Moving around the room slowly and carefully, I began to explore my body.  This exercise helped me to warm up and allowed me to really focus on the parts of my body that needed stretching. Therefore, this made me more aware of what I can do before every class, to prepare myself for the movement and tasks set.  However, I felt that the almost slow-motion pace that we were enduring whilst moving around the room, highlighted the habitual movements that I often fall into when I am unsure as to where I want to move next.   After this, we began to move at a faster pace, until it became physically demanding and almost exhausting. Even though this became difficult, I stopped thinking about what I was doing, and just let my body do what felt natural.

The next task involved us thinking, imagining and moving. I thought of a movement, imagined myself dancing it and then doing it. At first I found this really difficult as I would sometimes imagine myself doing a really technical and advanced movement, then when I would try it, I found that I didn’t look the way I imagined. Because of this I would refer back to habitual movements, and movements which looked good. Deborah Hay talks about how the body is an ‘imagined condition,’ (De Spain, 2014, 93) and following this, De Spain explains that thinking of the body as being ‘a powerful tool for breaking out of personally or culturally ingrained habits of body use and body awareness.’ (De Spain, 2014, 93). This really helped me to break out of the habitual movements. Instead of thinking of something that will look good, I thought and imagined how I could go from one movement to another in an interesting and exciting way. This was more successful and I really started to get into the task, exploring new ways of moving and finding new movements. De Spain says ‘As I am improvising, I am noticing certain aspects of what is happening to me, keeping track of them… so that I can use them to inform my choice-making.’ (De Spain, 2014, 45). The notion of tracking is an important process in improvisation and during the ‘think, imagine, move’ task I was unconsciously noting where I had been in the space, and which movements I had previously done, so that I didn’t feel like I was going round in circles.

In the following tasks, I applied the notion of tracking and the body so that I could again note where I had been before, and where I could go from the previous movement, ensuring I don’t revert back to habitual movements. In partners, one person would improvise, and shout out any body part or movement that they would do or see. The other would write down anything that the person improvising would shout out, or anything that they would see that person doing.

Using these, one person would shout out a word and the person improvising would have to do this specific action or involve the body part. I found this extremely difficult, as it was confusing to listen to your partner and track at the same time. Therefore, I often found myself repeating movements, instead of finding new ways to portray the action.

After this lesson, I felt more at ease about improvisation, and I feel like tracking could be a useful way to find new and innovative movements. I also found new ways of unlocking habitual movements, which I can apply whilst improvising.

This week I took part in my first ever ‘Improvisation Jam.’  I was feeling nervous about this as I wasn’t sure what it would involve, but I was excited as to what could happen.  We took the concept of tracking, and during each stage, we would have to create movement, which was performed in slow motion.  Each stage would progress and using the original movement in stage 1, we had to translate it into a different body part.  Between each stage there would be a 2 minute section of slow-motion walking, which I found quite difficult as we would have to remember the previous movement phrase whilst doing this.

Overall, I found the Jam very interesting, and I enjoyed this new way of moving.  Therefore, I feel very optimistic about the ‘Improvisation Jams’ ahead.

De Spain, K. (2014) The Landscape of the Now – A Topography of Movement Improvisation. United States of America: Oxford University Press.