Rehearsal 2: grieving woman photo

In our second rehearsal, we completed our cast with a third dancer. I briefly introduced the SAM dimensional analysis idea and described how we will draw from both categorical and dimensional theories to inform our adjustments of our movement in the process of illustrating cues for the most basic emotions. I described it as "sliders" along different dimensions of movement quality, and my goal is to determine which dimensions used to what degrees and in what combinations produce the strongest effects. There are lots of possibilities...!

I also began to explain the problem of whether to try to induce what I'll call primary (or first-hand) emotions such as sadness for an unfortunate event in your life, or secondary (or empathetic) responses, such as how I may be saddened by your sadness. I have yet to determine whether it is more effective to, for example, seek to induce fear by actually intimidating the audience, or by demonstrating fear in the movements in hopes of audience identification with the dancers. I could also seek to have them identify with one dancer who is responding to the other two versus identifying with the entire cast at once.


While the IAPS and other databases are out of commission until October (very unfortunate given this semester's showcase timing, but we can work around this), I searched online for other images which fit the short descriptions of the IAPS photos. I considered some "mutilation" images but am not ready to process those in rehearsal yet (given that they're probably a strong part of the need for a release form to view the images, I hesitate to give them to my cast to soon, or at all) ... so today we worked with an image of a grieving woman which could easily have been in the collection.


Before beginning to move, I mentioned Humbert deSuperville's ideas about people's unconditioned reactions to shapes and colors as having emotional significance, so that the down-and-out slopes of this woman's face correlate aesthetically with the sadness that she is expressing. I also noted the tension which I observed and at one point asked that they consider that in their movement. We didn't write out our responses this time, but began moving right away, using the same phrase I taught in the last rehearsal. They quickly moved on to fresh improvisation which really highlighted each dancer's own take on grief, and with this, I realized the richness which each of the three dancers brings to this project. Their three different styles working alongside and with each other works well with my desire to approach this process as creating something that addresses a universal element with roots in individual input, much as averaged data comes out of thousands of single participants, and as an overall message in a dance still has a personal effect that varies between viewers.

Watching them move, I became very interested in their use of negative space, which I at one point prompted them to focus more on that led to some movements I'll hope to use later; to me, this calls to mind the absence of the grief object. Later, movements of grasping for something not present, tension surrounding and through the body, and fixation of one body part on a point stood out to me. Each of the dancers seemed to have one of these qualities that struck me most strongly, and I asked each dancer to focus on what I had noticed in them, which gave diverse and both individually and collectively stronger-feeling results. A sense of precariousness also came into play with all of them at some point, and that is something I think may relate well with grief- as if the emotion were at a tipping point to overwhelming expression at the slightest nudge. And at some points sudden shooting movements our of the tension show pangs of emotion.


At one point I also mentioned the paradox of movement and stillness in grief: that the individual fixates on the object of grief while the world keeps moving, and they also have externally-unseen but internally-overwhelming emotional movements. I found a great article on a series of photos which illustrate this and other elements of grief. The series is called "a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes" by Rosemary Laing, and partway through improvisation I showed the expressive images from the article to my dancers. (I still need to decide about use of facial expressions- that'll come later when we have some other movements set, to see what effects facial options have.) The photo links to the article which has a great analysis of the series. In watching videos of today's work, I think it would be an useful exercise to have one dancer fixed on the spot while others move around the space surrounding her, trying out different distances to see if this paradoxical feeling can be found.


At the close of today's rehearsal, I asked for feedback from the dancers, and I was given an important reminder of the need for humanity behind what has become objective and academic for me during the summer research phase of this project. According to a request from one dancer -whose pensive style was part of why I asked her to work with me- I will make upcoming stimuli available to them in order to allow the dancers time to process and personally relate to the material that I'm asking them to embody. While I have ideas of in some ways imitating the experience of being an IAPS study participant for the dance audience, that does not mean that the dancers need to have that limited brief exposure. (And with a maximum of 8 minutes to present a few basic emotions at the upcoming Fall BFA showcase, exposure time will be short enough. We'll see how condensed we can make this!) I want to respect and take advantage of each of these dancers' unique ways of processing the material and working in dance; I'll maintain the research end of things, but they are the ones who I am looking to to embody and expand my ideas which I'll pare down to our eventual final work, so I'll look forward to how this change in our process can enrich things.

Finally, in reviewing videos of our rehearsals so far, I'm hoping to start improving how I lead improvisation, to make my prompts less general and more helpful. That will also come as we work together more, I hope. We're looking to continue practicing an hour and a half twice a week, once we find regular studio space!

Rehearsal 1: snake and homeless images

We've had two rehearsals so far, and it's been an interesting experience for me. I appreciate the three dancers who've joined me, and while a good part of our time so far has been spent explaining the gist of the project and subject matter, and ennumerating the many choreographic choices I'll have to make, we spent some good time looking at a few emotional images, discussing, and improvising. These images so far have been presented during rehearsal, so the dancers had little time to process them, but I think that we've addressed certain elements for each that will contribute to my first goal of generating ideas from which we will select later to focus on. At the first rehearsal, there were two dancers.

First, we discussed the image below. Personally, I am struck by certain aesthetic aspects of the photograph (so my input is an interpretation of an interpretation- which will continue to happen through this kind of work). The body of the snake rises out of darkness, creating contrast; there is forward movement, aggression, a primacy of action over foresight (with the mouth larger than the eye); and a sense of falling in (the mouth) vs. striking out, and round/smoothness vs. sharpness (curved fangs). Discussion with another dancer also brought up how snakes are unpredictable (including when we can't remember the "rules" of them, such as which are poisonous), and they are deceptive (I think even their appearance deceives: they aren't slimy though they look so). He also felt that they are vindictive without reason, which reminds me how we give human characteristics out so easily (which may make for more emotional experiences in some cases), and reminded me of the relationship between anger and fear, which will be better explored later I think. My dancers' reponses included phrases like "danger, open, escape response" and "'ahhh!' fear, scary, big, killer, escape; from the snake's perspective: attack, anger." From these responses, I asked the two dancers to improvise with an original phrase I taught them and the ideas of being like the snake as structures (with Massive Attack's "Antistar" playing softly). As I lead more improvisation, I hope to improve at clarifying instructions at the start- but as we went along, I requested more aggression, and became interested in the contrast of pulsating waiting and sudden larger movements which as I watched I felt characterized a snake. I requested more aggression directed towards me, and I think a stronger sense of dominance might help to inspire a more fear-like reaction in the viewer. Finally for this image, a request for "suddenness" yielded some effective movements that I'll look at for later use.

The other image that we looked at in the first rehearsal was of a "hobo", according to the IAPS descriptions (the actual image is not shown here to avoid copyright problems, but here is a somewhat similar image). The man in the actual picture is seated in a dark place and has a dirty face in such a way that he looks almost skeletal, he is drinking from a yellow glass bottle, and within the dark image, next to him are highlighted a loaf of bread and two more bottles on a piece of cloth. The drink and food remind me of the idea of gluttony, which can be disgusting or repulsive. When I look at the image, textures are very evident to me, in the black grease on his face, the roughness of the wall and brick behind him, and the cloth and crumbs net to him. I related this noticeable variety of "dirty" textures to how people respond to disgust. In a course on social cognition, I learned that people de-humanize the homeless to the point that we tend to think of them as having less human characteristics than dogs (which I believe shows up in brain scans- I need to find the research to reference). We also learned that people relate moral/mental dirtiness to physical dirtiness, so that when people who are "disgusted" by an idea are allowed to literally wash their hands, they feel better afterwards (also will look up that article to reference). The dancers noticed the dark, gruesome colors of the IAPS image, and also wrote "thirst, dark, cold, age/hunger in the defined cheekbone, bright hand sticks out" and "dark, chill, hydrate, drunk, escape (through drunkenness), trapped on the streets, lost, going anywhere?" We wondered what happened to him- but aside from re-humanizing him (and losing the sense of being at least somewhat initially repulsed that I hoped to look into at the time), I wanted to maintain the jerk-reaction urge to distance ourselves from the stimulus. For improvisation on this image, I particularly asked to see the texture that struck me in the photo, and the sense of the thickness of space that they created felt satisfying to me. One dancer pulled her hood over her head and faced upstage, which was an interesting way to remove herself from seeming fully human. Writhing, rubbing, sliding, crouching, and self-manipulation (one limb moving another) all appeared during this section of the improvisation. Next, I asked for them to show me something "repulsive" so as to cause me to feel disgust. The movements in response to this included reference to sexual exploitation which was a unique take on the prompt that led to some interesting movements, and also low-to-the-ground crawling/writhing.