“Space both determines and is determined by the improvisation occurring within it.” (De Spain, 2014, 108).

 This week’s improvisation focused on the ideas of space and time and how they can both shape an improvisation. One of the first tasks in class required us to walk around the room, and stop when we believed 2 minutes had passed. This opened my eyes as to how we sometimes perceive time as being faster or slower than it actually is.

 “If you are concerned about how you are seen or what you are doing, time will press on your mind and squelch your creativity. If, on the other hand, you play with time, mold time, laugh at time, literally “take” your time, you can use it to bring energy.” (De Spain, 2014, 114).

 I really worked with this quote when taking part in the tasks set. In partners, we had to time each other dancing a short phrase of movement. The phrase had to have a beginning, middle and end, which were dictated by the person dancing. The purpose of this task was to see how well we could perceive time by using our internal body clock.

My results from the 2 minute improvisation task, where we had to have a beginning, middle and end.

The results show that each section decreases in time. I found this task quite challenging as I started to run out of movements. I think that the decrease in time for each section is the result of me being more confident in my movements towards the beginning, and as the 2 minutes went on I became more aware of what I was doing and so had less confidence in my ability.

In reference to the quote about time… when taking part in the above task I found that I could relate to the above quote. In the beginning and start of the middle section I felt that I could take my time, and mold the time to fit around my own improvisation. However, I became more aware of time as I became more concerned with what I was doing. This started to affect my creativity and therefore I could not perform as well.

The next task involved a ‘chance’ score, where the time, number of dancers and relationships where picked at random.

I found that experiencing this score from the viewpoint of a dancer was both interesting and challenging.   I took part in the duet section. At first, I didn’t take into account the time allowance of the piece, and just involved all my creativity into the duet, sometimes following my partner. However, half way through another dancer came into the space. This really caught me off guard, and so I became more aware of the time allowance. I started to panic because of this and so I became more aware of the timing. Therefore, I exited the stage as I lost track of where I though we were in the time allowance. Repeating this task again, I once again found myself losing track of the time limit, and therefore the duet I took part in ran too long, resulting in the quartet having to finish early.

I think that having an internal awareness of time and use of space can be valuable when improvising. If you do not have this, how do you know when to bring the improvisation to an end? How do you know where in the space you have no yet explored?

De Spain, K. (2014) Landscape of the Now. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.