Improvisation


In the movement class today, we ended the session by working on the “leader and follower” exercise, and I noticed that as a group we started to create a certain flow which just went in a singular direction when we changed the “leader”. In the way that we, as a collective, have resonated with what we have learned so far, it seems that we have induced a form of expected physical motion, one which is not too straightforward to adapt or stray away from. Due to this, I have started to think about the idea of the second option in this context, and how it is that we can learn to communicate ‘unpredictable’ movements, whether in a situation where you are in a group, or when you’re communicating with your own body. After going around the room to hear reflections from each student regarding their experiences observing each other’s work, I began to think more about the relationship between listening and following. We were learning a lot about each other by listening to each other, but also about ourselves and how we relate to them in that moment, and this is something I experience also when following someone in movement class, or leading someone in movement class. And then when I compare this complicated, half conscious, half subconscious experience of the relationship between listening and following to my absolute confusion which I experienced especially in Trajal’s class (I had been sick the previous class), I realised how much communication within the class was becoming nonverbal, we had started to form a natural rhythm, a sort of dance. And if you miss learning about a step in that, adding a glitch to the rhythm, you actually see it quite clearly!