Seventh PAR session (22-01-10)

Rehearsal with Chek! This was a brilliant rehearsal as chek is also a music student and so understands the role and terms used in music. First I played around with some of the ideas that I had done with my other dancers but chek found it quite hard as she said I was beating quite fast so we did a 4/4 beat but half time to give her a chance to remember and get back to the 1 easier. This is the outcome:

We then tried it at normal speed to see the affect tempo can have on the movement create at a much slower tempo:

I then went back to my conduction created to music that I had previous done with Rhian and Hayley. Chek had a completly different take on the rhythem as she took the approach of a stepwise pattern to it which is how it would prehaps be taken in the commercial world of dance. The pattern is: 123,123,12. Which is quite waltz like and bouncy in conducting:

We then did a swap so that I was being conducted by Chek. This was just using some of the things that i'ld done before but so that I could feel it. We then started to play with the speeds:

Pre-exsisting Movement

Purely gestural conduction - I asked Chek if she had any material that she remember that could be put under conduction. She did and so we worked with it and some gestural signals that instigated the movement.

The biggest thing thing I learnt fromt this seesion was that of breath!! This is where the conversation between conductor and the moving body resides.

Next steps:

• Do more with pre-exsisting material
• Work with all dancers at once
• Work with gestural duet work
• Decide or piece or presentation

Sixth PAR session (21-01-10)

A different dancer again. This was a very brief session using the same methods from the previous rehearsal. Again I found the interpretations very interesting and so it was useful.

Feedback from Lex
Will the performance be improvised?

• Yes... The conduction signals will be familiar and so the movement can be different everytime...
• No... The movement will be set and perfected as part of a rehearsal process as it would so with that of a music ensemble...

Advise in conducting a full ensemble

• Get a score and conduct the individual parts while listening to it in order to get the jist of conducting more than one body at a time

Fifth PAR session (20-01-10)

Feedback from Karin

• Likes it and thinks there much more room to play in terms of Conduction. Get creative in terms levels, dynamics.
• When with three dancers -remember its an ensemble that play together but also play different parts.
• PLAY WITH STILLNESS
• PLAY WITH REPETITION
• THE UNEXPECTED

Plan of Performance

Components

• Metric conduction
• Gestural Conduction
• Conduction of Music
• Pre-exsisting movement conduction - look for pre-exsisting dance material

I have devised a series of conduction signals from listening to commercial music that have regular repeatitions of quick, slow and medium tempi. The patterns are quite interesting and I'm excited to see the outcome of the movement from these signals and there form.

Fourth PAR session (15-01-10)

This was the first session back after Xmas in which I had no dancer as mine had injured herself. I ran the same sessions I'd previously done with another dancer Lizzi. In doing this I found that the methods that didn't work so much with Rhian worked ok with Lizzi although the movement was limited. It seems that the simpler the movement material the easier it is to put it in this practice. The hope is that once the dancer is used to being lead in this way that they will be able to use more complex movement.

Present Thoughts...

Over the Xmas break i contacted Lawrence 'Butch' Morris about my ideas and using his methods. From this i gained a sense that this practice is somewhat more complexed than I had perceived it to be, therefore I am finding great difficulty in connecting it to the improvising body. I'm happy to have found this out before it became to late and have now decided to still use Conduction and all the other conducting research towards this project but in doing so i will create and mold my own conducting techniques and look into more ways of leading and guiding that stand outside of the conducting art.

Third PAR Session (14-12-09)

This session proved to be a break through... I have established the gestures without metric beats allows much more in the way of interpretation but in that, I have also discovered that both ways encourages a whole range of juxtaposing movement material! When time was beated the movement had a very unnatural, jagged dynamic, which was very interesting and with the gestures the movement became more fluid however; both of these still attained the idea of conduction and structure which was brilliant.
In this session we move away from beating time completely and instead used very elaborate gestures to instigate movement. Rhian and I also swapped places so that I could understand and feel the difficulties of both methods. I found this very interesting and enjoyed being lead and sometimes followed.