Creation and Improvisation
Creative Process
In this course, dancers examine new and emerging areas of thought and practice in the exploration of the craft of choreography. It is designed to facilitate students’ individual and collective journeys through the choreographic process, from conception through creation and rehearsal, to performance and evaluation.
Course instructors lead discussions on aesthetic choices and on practical creative skills. The classes are experiential and aim to stimulate creative thinking through research, physical practice, observation, analysis, discussion, and documentation.
Students investigate the creative process through free and structured improvisations to generate movement material and develop solo, duet, and group choreography. Throughout the course, students develop their analytical and descriptive abilities to discuss work and give feedback to their peers.
They begin to define their artistic point of view, defend their values, expand their critical thinking, and cultivate the ability to take creative risks. Students develop practical skills in handling technical and production support for performances, and in finding and integrating sound and music.
In third year, students are required to produce a work for public presentation; some class time is given for this purpose, but it is expected that significant out-of-class time will be involved.
Even for dancers who have no choreographic aspirations themselves, the process of creating and producing their own work will significantly enhance their understanding of the realities of their professional obligations as performers, and contribute to the development of a rigorous creative practice.
Students are encouraged to develop:
- the ability to speak and write articulately about the art form with dancers, other collaborators, and audience members
- an understanding of the relationship of sound/music and other design elements to choreography and dance production
- an understanding of the importance of collaboration
- organizational skills
- the ability to work constructively ‘to deadline’ and under pressure
Improvisation
This course provides opportunities for the dancer to participate in the creative process and to bring form to the instincts of the body and spirit.
The class provides a non-judgmental atmosphere for dancers to discover movement and sound that comes from their own impulses, and to discover, isolate, and practise elements of compositional form through improvisational structures, working towards the evolution of a compositional voice.
They make physical, personal, emotional, and psychological discoveries, and they develop sensitivity, listening, tools for expression, performance abilities, and choreographic skills. They are encouraged to take creative risks, and to provoke themselves to explore beyond their own movement vocabulary in order to discover new ways of moving and sounding.
Contact Improvisation 1
This course explores the style and technique, based on improvisation, in which dancers engage gravity and momentum to support and utilize each others’ body weight while in motion. Developed by dance artist Steve Paxton in the 1970s, contact improvisation is traditionally performed as a duet.
The emphasis is on touching, falling, lifting, leaning, sliding, counter-balancing, and supporting the weight of another person. Characteristics of sharing, co-operation, egalitarianism, and informality define the atmosphere among participants. This technique is a valuable tool for dancers approaching partnering work in choreography.
Partnering/Contact Dance 2 and 3
Partnering/Contact Dance 2 and 3 will continue the focus on the technique and aesthetics of Contact Improvisation 1.
The skills to be developed include: articulate and sophisticated response to the point of contact; multi-level movement; escalating the opportunities for momentum through anchoring, flying, gravity and breath; accentuating the elements of elevation techniques; lofting through propulsion; weight transfer and ‘dancing the impulse with your partner’; comfort in and out of contact; composition; and performance presence.
Source Work
With a free and flowing body, dancers learn to explore impulses in terms of preparation, expression, and reflection.
Through structured improvisations (called rivers), impulses are worked up into images. These images are then projected into the space, becoming a world that the performer enters and responds to. This highly structured and detailed work investigates impulse-to-action through resistance and commitment.
The 28 training rivers encompass all the situations that a performer might face.
