The basic elements used for devising movement improvisations scores can be identified in the following Summary by Jane Winearls.
For ‘dancing’ read ‘animating’:
The study of dancing from a dynamic perspective necessitates an understanding of the expression contained in varying movement qualities arising from the following:
The Three Basic Elements:
Quality: Strong and Light
Shape and Design: Cenrtal and Peripheral
Speed: Quick and SlowThe Eight Basic Combinations resulting from the Three Elements:
Strong, Central, Slow.
Strong, Central, Quick.
Strong, Peripheral, Slow.
Light, Central, Slow.
Light, Peripheral, Quick.
Light. Peripheral, Slow.
Light, Peripheral, Quick.Degree of Element of Change: Transition from one quality to another by changing 1, 2 or 3 elements.
Single, Simultaneous or Double Tension:
1 quality of movement only.
2 or more qualities in different parts of the body.
Central and Peripheral activities in one part at the same time.
Jane Winearls, Modern Dance – The Jooss-Leeder Method, 1978, p.90-91
These elements originated in the work of Rudolph Laban, whose work in turn informed many teachers of Movement and Dance, including my teacher, Hanny Exiner.
They are used to analyze movement in the human body.
Laban devised a geometrical, crystal form as a conceptual framework through which to physically move.
Read Newlove and Dalby, where they quote Laban:
In the growth of crystals (and what is not a crystal?); in the life of plants and in the weave of boundless existence which we call the cosmos, no other driving power can be recognised but the one that also creates the dance.
(source unknown)
See also: Laban International Courses
Hanny worked with this model to expand the aesthetic movement potential of dancers and non-dancers. She established the Movement and Dance education programme at the Institute of Early childhood, Melbourne in the early 1970s.
Hanny Exiner extended this work into a therapeutic dimension in the early 1980s, founding the Dance Therapy Association of Australia.
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Initiating and responding to others in movement improvisations was one of the ways used to extend one’s movement vocabulary, and so deepen one’s understanding of an idea.
Animating in response to the responses that others have had to the changes observed and experienced in Antarctic landscape, drawn upon this method.
An example just begun is here, where I had made a simple sequence based on ice crystals.
Attaching the animation with the song, Balancing Time, by Mic Conway, changes how I see it and think about it, extending the conceptual and aesthetic possibilities.
The song challenges me to expand the dynamic range and the nature of the imagery. The Chilean plant circling like a cardboard cut-out was added just after Mic’s song was added. It’s more solid form reflects his solid voice, and draws a connection with Gondwanaland and a live species in a present day Botanical Garden (Mount Tomah). More will be added to reflect the song’s content – balancing work and play – and extend to reflect the balance/imbalance of our present way of life within the natural world…house, two cars etc….
…and the cup of tea recently contributed by Tasmania designer Bronwyn Burles.
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What fascinates and delights me about working in response to other people’s responses, is how it can connect people with each other and with the Antarctic landscape, in a way that expands our visual and movement vocabularies. My underlying assumption is that expanding our vocabularies expands our ways of knowing.