Stamp Work Shop IV

"This is an Action"
For a more detailed description of this exercise please refer to my post title Stamp!
We spent 20 minutes in action with Brooke often calling out "If you find yourself in a rhythm, begin again, begin again, begin again." After some time Brooke asked us to spontaneously form duets and continue - without necessarily indicating to our duet partner that we were dancing 'with' them. She then asked us to form a trio followed by a group dance.

Send and Receive: Brooke asked as to send and receive actions, without always being aware of who we were sending actions to and receiving actions from.

We were asked to form two parallel lines, some distance apart and 'communicate' with the person opposite us. With an image of being alien to each other. Our communication tool was movement.

Brooke asked the two groups to move from parallel lines into two groups/clumps while remaining opposite each other. Now instead of one individual communicating with another individual we were 'one' as a whole group communicating with another group. A more collective approach.

"Portraits"
Brooke instructed us to spend five minutes on our own to decide on three different portraits/shapes. We were asked to avoid obvious human gestures. As one large group Brooke called out gestures (1,2,3) and explored with the timing between each portrait change.

We then split into two groups and took turns at performing and observing. Each group was further divided into three colours: pink, green, blue. The first group to perform, the greens had to change every 5 seconds, pinks every 10 seconds and blues every 20 seconds. After a few minutes of this Brooke asked the greens to change every 10secs, pinks every 20secs and blues every 30secs.

The second group to perform were asked to be aware of the people in the group that were given the same colour and to change together at any point after any length of time. We were asked to make decisions on when to change portrait based on reading the whole group visually, e.g. in order to play with contrasting levels, to have moments of every one in stillness or in motion or contrasting between motion and stillness...

Thinking about time
We watched a you tube clip of three dancers during the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, 1931. Again Brooke asked us to think about time and performance. The video demonstrated repetitive, trance like movement. All three men performing the same short sequence over and over again but never in exact unison rather they were on their own individual time frame.

"Directing"
For a more detailed description of this exercise please refer to my post titled Stamp!
We split into two groups and one participant from each group lead the group with their own ideas based on the work shops thus far. The person that lead the group I was in lead a directing exercise of calling out three words and playing the order of the words, the combination of the words. He sometimes gave the whole group a word(s) or part of the group or an individual.

End of work shop discussion
Brooke encouraged us when leading such as exercise to provide words that indicate a certain state, to explore different combinations and sequences. She explained that at some point we would have to make decisions about combinations of words, the order of words and the length of performing each state.

Idea one:
I could give the whole group one over-arching word, 'collective unconsciousness'. To move as if their minds were connected, still individual in some respects but connected to each other on some level. I would ask the group to start very close together, and as a group explore the entire space at their disposal. The second word I would give is fractal, then the next three words would examples of fractals in nature.

Idea two:
Using the portraits exercise I could provide a three words to inspire three portraits such as: vanishing point, permeable and consumption. The portraits might be individual or in partners. I would use the portraits as starting points for further exploration. If I called out permeable, participants would move into that particular portrait hold for any length of time before exploring the word in action.

Gala and I came up with a list of words that we could play with:
perspective: vanishing point
break beat
collective unconsciousness
hood
disconnection
consumption
permeable
quality