Tuesday, September 28, 2010

[Insert title here]

I was thinking about the course that laughter follows in trying to understand why and when things happen to whom in this piece to clarify that... Here's what I got:

1. social (antecedent)
2. next stage is a tie, between the mind and the body (depends on your theory of emotion)
3. social (communication, contagion)


...So here emotion begins and ends socially, bridging people on both ends. And in-between, it bridges the bio-psycho-social elements of the individual all at once. Emotion ties us together as an individual and with others in a natural, bidirectional process of experience and communication.

That's where my title idea of "Bridges" comes from. I was thinking, maybe "Affect: Bridge I" and "Affect: Bridge II" etc. to distinguish the sections. Or maybe something stemming from the idea of "contagion." Oh, this struggle with titles- it seems unimportant until I have paperwork and need to identify the work!

Thoughts since Unshowing #2

These days we're dancing to ragtime music (Bolling's Mississippi Rag), with movements inspired by little Scottish girls doing handclap games on Youtube, childhood toys like Hungry Hungry Hippos, a few remaining apple seeds, some residual funny faces, ANEW words made into a movement phrase, and the laughter of people we enjoy. We seem to have found the genuine humor in the piece, and now it may be time to select portions to keep and return to the original structure of the first unshowing (mask, blank-face, laughter).

Verbal feedback from the Unshowing yesterday follow:
-stirring (ANEW "snuggle") stood out to one person
-dancer about to pee pants with laughter
-clap movements stood out, visually and audibly rhythmic, depth and intricacy, connection between the dancers
-hungry hungry hippos at the end
-goofiness, fun and playful, entertaining, inspired real laughter in audience, interesting
-believable, virus (contagious)

on setting:
-sleepovers were referenced by many
-silent movie referenced by several because of the music
-many others asked about setting- and this I will work on.

on characters:
-female "Three Stooges"
-childhood, young/young at heart?
-they saw a reason for the laughter, laughing at/with each other/something else
-there were questions as to the relationships between the dancers that I need to continue to address: who's who? what's going on when one breaks away from the group? the clear dynamic gets muddled when not all moving together (as in, not all "laughing" or doing phrase at once)

on changes from first Unshowing (two weeks ago):
-missed mystery of first structure, it was engaging and odd to see laughter without sound (I need to consider clarity vs. engaged confusion)
-originally an organic sense in the laughter-only movements
-original structure gives deeper context than delving into only one on standing alone (I'm realizing that I don't want to wait to explore the other side of this or wait to present them together. I'd like to do a parallel process with another section, and begin juxtaposing them as I previously thought to do.)
-no moments remain when all are "laughing"
-vocal vs. not vocal (I still need to decide on this... I'm leaning towards muting it after we get a full understanding of complete embodiment with sound first.)
-problem, challenge of face/body separation (I want to take this one on to return to the original structure with the experience of what we've become genuine in now. no more mime comments!)

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Working Title Idea

It's funny how you're not saying things out loud to me.

A little wordy, but just try it on for size... That phrase came along ot me in a bizzare way. Via my coat pocket specifically, on a long folded shred of paper towel and in my handwriting. But I had no memory of how it got there! It was the oddest feeling, before I recognized my handwriting, trying to figure out WHEN it was from, and WHO wrote that to me and why... or when I did recognize it, who I wrote it for, why it was in my pocket and not theirs, and again, WHY was it written? Then I decided I don't really want to know those answers! (Unfortunately, new clues have told me it came from a paper towel at home. I hope not to recall more than this.)

I immediately took the urge to take that little slip of paper seriously, maybe because of the mood I was in when I found it and the personal little crisis that I'm relating it to based on that... but I think it can be applied here. In this dance, we won't be explicit- I imagine we're going to work ourselves to communicating and sharing emotions in a roundabout and clearly nonverbal way. I didn't find amusement in the phrase "it's funny" the first time I read it, instead my stomach dropped as I pressed on to finish the first reading. As I looked at it more, it gathered more dimensions as I hope this dance will. I realized I may have actually been amused when writing it. But there's also a sense of exclusion that touches me. Like the first showing of this piece, there is some confusion as to what it all means, what the feelings behind this are, how it relates to us. Maybe it's silly to give it that kind of weight, but who's to deny something that seems to fit, when something that somehow fits is just what I could use. It feels relevant to my personal processes that relate to the subject of this dance on emotions.

I might decide against it later, but for now, I'm going to see how I like the fit.

IADS Wind Remix

I got a disk with the IAPS and IADS on them today, and I've been having fun beginning to play with editing the sounds! This is just the beginning. I can't quite get the file to post, so that's a technical difficulty I'll need to work out. This may serve as a soundtrack to the pieces, or it could just be inspiration.

Either way, it adds more layers. I'll do a separate post on our first open showing this past Monday and some of my thoughts on the feedback. But after seeing the beginning work performed and the strange power it had, I'm interested in bringing more layers into the piece. As Neta said, let's "see how we can mess it up more." I'd like to look into drawing on more areas of the brain and human experience to add depth to the piece. Rather than being a pared-down version of the stimuli (which everybody would quickly get bored with) let's see how many relevant elements can contribute to what I imagine can be an oddly touching emotional experience pushing itself on the viewers from as many angles as possible.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Communication as meaning-creating

"From a transactional perspective, human communicating is a process of meaning-creating rather than idea- or message-sending. When you're communicating, you're not transmitting your ideas to others but evoking their own ideas or meanings."
-John Stewart in "Listening"

I like this quote because it is as relevant to dance as it is to verbal communication. One of the premises of this dance project is that our dance communications call to the mind of the receiver associations to which they attach meaning, just as our verbal language does, and much like the CSEA stimulus collections do.

Other sources influencing me in this area lately include a New York Times article on the book "Through the Language Glass," this other Times article on how language affects our thinking, and studying for my Listening class (joy).

Rehearsal 4: laughing club and apple seeds

Today's rehearsal was a bit more selective in what we worked with as we focused on the first pleasant emotion we've worked with!

First, we watched videos of people laughing to introduce the idea of that contagion and the social nature of it. Then we did a little Laughter Yoga as a silly warm-up (this is a sample). With this we explored the boundaries of faked and real laughter and how the first can become the second when in a social situation and given the opportunity. We reconsidered the original phrase with the laughter playlist linked above as our soundtrack, and discovered how some of the moves can fit with some of the unusual laughs heard on it.

Moving from this, we worked with some improvisation around the original phrase, and gradually this turned into a game based off of one of the moves which I describe as "dropping apple seeds." Soon enough, the dancers were tossing seeds into each other's mouths, flinging them at each other, and some creative hiding places to avoid seed-theifs. All of this, combined with some of the laughter-movements from earlier became a free-for-all game. For the next rehearsal, I've asked the dancers to each create a bit of movement for a laugh with which they are familiar and we'll see what comes of it next week.


In the attempt to portray emotions and through all the insight from research, I've in some ways lost track of them. Today's rehearsal, particularly with its upbeat topic and somehow freeing degree of focus on making fun allows me to give myself permission to focus on only one emotion for now. The showcase is in October, and my project deadline is in the spring. To fully investigate the emotions to the degree I can imagine would be to make a career out of this project beyond that time frame- however, I hope to have grad school next year. To get ready for the informal showing on Monday evening, for that afternoon's rehearsal, I'd like to work on some sort of structure in which to present what we created today. And for the showcase, I'll plan to show only one, maybe two emotions. But we'll get to the second one when I'm satisfied with the first well enough, so there.


...Now, in the spirit of silliness, enjoy one more video and your weekend!

Rehearsal 3: exhale, jittery, un-focus(ed)

In this rehearsal we experimented with different elements placed on the same movement phrase we've been working with. I first recalled some experimentation I did on my own with the ideas of "give/get/remove/escape" where I found inhales and exhales had an interesting relationship to the associated gestures (mentioned in a previous post). At another point in rehearsal I also chose to look at words that the SAM assessment associates with the concept of "excited": stimulated, jittery, wide-awake, aroused. With these ideas of excited and exhaling as manipulations, we returned to our phrase.

Again, each dancer found her own way to interpret this as we manipulated breathing first, working with focus on the exhales. Differences in the origin of the breath (lungs or stomach) and changes like segmented breaths, pursed lips, or an open mouth were interesting variations. Then we also considered heart rate, so we ran a lap of the dance building and returned to work with the phrase some more. We found that our breathing changed significantly after running, so that deeper "HAA" exhales were easier. It was a challenge to make the movement work with the naturally segmented breath rather then the usual other way around. We also discovered an interesting shift in the sense of release when the dancers were still focused on catching their breath. It was as if they were more free because their bodies were worked up, or they were distracted by the breathing to be freer in the movement. When I introduced the SAM description of excitement, each dancer naturally tended towards a different point along the scale of valence, one positive, one neutral, and one negatively interpreting the idea of excitement. Continuing this part of rehearsal and going off of their natural valences, we also experimented with focus: the dancers described an internal focus as feeling naturally faster, and I need to look again at video in which the dancers tried to maintain a forward focus at the audience to see if any worthwhile effect is found.

You can see above the flighty paths I'm following in leading rehearsals, and I'm realizing with the difficulties of this that I'm resisting the fact that I simply don't have the time to explore in a worthwhile way even a small fraction of the possible "variables" I'd like to have the time to look at. It's just like any psychology experiment- a reasonable researcher would limit the variables and attempt to control for the rest. In this case, control is neither quite possible, nor frankly desirable. But I can still limit my manipulations to focus and have more clear understanding of what I will look at. As we go along, my dancers' patience and feedback helps me to learn ways to focus and better delve into material, and I'll keep at it until we get it right and enjoy doing it!