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Dear movers,
This is last’s week
diary and is created upon recipes of my grandmother, mother, teachers, practitioners,
theorists and my observations on them and on me. I think it will help us focus
on the doing tomorrow rather than the talking. My plan is to pass through my
working method, but my hope relies on creating questions on your move(ment), questions while moving that can only be personally answered, and on flow be created.
Body image: “system of perceptions, attitudes, beliefs to
one’s own body. It helps to answer questions about the appearance of the body
in perceptual field…Is the result of intentional(conceptual, perceptual,
emotional) experiences and an operative determination of such experiences…It
involves partial representation of body insofar as my perception, thought, emotional
evaluation, attends to only one part or area or aspect of body at a time. Body schema: System of sensory-motor
capacities that function without awareness or necessity of perceptual
monitoring..It involves certain motor capacities/abilities/habits that enable
and constrain movement…functions that operate below self-referential
intentionality. It helps to answer questions about how the body shapes the
perceptual field. It functions holistic and blurs the body-environment
limits”(Gallanger)
10
July
You will need:
The Debora
Hay’s metaphor in cultivation
of physicality of body as “the ever-changing cumulative performance of fifty
–three trillion cells”(Susan Leigh Foster) and her triggering question “What
if? What if every cell of my body is where I need? In relation to my body, my
teacher? In relation to the space? What if?” (Debora Hay)
52 trillion of cells of yourself studying to reach rituality. Start by ritual
studying is of no importance at this part. “I have planned nothing and that has
kept me very busy”(Ruth Zaporah)
1, ½ Definition of Proprioception: major source of information concerning bodily
position and posture(more definitions are more than welcomed)
2
cups of Gallagher‘s definitions
of body schema and body image.
Body image: “system of perceptions, attitudes, beliefs to
one’s own body. It helps to answer questions about the appearance of the body
in perceptual field…Is the result of intentional(conceptual, perceptual,
emotional) experiences and an operative determination of such experiences…It
involves partial representation of body insofar as my perception, thought, emotional
evaluation, attends to only one part or area or aspect of body at a time. Body schema: System of sensory-motor
capacities that function without awareness or necessity of perceptual
monitoring..It involves certain motor capacities/abilities/habits that enable
and constrain movement…functions that operate below self-referential
intentionality. It helps to answer questions about how the body shapes the
perceptual field. It functions holistic and blurs the body-environment
limits”(Gallanger)
3 to 5 games to create, according to Johan Huizinga‘s notion of game: Game has its own time and space,
it precedes culture and its rules are not fixed, but flow along the interest of
the participants.
Some observations about you and the others, you and your
interests in movement, you and your choices while moving, you and the influence
of language, culture, experiences in your movement.
1 or more virtual doubles while moving. As Mary Wigman said, to dance is
to produce a double with whom you dialogue.
Good luck to us all!
DIARY
4 July 20013
Despite Ana‘s and
Kinitira’s invitation as a visiting artist this year, I always consider my self
as a participant. This thought works for me in an upside way. It reminds me to recognise
myself not only as being part of the others, but also as the becoming of reaction
and action of being within/among others. The question naked seems to be: how do I claim
myself within the others, within their offers and their claims?
How do I “translate”
their proposals and thoughts? How I do transform them? How am I becoming, while
I am transforming them or dealing with the transformation? This year the
“finding me” issue existed under this umbrella. But this question was and is
the one that evolves my self-research. Which is yours? Which question
concerning the self and the others, the self and environment, the self and the
space do you think would shout you best concerning your self-research this last
year?
How do I study and
practice the surrounding world, how do I experience my egocentric world
restructures my consciousness and perception and is linked to the proprioceptive sense.
6 July
Restructuring
consciousness and perception? Re-monitoring my mobility? Re-accessing my moving
mechanisms?
Everything that I
wished for, seem to address back to the same question: How do I experience my body (disagree with the
duality of me and my body as it does not help to see myself holistically) and how do I experience my surrounding
world in personal life and in
performance, were always key points to
my research. The question was always how do I “grasp a glass of water” and how
do I “hold a persons’ hand”. As a choreographer these questions were answered
under the name of modulation: My interest in choreographing relied on the
relationship of performer and audience. I created choreographies that were able
to be modulated by the audience and the surrounding space (What kind of
movement material concerning how to trace
back movement material and how to claim
the chosen performing material under this filter of modulation, is another
issue that I am not going to explain in this section).]
The last year though,
my research focused on the actual movement of me “grasping the glass”.
“Grasping a glass of
sth” belongs to a group of movement called “instrumental” and do happen due to
automatic motor programs which are
kept updated by proprioceptive information. Propioceptive information operates
as part of a system that constitutes body
schema: “a system of sensory and motor capacities that function without
awareness or necessity of perceptual monitoring”(S.Gallagher).This means that
my grasp shapes itself outside my awareness, without me having to monitor
perceptually the movement, as it is when I am jumping to catch a ball, or
walking, sitting(which belong to “locomotive” type of movement).
7 July
While performing or
teaching I created systems that could stimulate this kind of movement and let
them breathe under the name “teleologiki kinisi”. The word “telos” in Greek
means purpose, so the translation should be sth like “purposive movement” or
“teleological movement”. The focus of attention on this kind of moving is on
the something, not on monitoring the act of doing the something. My interest in
teleological movement relies on its minimalism and repleteness, on a quality of
pure movement with minimum remains of the history of dance and of my history of
dancing. Questioning myself was always my favourite game.
This “love affair”,
relied on something else also. During my preparation for performing, I used to
say that I am preparing my body so that then “it” will know what I need, and
how to move. It was as if my body knew already before I am aware of the needs,
as if “it” was faster than my perception. My body always talks and acts before
I know it. That kind of myself, the it, only needed a reminder of its limits of
capability before performing (I used to do a Cunnighmam class to myself before
every performance and then the “Debora Hay” cellularly exercise).
As Gallgher puts it
“action is faster than consciousness…it is faster than the kind of
consciousness one would require to monitor action”. But what I was doing with
my preparation was to alter the established postural schema and thus my
“enlarged” body image affected the body schema.
Body schemas are not fixed, they are active changing process. Body
schemas have emotional impact on the subject and can lead to changes of visual
perception, of perceiving subject’s body and of perceiving space. On the other
hand body schemas can stay in process only if they are kept updated by prioprioceptive
information. They can fade and cease to exist when are not used.
8 July
I start with
teleological movement and try to keep the connection by recalling the purpose
of me moving. I try to understand and analyse the anatomy of my body while
moving(enlarging body image and affecting body schemas). I observe visceral and
emotional signals and make the adjustments. They are essential to what and how
I perceive. “My memory is formed along the lines of perceptual
experience”(Bermudez).I restructure my
game according to new findings. I dance
with my double and make aesthetic adjustments. I restructure again. I dance
with my game and choose conceptual adjustments. (They may be triggered by the
combination of two different starting points.purposes also). Every time that I
rehearse I start from recalling my purpose. That’s my story. Teleological-anatomical
-affect-concept.
9 July
The performance is an invitation to show how I
perceive things. How I create has a
major impact on my performance and on what will be performed.
Remove ornaments and decorations. What if less is more?!
