Working on: Section 1 – The Narrative

In this section, we’re in the living room facing the decorated couch and the lamp. The music for this section is a recording of me talking about merengue and the ways in which it shows up in the bodies of my family. In a corner in front of the lamp, I dance confined to only that square of space. The score of the movement is to start in an abstract movement that is not flashy, just static, making space for the talking. When I mention a family member in the recording and the way they dance, I embody them in my movement. Once I finish that family member’s movement I go back to abstract dancing. I go in and out of these different modes, confined to my square, for the entirety of the recording. 

In this rehearsal, my goal was to clarify what improvising actually entails, the moments where I’m not embodying family. How can I make it more specific? What really is on the outside of the embodied movement of my family members? What’s there? What is it supposed to be? Improvisation is obviously different every time but something about some scores makes it so that every time it is fed back into the body the same theme shows up no matter how many times you do it. Do I need a specific prompt? The goal is for that in-and-out to be as clear as daylight. 

When watching the last time I did it I notice that my body is responding to what I’m saying beyond the parts where I’m supposed to. That “nameless movement” changes too much and I want to try to clarify it in a way that is very specific and recognizable. In order to return to it, I need to remember what it is and so my first experiment will be to have a set of gestures that I can pull from and come back to, a phrase I rebuild over and over again, a language to come back to. 

One of the points of staying confined to a square is that I want the audience to see that I’m dancing but to feel free to look at the space around me. Originally there is a couch next to me and I want there to be space to look at it while I dance. Regardless of that original idea, I thought it was worth a try to freely improvise in the room while still trying to catch the glimpses of family. This brought up for me that it becomes harder to pay attention to the words in order to catch myself talking about family so being confined is not also for the audience but for me because I get lost in it too. 

Then, I tried having no confinement but having a language to the improvising, a set of steps to come back to and this was rather freeing: 

Another thing I discovered is that at the end of the recording when I hear “and then there’s me…”, something intensifies. Although I don’t go back to dancing merengue, whatever it is that I’m in gets intensified. The reason why I don’t just start dancing merengue is that I feel that not only will I be dancing merengue  “my way” eventually in this piece, but I also feel there is really no difference between “me” and every other family member I mentioned. Their ways are in me and what I end up doing is my body’s translation of their movement and I hope that reads.  I also learned that it takes the right clothing and a warm-up to drop into this work. This is my very first rehearsal and so I thought I could just jump in but now I know there’s an arrival that needs to happen before I’m ready to be inside my work. 

I’m not completely sure of which is best, I think it will also become more clear as I learn more about the following sections. Hopefully, I find the right one!

Feedback:

• Continue to tune transitions between family and phrase
  • It works that they’re not cleanly attached to the script
  • It is satisfying when the phrase and the family sections weave/crossfade into each other, more of that
• In the “May” section of expansion, maybe the feet could wake up too. Not change but wake up and serve into that openness.