Group Mind Videos

Thanks to Louis for taking these!

September 17, 2012

Hi, and I'm very pleased with your responses to last nights lab (Ensemble communication, how do we sense ensemble weight-sharing, etc).  In my past experience w/ ensemble work/play I've leaned a lot towards direct imitation of each other.  This shift away from self towards the Other(s) seems to be an instinctual mode for us humans (all those mirror-neurons...!)  "Imitation is love." - Jean Genet, French dramatist

We walked amongst each other, stopped and were helped deliciously to the floor.  I, too, love being able to fall/collapse (is there a word for such mutual-assisted collapsing?) into my backspace all the way down.  What a gift to give and receive.

We then collapsed solo trying to mirror the quality, timing of the others.  Then in small groups, trying to add elements of composition.  I observed this mostly and noticed individual choices effects on group behavior.  What elements come to your mind, when you move and "compose" spontaneously?  I consider space, time, energy, as well as, dramatic elements of relationship, character, objective, etc. 

Group lean towards center is due for more exploration.  As we began to lean away and hold each other up and together, someone said, "fascia".  We seemed to really find some ensemble listening meat here, so to speak...  Has everyone seen the video Michal shared last winter?  Michal, can you find and post again, or is it on here?  I'd love to explore ways to make this "breathe", less continuous tension. 

We lay our bodies down and breathed.  Breathed together, shifted position on the exhale, and moved into an open improv.

Here's my main question I left with:  How did I edit my choices to stay connected to the ensemble?
I do hope to see you all next Monday!
- Christian

Underscore Drawings

Sorry it took me so long to post these! Nadia says:
Hand written by nancy stark smith herself! From a workshop I did in Austin in 09.

The Underscore in Text

Here's a textual rundown of the underscore. No symbols, but a good overview of everything. Karl Frost posted this text on tribe.net a while back. He grabbed it from an Amsterdam jam. Not sure who wrote it originally.
____________
 
UNDERSCORE:

Developed by Nancy Stark Smith, it is a structure that organizes a contact impro and allows people to work together in a warm-up or an impro session. It generates a very interesting frame to share that may orient the impro and provides a language to be able talk about the experience later.

I. Sequential Aspects: These aspects of the Score serve as a guide that develops sequentially. The changes from one aspect to the next occurs spontaneously for each dancer rather than being strictly controlled.

• Arriving:

1. Arriving energetically: bring the focus to the present.
2. Arriving Physically: bring the attention to the sensation you have in the body at this moment. 
3. Pow-wow (optional): coming together to talk in a circle (names, injuries, how long it will last)
4. iv. Pre- ambulation: (optional): go through the space, open connections with the space and the people after the talk. 

• Skinesphere: What’s inside the skin, sensation, what we feel in the small dance.

1. Bonding with the earth: to relax the body, to feel the support from below, connection with the floor. 
2. Mobilising, agitating the mass: To mix the mass with the air, by jumping, moving, to get a new organisation afterwards.

• Kinesphere: Attention to what you can reach with your limbs.

1. Low kinesphere: Dome, centre on the floor.
2. High kinesphere: With the centre high. 
3. (Maybe a moment to balance, to increase our tone.) 
4. Expanding and traveling kinesphere: The base of it is the connection with your centre and with the floor. Breath. 

• Overlapping kinespheres: We start to be more conscious of the others in the space.

• Connections- Grazing: Short connections happening during the Overlapping Ks. Between one and the other is your solo.

1. Coincidence: same time same thing.
2. Confluence: two rivers that meet. 
3. Divergence 
4. Touch 
5. Attraction: is magnetic, you feel attracted by a body or a movement.
6. Repulsion or Aversion 
7. Intersection: cross ways. 
8. Influence: music, people… 
9. Contrast: acknowledge that difference is a way of connection. 
10. Collisions: soft, they wake us up. 
11. Tangent: when our route meets another just on a point. 
12. Empathy and Resonance: I feel something from the distance. 
13. Shearing: from shearing sheeps.

• Engagement: At some point we start to be more implicated with the connection.

1. Development: developing a duo
2. Resolution: disengagement, end of the duo. 

• Re-circulation through the score: Allow the sensation to continue. Where am I? What do I want to do? Don’t cut it, don’t escape to drink water.

• Open Score: We can use different ways to re-enter the score.

1. Observation
2. Re-Entrance

• Final Resolution of the room: The beginning of the last chapter. Each person resolves his own activity arriving to stillness where we can feel the experience of had been dancing.

• Disengagement of the whole pattern: From the stillness we imagine the group as a crystalline form, and when we are ready….end of the total design.

• Reflection and Harvest: Introspective revision of the body. And then harvest, you may write or draw or…

• Sharing: Harvest’s celebration. Listening to the authentic of the personal experience, we learn, we feel.

II. Non Sequential Aspects- Any time All the time:

• Streaming: Current, flow, stream. Small particles of light in movement (like the fffffff of the tv). Vital force. Related with the breath.

• Gap: temporal moment of absence of reference. You don’t have orientation.If we experience a gap we may focus on the streaming, for the current not to diminish, because we need it to orient ourselves. Also allow ourselves to explore the gap, we don’t have to fill it always.

• Telescoping Mind: We can zoom in and out when we like to. 

1. Zoom in: We concentrate on a particular sensation and we increase the focus. It gives context.
2. Zoom out: Consciousness of the total composition, without loosing the consciousness of what we are doing.

• Idiot Button: When it gets too much the trying to be aware of so many things we press this button and we simplify. We feel, we breath, and if we want awareness we press it again.

Potluck Notes from July 2

It's another lab session! Here are the details:

Theme: The Underscore (more details below)
Dates: July 9th through Labor Day. No lab on July 30th due to SFDI. No lab on Labor Day (Sept 3) unless folks decide they want to. That leaves 7 weeks total.
Time: 7-9pm, with the space open for warming up from 6:30.
Cost: $20/person, paid to Liz, with extra $'s going into the retreat fund.
Summer caveat: As we've done the last couple of summers, we expect that folks are going to have commitments and may miss chunks. We're a bit looser with attendance, but let's stay communicative about days that folks will be missing so that facilitators know what to expect.

More about the theme: We've decided to explore the underscore this session. Kaitlin and Nadia (and whoever else has material) will work together to post more detailed info about the underscore on the blog, so make sure to take a minute to read up in the next couple of days. Michal will bring printed underscore info to lab. Michal and Cody will be facilitating the underscore on Monday. Future weeks may choose to focus on specific areas of the underscore that people find interesting (i.e. what can grazing really entail? What does it mean to acclimate to our upper kinesphere?). I had some interest in ending this session by having the lab facilitate an underscore with the larger CI community at the end of the summer. We'll see if there's energy for that. Some labbers will have the opportunity to dance the underscore at Orcas as well.

Mukilteo Jam

First off: here is Roel's link that he sent via email, it is a more direct stream of the slowed down beethoven without the radio-lab portion. I enjoyed listening to the radio program a lot, but it did make me want to hear the music uninterrupted. Thanks for this link, Roel.
http://www.park.nl/park_cms/public/index.php?thisarticle=118

Great jam last night. Thanks for organizing Sheila! I took a few pictures because it was so beautiful. None of the pictures are very good (taken with my phone), but thought I would post them anyways.

Potluck at my place at 7pm on monday. I'll send out an email with more details, see you then!

June18th Lab

Christian here - and I think I'm learning how to post...?!  

Last night we explore slowing down and trying to remove momentum as the invisible 3rd partner in the dance.  Other 3rd partners began to appear, such as a sustained tone (speed) of motion, image-based qualities, an attention/listening towards the Ouiji connection of beginning with light touch to skin, then increasing weight and speaking into muscle then bones.  Some spoke of their choreographic mind becoming more active once momentum was removed and the pros and cons of this.  Michal and Cyrus tried dancing all wrong (creative deviance, I've heard this called) to get past the over-thinking while dancing.

Roel, you took lots of notes, any more you can share?

Kaitlin liked this new word:

can·ti·le·ver (It has many meanings, but this might be closest to what Cyrus meant.)

Extend outward: (intransitive verb) to project outward with an unsupported end.

This came from Michal.

here is the link to the Beethoven piece and radiolab show about .. time...

http://www.radiolab.org/2007/may/29/

You can also stream the episode below: