Improvisational Task
We began by getting into our groups before the Dancers arrived and just running through our idea again developing it further and making sure everyone was clear. We also had to finalise what we would set as a improvisational task for the dancers today to help us start developing and being a piece.
Firstly we ran through some more phobias that we had found out about and spoken about how we may get the dancers to represent them:
Nyctophobia (Fear of the Dark) - Smalled bodied dancer, balled up in fear. Exploring the space in low level timid manor as if it was pitch black. Not a lot of travelling. The dark could be resembled by a square bodied dancer very strongly travelling around the space.
Pediaphobia (Fear of Dolls and Puppets) - Dancer could act like a doll or even puppet in a very possessed manor wobbly with movement. The fear could be show in a childish manor having lots of frantic spinning and travelling around the space.
Homophobia (Fear of Blood) - Fear shown by someone very slowly and deeply observing their body in a timid manor, abstract body movements represent that they might be bleeding. They can resemble the blood by flowing around the space slowly expanding out with all their limbs into a wider space as if bleeding is getting more intense. Possible use of red cloths as prop to move with.
Now that we had finishing looking into Phobias that interested all of us we set decided on our improvised task for the dancers. Firstly we would take just a few of the phobias we wanted to try out and firstly ask the 2 dancers to embody that phobia in a way that may come across as scary. Then we wanted to get them both to try and be the reaction/fear to that phobia using the direction given based on our notes about the phobias. We then wanted to see what they would dance like one we picked out our favourite bits and got them to dance together one as the Phobia and one as the reaction. The Phobias we want to try our Arachnophobia, Nyctophobia and Claustrophobia as we feel like we have a stronger image of how we could experiment with them.
Working with the Dancers
We went round all the ideas in the class watching as everyone got to work with the dancers on their developed improvisational task. We all helped each other by giving feedback on everyones ideas and this also helped me to gain useful information as well as practice working with Dancers. Here are the notes and ideas I wrote down during everyones different tasks:
Here is a video documenting all the exercises myself and the group tried with the dancers when it was our turn:
Referring to the Video:
- In task one we directed them to act as the phobia of araachnophbia so basically like a spider, however we didn't want it too literal but we just wanted elements of spider like qualities through lots of travelling, low levels, crawling etc based on moving them limbs especially legs a lot. That results we got for this first task were good however the lacked an element of fear as in they weren't impacting the audience enough.
- We fed back and decided there needing to be some faster pace through out especially with the scuttling back and forth. We tried again and it was improved a lot more by the feedback from ourselves and the class.
- We then had the idea of using the dancers hands as spiders suggested to us. At first I was sceptical but I thought it would be good to at least try it and experiment. I really actually liked the results as it provoked a much better emotion which was a cross between being a spider but also the fear and anxiety that they can create. combing these two successful improvisations together has helped us start building what we want the dance to look like for this phobia.
- We then began looking in Nyctophobia which is fear of the dark. We were going to instruct the dancers to improvise a fearful dance as if they could see (like if they were in the dark) however after talking it through and taking suggestions we realised it would be more effective to first do some exercises were we actually have the dancers close their eyes and try and complete a task to be able to examine how the body actually moves when you can't see. We got them to stand in the circle (the circle was a safety precaution) and move around with their eyes closed as one is trying to find the other and the other doesn't want to be found. This was fun but really useful as it helped me begin to observe the nature of the body when in such a vulnerable position and gives me a clearer idea of how that could be represented through dance now.
- Lastly we looked at the Claustrophobia and instead of getting them to just improvise we again came up with a task to help them get into the mindset. We stood in a circle and they began dancing but as they danced we stepped in and slowly closed the circle smaller and smaller. This was to show them what that tight space would actually be like. It was helpful to try this however we didn't get the fearful aspect we were hoping for so we took a different approach.
- We then had one of the dancers being the claustrophobia by trapping the other in a small space by pulling them back into themselves constantly. I actually really liked how this turned out as it had a serious element of fear yet wasn't too literal and flowed really well. It has again helped me envisage how this dance piece would look.
Overall today has been really helpful in developing our ideas further and I have enjoyed working with he dancers to do this.
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