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!