I have been investigating theatre, dance and music with live performance for 40 years. I take a microscopic view on the role improvisation plays in the creation process combining my background as a maker and performer with a curiosity for advances in brain studies. I have worked with music artists, dancers, actors and text artists who share my passion for interdisciplinary real time performances. My study and practice of the body is the glue for how I combine all aspects of the performance arts.
I guide performers through physical exercises that highlight how the eyes and ears effect movement choices using my research in “why we learn to walk”. I set up exercises for musicians, text artists and vocalist during the physical work that challenge their ability to create “a band” instantly. Musicians and performers can choose to change roles in these exercises at any given time.
Creativity is messy. Three choices arise out of the messiness; Pause Flow and Exit. Each of these choices are a mountain of study and each of these choices are shared in the space under the guidance of the performer/ artists relationship to their public.
I extend the workshop towards improvisation sessions setting a fictional front in the studio space and then declare this as a platform to choose pause, flow or exit. These three choices provide the frame for a composition to take place while misunderstanding, coincidence, messiness, emotions, intuition, impulse and inspiration feed the content.
The improvisation sessions are given a delegated time frame with an option for the workshop group to shift, drop or lift the space at will. That responsibility places each individual in a position to be fully awake or they will recognisably loose the thread of the creative activity in play.
Individual development and understanding of presence and tension is critical in this workshop be it in music, text, movement, dance, figure, object or vocals. We amplify how tension reveals presence playing games I have invented that encourage vulnerability and/or expressionism.
In the improvisation sessions, individuals can elect to participate in the performative or as a viewer (front). The aim is to gather the workshop group in a creative composition process with an awareness that time is passing at different perceived speeds and that space is shifting in several dimensions at once. This awake fullness promotes individual composition alertness and an appetite for creativity.
For the Improvisation Summer Course, I will use my material to support the creation processes towards real time performances with the questions:
“What and how do we rehearse towards a real time performance?”
“How do we develop an interdisciplinary communication”
“What is a collaboration for an artist?”
“What is your relationship to public?
“How does that relationship effect the way you compose your work”?