Stream of consciousness and historical landscapes - Choreographic Lab Investigation

Lab Definition: This lab was a meditation-led choreographic investigation where we loosed at the deeper meaning of “bags” as historical landmarks and vessels to address deeper emotion attached to specific points in time. This meditation was inspired by Lisa Cullen’s definition of ‘stream of consciousness’ and guided visualization improvisation meditation. This is an alternative process of channelling creative thoughts and emotions. This was also inspired by the idea of bags having an ancestral/historical impact/embodiment with the human body.

Description:

· I began the session with a meditation. I instructed the class to lie on their backs with their eyes closed and began to guide them into a relaxed state. I asked them to pinpoint a place in time or history. This could be personal history, a historical period, whatever they felt was right for them. I then asked them to begin building a landscape of this and to consider, where were they? What does it look like? What did it feel like? Who was with them, who were they, did they know them? Etc. Once I felt that they had a sense of the landscape, I prompted them to begin slowly moving their body on the floor (eyes still closed), then building up on speed, level, and movement before coming back to the beginning position.

· Halle and I then asked the dancers to begin automatic writing/stream of consciousness for 3 minutes, about their meditation, landscape, and movement. Halle then began to prompt them to think about bags. She asked them to think of their bags as holding an emotion or feeling that they had come across during the meditation. It could be a tangible bag, or abstract. They were asked to consider whether the bag was something they would like to throw away or keep. We both tried to keep things vague and asked them to write down these new considerations about their idea of a ‘bag’ and what it could represent.

· I then proceeded to hand out rubbish bags and we asked the dancers to create a short phrase of movement using these bags, and considering what they had written down and the thoughts, feelings and emotions brought up by the idea of bags. We gave them 5 minutes to create this phrase and then share their results. They were told that they could use the bags in any way they liked (They could decide to use it or not or manipulate it, etc.).

· I did not have any notable feelings during the process as I was an observer. However, I was intrigued by the participants reactions to the lab. Some really delved deep into their meditation and let things occur naturally, where as others (mainly those with more strict or traditional training backgrounds/those who had not experienced this way of working before) were more concerned about what I wanted/was looking for and the end result. I would like to explore these methodologies further and investigate the kinds of choreographic works that I could create.

· I feel that some of the dancers would not allow themselves to relax as they were concerned about the aesthetics of their movement as opposed to others, however they did seem to relax and interrogate more when the prompt of historical landscapes came into question.

Evaluation:

· What worked: There was meditative time to set the themes and questions of the lab without the pressure to create something substantial or specific. The music used throughout the meditation seemed to relax the dancers.

· What didn’t work: The lab was too short and needed more time to connect through the meditation to explore the landscapes more thoroughly as well as to develop on the choreographic exploration. Some dancers were confused over the instructions due to them being more open and interrogative questions, than strict rules and boundaries.

Analysis:

· The dancers were able to pinpoint and connect with a specific moment in history and connect meaningful connections within the meditation. When given time to reflect on these concepts, the dancers began to form questions and areas of interest about this. These could be used and interrogated throughout the choreographic process.

· After forming these connections, the stream of consciousness/automatic writing allowed the dancers to reflect on the landscape that they had created for themselves. Only after this did we incorporate the concept of ‘bags’. This concept was to identify strong emotions attached to these historical landscapes and utilize the ‘bag’ to analyse and interact with those emotions through movement.

Conclusion:

· This research is not finished. The depth of emotionality needs to be further explored and established. The historical landscape and emotionality separated, as opposed to merging as originally intended. I would like to explore ways of merging and separating the two concepts and how this impact movement and creativity within a choreographic process.

Action Plan:

· In future labs, I would like to further explore the stream of consciousness and its effect on movement and individual choreographic practice as well as my own. I would also like to continue the use of props as it gives physicality to the inner explorations established at the beginning of the lab. I would also like to play with open instructions as well as rules and boundaries and how this changes the movement and creations of choreography.

· I would also like to have more than 25 minutes, to further explore connectivity and its output.

Isabella Ng - Choreographic Data