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.