Overview

There are many ways to communicate, and this becomes more apparent at borders of communities. In the performing arts, we recognize that movement and sound offer us alternative vocabularies. These ways of communicating can broaden spoken dialogue or replace it at moments of impasse. In the Translucent Borders encounters, we developed music and movement exercises that support group-building and dialogue. Each will contain suggestions for warm-up and preparation, leading to the core exercise.

EXERCISES

The Welcome

Photo by Andy Teirstein

CONTEXT

Beginnings are enormously important. The first moments can hold the seed of the entire project to come. A group consists of individuals with different perspectives, bodies, genders, artistic disciplines, and perhaps different languages. In the opening moments of Translucent Borders, we ask each person to begin by representing who they are in movement and music.

Exercise

1.    Begin with a short greeting from the exercise leader and move into a standing circle equally spaced from one another.

2.    Short warming exercise (5 minutes) in chi-gung or another form, a gentle waking through the body. Include sound in the same way, adding simple vocalization with the warming movement.  

3.    Preparation (3 minutes): Find your own place in the room, and develop a phrase that will tell us who you are, in movement and sound.  

4.    Begin: Return to the circle. 10 seconds of silence, then participants will enter the circle one at a time, on their own volition, show their welcome improvisation, and return to the circle perimeter.

NOTES

The exercise presents the challenge of the project, requesting that each of us takes a leap into a common pool of movement and sound. For individuals who have spent some years in the arts, this can be a familiar platform, and they will find it an open pathway to expression. For others, it may be difficult. To help with this, it is important for the exercise facilitator(s) to convey a feeling of invitation, of excitement to learn about each participant, and a sense of listening--to the room itself and to each person.

TUNING

Workshop, Kuala Lumpur

Photo by Andy Teirstein

Context

Improvisation is related to spontaneity. Is one ever truly spontaneous? We carry our pasts with us—our training, preconceptions and anticipations. When we begin to improvise, we fall into familiar patterns; we naturally draw on what we know. But when improvising with others, we are listening and watching one another for newness, for what we don't know. In most cases, the first improviser sets the tone for what follows, and each participant changes the aesthetic atmosphere of the room. This exercise seeks to change that quotient by adding a conductor.

Exercise

1.    Begin with all participants warmed up and ready. Musical instruments are tuned and accessible; bodies and voices are prepared through a prior warm-up. Musicians and Dancers are standing if possible, and fanned in a broad horseshoe, leaving movement space in the center.

2.    A volunteer conductor (mover or musician), stands facing the horseshoe.

3.    Start with 10 seconds of silence. This brings the room to focus and allows prevailing aesthetics to settle into equanimity. The conductor will cue people in and out, using the following tools:

a.    Eye contact. To cue a new person in (musician or mover), first direct your attention to that person, then cue them in using the right hand. Lift the hand from the wrist (upbeat), and cue by pointing to the person (downbeat).

b.    The left hand is used for dynamics (volume and energy). To elicit more volume and/or movement energy, raise the hand, palm upward moving into a grasping shape, along with a facial expression of more intensity. For less volume and energy, turn the hand palm down with a calming expression. 

c.     To cue more than one person at once, first indicate those to be cued with left hand pointing and an anticipatory expression (eyebrows up), then cue with the right hand.

d.    To indicate that a person or persons are to drop out, direct your attention to them, and draw the right hand into a lizard’s tail shape, bringing fingers and thumb together at the end.

e.    To draw the group a close, use both hands opening to all, and two closing lizard tails.

Notes

The exercise brings listening and watching to the foreground. Since the conductor will make decisions on entrances, exits, and intensity, each participant will focus on the evolving movement/sound landscape. The Sufi poet Rumi’s phrase, “take off your head” applies here, as you cannot know when you will be cued in.  When you are, seek to enter into the experience with fresh ears and eyes (avoid doing anything prepared). Movers will enter the circle when cued, and may either return to the periphery or go into stillness when cued out.

Orientation

Camel with Instruments, The Negev

Photo by Andy Teirstein

COntext

The spaces within which we meet, work, and move affect our emotional worlds. When we improvise in a collaborative context, the space around us provides an expressive landscape. In exploring this landscape, we begin to understand and relate to one another. The decisions we make about things like pitch, locomotion, and dynamics are guided by our emotional resources as they inhabit the space, made visible in dance and music.  This is a Two-Part Exercise

Exercise

Part One

1.    Begin with all participants warmed up and ready. Musical instruments are tuned and accessible; bodies and voices are prepared through a prior warm-up. Musicians and dancers are spread out through the space.

 2.    When you hear each prompt, respond with movement and/or music. Take time after each of the three prompts. Your response will be a short phrase (4-8 seconds), more or less in place. We will call this place HERE.

a.    I am in my house, the place I feel most at home

b.    I am stepping into the season of Spring

c.     I am in the presence of my beloved, my soulmate

 3.    Find a different space in the room (both dancers and musicians), which we will call THERE, and create three new phrases responding to the following:

a.    I am in trouble

b.    I am in exile

c.     I am lost

 4.    Begin in the HERE place. Do all three phrases, and then move to the THERE place. Repeat, learning to associate these two phrase groups with their places.

 5.    Be conscious of the transition between the two places. Carve the space (and the music) as you move from HERE to THERE, and back. Listen and observe the others as they pass you, allowing your phrases to change in response to the evolving room.

Part Two

1.    Break into groups of 3 (or up to 5, if a big gathering), with at least one musician in each group.

2.    Each member teaches the others their six phrases

3.    Each group will create a piece drawing on their shared phrases.

a.    Not all group members need to be in the showing space at the same time.

b.    The showed work can begin with music and/or movement

c.     The phrases can change as the group piece develops.

Notes

The exercise maps an emotional geography, a continuum between “HERE” and “THERE.” In moving between these two places in the room, participants explore the transitional tension between them, both physically and in sound. This exercise, and others like it, provides a unifying framework in which individual artists from disparate cultures explore a shared experience.

the translator

Rune Singers of the Finnish Kalevala

(19th century. Source unknown)

CONTEXT

One of the most basic forms of dialogue is an exchange of stories. One imagines travelers from different countries, over the centuries, sharing their stories around a campfire. And, in a form of cultural evolution, the story may be retold, with changes, from one storyteller to the next. In this exercise, two individuals are paired in dialogue. They teach one another their stories and then “translate” them. 

Exercise

1.    Take pen and paper into a corner, and jot down the outline of a personal story, with a beginning, middle and end. This can be a life incident, a biographical sequence depicting a transformative moment, or a tale from your community that you find significant.

2.    Musicians and dancers are placed into pairs

3.    Take turns telling your partner your story. Listen carefully, because it will be your task to tell the other person’s story in your own words, in the first person. Allow at least 20 minutes each.

4.    Standing, the dancer will tell the musician’s story. The musician will create a soundscape to the dancer’s telling, one that also tells the story in sound. Pause, reset.

5.    The musician will stand and tell the dancer’s story, as the dancer tells the story in movement. This can happen in silence.

Notes

This exercise creates a deeper level of connection and trust, from one individual to another. In this way it is something of an adventure, requiring some courage and a modicum of already existing trust, which can be extended from the group’s mutual agreement to embark on the exercise. In this way, it provides us with a roadmap for an exchange of personal expression. We give something of ourselves to the other, knowing it will change. In return, we have the pleasure of engaging with the equally personal story given by the other. The authentic story is still told by its original teller, but in the language of music or dance.