Continuing from
Introduction …
For this paper, I would
like to present a report of this process.
In order to do this, I have
divided my process into four separate methods of research / development:
1.
To define
& develop my own distinctive body-based exercises (Body Tuning)
2.
To conduct
workshops for the purposes of:
a)
Receiving
critical feedback on my Body Tuning exercises
b)
Developing
Creative Response exercises
c)
Exploring
methods of creating New Work
3.
To research
methods of others
a)
Research other
body-based performance methods
b)
Conduct an
interview survey of contemporary performance art teachers
4.
To use this
information to develop a well-rounded performance art pedagogy
1. Body Tuning (BT)
To explore methods of
preparing the body as a versatile medium for art
by developing exercises
that engage in relationship with fundamental concepts of self, body, time,
space, gravity, surface, form, body sound and motion.
Using the analogy of
“tuning” a musical instrument or an engine in order for it to function smoothly
and efficiently, I am developing a series of physical preparation exercises. It
is my philosophy that one cannot really “invent” movement, only discover and
utilize what is already inherent in the body for a specific purpose. Each of
these exercises isolates one specific movement concept for in depth exploration
and creative development.
Vibration
The use of vibration and
shaking releases tension from the body – as well as energizing and preparing
the body for further action. It also embodies the idea of energizing the space
surrounding the body – which gives a relationship with space that creates an
“energy field” around the mover, in turn feeding back energy into the body.
Spirals
This exercise isolates
each joint in turn with a small spiraling action and gradually builds up to
realize it’s full range of motion with an emphasis on visualizing “expansion”,
“space” and “openness” inside the joint. The action of going through a joint’s
full range of motion creates circular gestures in space. If one could see the
air, it might look like flowing water with eddies and whirlpools resulting from
these gestures. This imagery is continued in creative play.
Floor massage/Cat Stretch
A combined exercise
beginning with the weight of the body released or “melted” into the floor. The
desired movement quality is one of fluidity – like liquid being poured. From
this emerges a cat-like elongation of the body that presses into a stretch and
then melts back into liquid again, luxuriating in the movement as a sensual
experience.
Breath
In this exercise, the
breath is the sole motivating factor of all motion that occurs. The conscious
use of breath facilitates organic movement responses in the body. This
connection with the breath also develops a heightened sense of plasticity in the
resulting gestures and forms. This exercise also seeks to develop a sense of
full expansion of the body in space, as well as experiencing the opposite
extreme of emptiness, deflation and release.
Transfer of Weight
This exercise is an
intense exploration of the body’s weight in relation to gravity and a
heightened awareness of the nuances of exactly where in the body weight is
being supported. There is an emphasis on subtle shifts that occur inside the
body in order to maintain balance and equilibrium – one that I find akin to
structural ideas of “tensegrity”. Transfer of weight is also the key factor in
locomotion – allowing a body to travel in space via its relationship with
gravity.
Definition
This exercise serves to
guide the individual away from a “self-conscious” cognizance of the shape of
the self-body and into a more objective sense of their presence as a sculptural
form in space. This allows a full ego-less embrace of the potential power in
the raw material of the human form alone – before any action has even taken
place. It enforces a sense of
defining ones edges, the surface tension separating matter from “ma” (Japanese
word to summarize the concept of the in-between).
Shape
(1. Rounded 2. Straight 3.
Twisted)
The goals of this exercise
are to isolate the purist possible formats for the concept of shape in the body
and to work with each one individually within its limitations to discover all
the possibilities it will allow a given body. This works in conjunction with
the resulting shaping of negative space.
2. Workshops
I have been conducting a
series of workshop sessions with a variety of community groups. Among them are;
a contemporary dance company, a group of Butoh dancers, art students and a
group of mixed backgrounds, ages and ability levels.
The purpose of these
sessions has been to receive critical feedback on my Body Tuning exercises, to
explore ideas for Creative Response exercises and to put into play ideas for
the artistic development and creation of New Work.
So far, the responses have
been incredibly encouraging.
a) Critical Feedback on Body Tuning
Most participants concur
on their experiences with the Body Tuning exercises and are making the
discoveries I am leading them towards.
Something that seems to be
similar in each individual’s report is the fact that they are having an inner
dialogue about the process. The fact that these exercises give a defined enough
concept and also enough space for that dialogue to occur is encouraging to me
in itself.
There have been useful
suggestions for how I might guide and instruct more clearly and less
ambiguously in some instances and also for possibilities of expanding the
exercises creatively.
Other BT exercises
explored during the workshop sessions were:
Quality of Motion
My intention with this
exercise is to explore a movement quality in it’s most pure and concise form.
In the workshop we isolated the contrasting qualities of Percussive and then
Sustained movement.
Body Soundz
I am gradually developing
a body of “Body Soundz” exercises to explore sound that can be created by the
body alone – as with my current movement explorations, I am trying to
specifically isolate the most basic sound concepts in the body and address them
individually in their purest form.
b) Creative Response (CR)
To use creative response,
play and interaction for engagement in relationship with “other” in response to
such entities as: sound, image, text, environment, object, color, smell, taste,
texture, concept, narrative, technology, person and identity.
Below are examples of
Creative Response exercises developed in the workshop sessions.
Call & Response
Played in partners to
encourage intent “listening” (in both an aural and visual sense) to the call
and a resulting spontaneous movement and / or sound response.
Finding The Essence
Based on a Stanislavski
theatre exercise for character development, questions are posed to assist in
providing vivid metaphorical imagery. In this workshop, it was used like a
party game with participants posing questions about each other.
Creative Synesthesia
A group game to explore
the effect of sensory stimuli on creating a performative action. In this
workshop, the action response choices were Motion, Sound and Language. The
qualities being responded to were those of: shape, color, sound, texture,
smell, taste, word and association (meaning a literal association with
function) of a number of objects.
Abstracting Adverbs
This is a modification of
the “Acting Adverbs” game – also known as “In the Manner of the Word”. In the workshop
we approached this in two different ways – as an individual exercise and also
as a group game, experimenting with a variety of structures.
Movement Telepathy
Derived from an
established movement theatre partnering exercise of “Mirroring”,
with the goal of the
partners coming to a point of “fusion leadership” – where they are both moving
together in mirror-image movement telepathy.
Being able to work on
ideas for Creative Response exercises in this synergetic setting has been
extremely valuable, as it has given me an opportunity to really experiment and
try out new material and discover the real-live responses of other human beings
to these ideas! The participants have been very helpful and accommodating in
assisting with functional structures for these exercises so that the concepts
can be explored interactively. Some of this process has been a matter of
strategy, rather like setting rules for a game.
c) New Work (NW)
Assignments with a view to
developing a performance piece.
Place
In the workshops this assignment was developed in three
stages, guiding the performer through a process of creative responses to
sensory stimuli associated with a specific environment. These actions were
assembled into a time-line and presented as a short piece.
3. Research methods of others
a) Body-based performance methods
The main thrust of my
current research has been to look at other body-based methods of approaching
performance pedagogy. This research has been conducted by reading books and
articles and viewing videos with the intention of identifying similarities and
differences to my own developing pedagogy and making discoveries that can
inspire the furthering of my work.
I have chosen three
methodologies to include in this report based on how much they resonate with my
own ideas and also how much information I was able to find.
“Exercises For Rebel
Artists: Radical Performance Pedagogy”
Well
this seemed like a good place to start!
Guillermo
Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes (of La Pocha Nostra) did not disappoint me,
they are rebel and radical indeed! The purpose of the book is to guide the
reader through their pedagogy step by step, with enough information and clarity
for the reader to conduct the exercises for themselves. I see connections in
their work to Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed”, however even though
their artistic, social and political choices are so radical and provocative,
their pedagogy is one that does not necessarily dictate their political
platform or aesthetic results, but allows the individual to develop their own
artistic choices.
I
found many similarities in their pedagogy to mine – including their approach to
the body as “raw material” for making art. Also in their use of objects as
inspiration for creative response. I
feel I could very easily incorporate many of these exercises into my pedagogy.
Guillermo Gomez-Pena says
of his approach to creating “…. always in
response to the moment, with a sense of urgency.”
Of his pedagogical vision
he states “ … the classroom … would become
a temporary space of utopian possibilities” and “… a nerve center for progressive thought and action.”
His colleague Sara Jane
Bailes states, “The body is a way of
thinking, and intellectual work can be a creative practice.”
I agree strongly that the
body is a way of thinking. There is a process that occurs in the body through
focused movement that also causes neurological changes in the brain. I believe
that this opens up possibilities of new thoughts and ideas in many capacities.
“Viewpoints”
I began to read about Anne
Bogart’s work with Viewpoints and Composition as a result of investigating
Tadaki Suzuki’s movement method for actors (which I had found to be
incompatible with my own, as I felt there was not enough space for exploration
and discovery.)
Immediately I felt like I
was hearing my own creative language!
I followed the thread back
to post-modern dance choreographer Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints or SSTEMS of
Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement and Story.
Bogart’s development of
this system in collaboration with director Tina Landau includes Nine Viewpoints
of Time and Space:
Time – Tempo, Duration,
Kinesthetic Response, Repetition.
Space – Shape, Gesture,
Architecture, Spatial Relationship, Topography.
Within these categories
there are also sub-categories – for example, within Architecture are the
subjects of Texture, Colour, Light and Sound.
Bogart and Landau have
been examining vocal sounds with this type of deconstructive method as well –
using categories of Pitch, Dynamic, Acceleration/Deceleration, Silence and
Timbre.
All of this, plus their
compositional concepts of using “ingredients” (objects, textures, colours,
sounds, actions) and also of borrowing approaches and terminology from music
and film composition is very familiar to me and the way I work.
Like “Exercises For Rebel
Artists”, “Viewpoints” is an instructional guide for the reader to put into
practice. I feel I can easily integrate elements of this method into my
pedagogy, as much of it is already there.
“ … it is impossible to say where these ideas
actually originated, because they are timeless and belong to the natural
principles of movement, time and space.” – Anne Bogart.
Butoh
Since it’s beginnings in
Japan as an expressionist reaction to World War Two and its aftermath (with
connections to German Expressionism through choreographer Mary Wigman), this
dance form has branched out into a variety of modern hybrids. However, I still
see a link to its original roots through the pedagogical approach of any
Butoh-based movement classes I have participated in or heard descriptions of.
What is most distinctive
in Butoh methodology is the use of imagery. And although much of the imagery is
nature-based, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s pretty! Butoh fully confronts
and embraces the horrific and grotesque or perverse as well as the exquisitely
beautiful or delicate – it is an art of violent extremes. It grapples with
archetypes of human, animal, nature and spirit – forces seen and unseen.
Tatsumi Hijikata is
recognized as “The Godfather” of Butoh. (To me his physical countenance bears
resemblance to Albrecht Durer’s Christ.) Kazuo Ohno was also a leading pioneer
of the movement and any current Butoh pedagogy holds a direct lineage to the
methods of these two artists. Very early on, the body-based methods of Michizo
Noguchi with his “Noguchi Taiso” (or Noguchi Gymnastics) were absorbed into
Butoh training due to their image-based approach to the body.
Although I would not
necessarily consider my own work and pedagogy as “Butoh-based”, it is certainly
the practice that most resonates with me in its approach to the self as medium
for art. Here, I use the word “self” to describe the complete entity of
body-mind-spirit that Butoh demands the commitment of. It is here that I find
the underlying themes in my work of Transformation, Metamorphosis and
Transcendence are called into play, as they are inherent in the Butoh
philosophy itself. It is here that my desire as an artist to feel the
“voluptuous surrender” of the self into something greater than the self – yet
would not exist without the self – is satisfied.
My main avenues of current
research are through recent articles – some by practitioners I know within the
Butoh community. Zack Fuller worked extensively with Min Tanaka, who danced
with Hijikata before founding his community “Body Weather Farm”, where people
from all walks of life could come and participate in his movement workshops and
farm the land. Fuller has written about his experiences with Tanaka in his
essay “Seeds of an anti-hierarchic ideal:
summer training at Body Weather Farm”.
Tanya Calamoneri is a
dancer, choreographer and teacher who has trained intensively under the direct
Hijikata lineage. I am currently reading her PhD dissertation entitled “Becoming Nothing to Become Something:
Methods of Performer Training in Hijikata Tatsumi’s Buto Dance”. Calamoneri
also compiled a text guide of “Butoh
transformation exercises” for
Scene magazine – which I have been referring to.
Another article of great
interest to me is an interview for the Japan Foundation with Akaji Maro, dancer
with Hijikata and founder of DaiRakudakan. He speaks about his approach to the
body in response to guided imagery, “… I
will use any words as long as they get the body to move. But that doesn’t mean
that the final movement is an embodiment of the words. The meaning lies
somewhere else. The body drinks in the words and they completely dissolve
there, leaving only the state of the body, with its movements …”
Of his introduction to
Noguchi Gymnastics, he says “It showed me
a completely new image of gymnastics as something flexible and formless rather
than a set of strict movements and forms, and that the body was also something
flexible and formless.”
Of responding to imagery
in Hijikata’s pedagogy, Calamoneri states, “
… the images act as a gateway to an experience, which can then be interpreted
and shaped by each individual dancer.” She quotes Hijikata as saying “… my body trains itself as a matter of
course … when you come in touch with such things (these extreme nature images
and experiences) something is naturally forced out of your body.”
According to Fuller,
Tanaka is so anti-hierarchy and anti-structure that he does not want to be
regarded as a “teacher” or as having a “method” or even his dance form being recognized
as Butoh. He describes Body Weather as “
… an ideology that informs training dance and daily life.” and that Tanaka “ … envisions the body as a force of nature:
ever-changing, omni-centred, and completely open to external stimuli.”
b) Interview survey
My other avenue of
research has been to conduct a survey on contemporary teachers of performance
art. (As of March 15, I am compiling the results of this survey and will
include them in the final paper.)
Other research has been
for the purpose of gaining knowledge and insights on pedagogy as a practice and
the structures and systems of teaching.
4. Performance Art Pedagogy
How does this all come
together to produce a well-rounded, comprehensive pedagogy for performance art?
I propose that in order to
use the self to create art, one must address the self as medium. Therefore, in
order to prepare this medium for optimum use in creation, the body and mind
need to be “tuned” – alert, responsive and open to possibility.
I believe that these
physical and creative exercises I am compiling and developing help to provide a
universal, unbiased substructure for the body and the imagination from which to
explore, discover and create.
Add Definition, History
& Context – to research the history of performance art in order to gain an
understanding of the platform it provides.
Add Production
(presentation of work) – to gain a working knowledge of the procedures involved
in making a piece, producing an event and presenting to an audience.
And so, I present a syllabus
outline that includes all of these elements:
Comprehensive
Objectives and Outcomes
* For students to
understand the concepts that define Performance Art, its origins and its
distinctive role in contemporary art.
* To investigate
its potential for modes of expression, statement, aesthetics and presentation
that are uniquely unpredictable, challenging, provocative and exciting.
* For students
not to feel alienated by esoteric performance, but to be enabled to develop
their own critical voice with which to comment on their experiences.
* For students to
be enabled to confidently develop Self as performer/medium, creator/author with
freedom from self-conscious inhibitions.
* For students to
develop their own distinctive creative voice with which to pursue their work.
Specific
Goals and Objectives
Definition,
History & Context
* To research and
analyze definitions of performance art – with the understanding that this is an
evolving art form to be continuously re-defined.
* To introduce
key historic movements in performance art, as well as individual artists and
groups throughout the twentieth century.
And to regard the
political, social and philosophical issues surrounding the creation of
performance art in each era.
* To look at
recent work in contemporary performance art, discuss how it fits into historic
context, how it is now developing due to current influences and to contemplate
its future.
Physical
Preparation
* To introduce
and explore methods of preparing the body as a versatile medium for art.
* To engage in
relationship with fundamental concepts of self, body, time, space, gravity,
surface, form, body sound and motion using “Body Tuning” exercises.
* To establish a
routine of basic exercises in which to develop these principles as a regular
practice.
Creative
Response, Play & Interaction
* To utilize
aspects of physical preparation in creative response and interaction.
* To engage in
relationship with “other” in response to such entities as: sound, image, text,
environment, object, color, smell, taste, texture, concept, narrative,
technology, person and identity.
* To discover and
develop the potential of Self as a viable means of artistic communication.
Assignments
& New Work
* To apply
physical and creative tools explored in the class towards the development of
original new work.
* To establish
Self as “author” or “creator” of artistic work.
* To foster a
decision making process of creative critical thinking.
* To present
original new work in a performance setting as a culmination of the project and
manifestation of the work as art piece.
* To receive
feedback and reflection on the work produced.
