived by others the way I want it to? This ratio is defined by my relationship to a viewer, which I think is questionable in and of itself.

Much of my end-of-semester musings have revolved around my own presence and awareness while dancing. I have become very interested in the cognition of the dancer. Especially because I have begun to integrate the use of text in my own work, I am curious about the head-voice of the silent dancer. What is being said in one’s head when in motion may deeply affect the kinesthetic decisions they are making. It is a really interesting question to ask, because it is so difficult to measure in practice. How does my consciousness inform my movement? How does the voice in my head dance while I am in motion? Does a change in the tone of my internal monologue affect my resulting motion? What am I actually saying while I’m dancing? Is it words? Could it be understandable to some outside listener? I am continuing to ask these questions now, because I have yet to find an answer that satisfies me.

How is my experience and awareness shaping my ability to ‘dance’? How is it affecting the ways that I translate feeling in my body out into my kinesphere? I have begun to imagine there being two directions in my movement: impulse and decision. There is something magical about following an impulse, but it is a gut reaction and not a thought process. This is unlike a decision, which is actively made, and sometimes preemptive to movement. I am now very centrally aware of the interplay between impulse and decision in my own movement practice, because I think it provides a really interesting structure for me to interrogate. Defining these terms for myself is useful in figuring how to best position myself between the two so I may take from either when necessary.

One of my movement tendencies is to release and rebound, which isn’t necessarily bad; I think it is an important part of my style and practice to be concerned with the weight of gravity on muscle bone and ligament. I hit the hits, but where is the soft follow through? Are there other ways than tone to communicate dedication to follow through? I think my concern with strong breaks might be strengthened by an increased ability to call upon movement on the opposite end of the spectrum, suspension that is careful, toned and precise. How can followed momentum be co-opted by the body and suspended?

Throughout the semester, I continued to wish that my I was bending my knees more. Much of my exploration in this movement practice during the fall of 2019 has been dependent on my willingness to learn and speak the language of the floor. I developed a method of examining what I have named “floor aftermath” in my journey to learning how to be in and with the floor. I have decided that it is important to my practice to be fluent in this language, and as I have learned this semester, that will only be possible through a process of total immersion. What happens when 50% or more of my weight/body is transferred from my feet to other parts of my body? I have been processing how I explore the way the floor is reaching up to me as I am reaching down to it.