This week was different. Somehow I felt like I’m starting to know/understand/interpret what is/could be improvisation. And the reading… It was very different from previous ones. Much more harder, much more scientific, but, on the other hand, much more gripping…
In my opinion, these two questions: How is it possible to make a shared choice of movements during improvisation between two or more dancers, without previous agreement and without communication through words? and Can we call choreography what we see when we watch a dance improvisation? kind of complement each other and seek to a common response. However, I don’t know exact how to answer properly and logically, but that’s what I’m thinking:
SOOOO… Now I know that improvisation in dance requires a type of cognition anchored in the body and situated in the relation with the partners and the space. As we dancing, we see other dancers and, because of human mirror experience, we are capable to find connections, send messages and response with our own movement. That leads to the idea that empathy really exists and it is deeply rooted in the body experience. And since we’ve known that we can understand dance as a confluence between body and space revealed in a flow of expressive and intentional movements, as a show, or even as a game, I believe that dance improvisation could be called choreography as well. The empathy evoke the very specific movement and the response to somebody else. That creates subtle intentions for our actions, which could be called “stop time, thou art so beautiful”. It’s a live and temporary choreographic structure which includes agreement without words.
Well, probably it is not an answer at all… It looks like a brainstorm for me. But, I’m quite happy with that, because it is my live response for these questions. Perhaps, I will figure it out later…
Bibliography
Ribeiro, M, & Fonseca, A m (2011), The empathy and the structuring sharing modes of movement sequences in the improvisation of contemporary dance, Research In Dance Education, 12(2) 71-85