Studio | the-sense-of-place

Here you can find the video documentation of the first session which is diveded into seven parts accordingly to the progression of the score. This session took place in the dance studio of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main. It is the first time the score was performed.

The reason to present the first class in a narrative manner is to observe how the stages of the score develop in themselves and build clarity about the uniqueness of each of them.

Further, each of the videos presented here has some new questions that may put a new light on the score as well as potentially bring the viewer, which at the moment probably sits in a chair or lies in the bed, closer to sensing the place in which participants are in: in the body, in the site, in relation to one another.

The video materials and text are not intended to be look at from the beginning till the end, but rather scanned through and observed accordingly to own interests.

1. Arrive into the body

How do we arrive?

Does it require a particular position of the body?

Do the eyes need to be closed?

How long does it take and upon what the arriving depends?

How does one recognizes that he or she arrived?

Where to arrive?

What for?

How does the arriving feel?

2. The materiality of place

What is the memory of your first dance studio?

What was the dance like in it?

What is the form of those memories? Particular images? Situations? People?

If not, how do you imagine it?

What is special about dance studios?

Do you remember the walls the first dance studio you were in?

What was the floor like?

The air?

The temperature?

Which sounds occupied that place?

Any objects?

How do the dance studios influence the way we perceive our body, our movements?

Here, the participants were asked to walk through the space and explore what there was in the room by touching, hearing, smelling and seeing. They were encouraged to check materials, textures, shapes, and sizes of the visible objects and answer the questions inscribed in the score.

3. From an alien to an inhabitant

In this part, dancers are getting more active by giving more weight to the objects present in the site through their own peripheries. Further, they yield with the whole weight to particular places, let their body assume what movemet will come next and follow their individual interests. One of the dancers related to this part of the run as the most crucial experience saying: “The most important for me was to see the differences between different objects (their sizes and materials) and how differently we can use them in moving.” Further, they entered into the choreographic possibilities.

How do you move through the place you are in?

In which parts of this place are you usually spending time? What movements of your body this place encourages you to do?

What changes when another person is in this place with you?

How does the light in this place change during the day?

4. Attach yourself to the place

Task for dancers in the video: find a place in the room in which you could “yield the whole of the body, a place to which you can ascribe yourself and attach.”

In response, each of the participants found stillness in a different places of the room.

Further, they were asked to acknowledge them and once more to bring their focus to the body and rest.

In which places do you rest?

What allows you to rest in it?

How does the body feels when resting?

5. Becoming one

With the awareness of the body as a place the dancers began to move the place inside them and from there try to connect “the sensation of moving the place inside the body to the sensation of moving in the place outside”.

Have you ever experiences an absolute connection with a place or a landscape?

Which place is most meaningful to you?

6. Becoming active

Next, dancers were asked to continue what they were doing and simultaneously to bring awareness to other people in the room, to observe what their actions were and in which states they were. As the students acknowledged this information within their own movement exploration, a visible relation in movement between the movers was established: the same movements, similar directions and character of movement.

The participants were also encouraged to take more initiative, propose activities for the whole group, provoke exchange, and take responsibility for the place they were in. At that point the movement exploration in the room transformed into a playful social interaction. A play developed in the middle of the studio space. The participants started to interact more with each other, each other’s clothes, and the green gymnastic ball.

7. Open score

This is the last part of the score. It allowed participants to follow their interest and desires present at this particular moment. As well as arrive to the end of the activity.

What can emerge from being sensitive to places?