Sunday Skype Discussions 27th Sep 2020

Lots discussed during last nights's Skype call centered around the notions of knowledge, learning and information. 

Part of the conversation flowed between ideas around embodied knowledge, and the challenges around capturing, analyzing and finding or making meaning from our lived experiences. I've continued to think around experimenting filming parts of practice, as way of capturing data to reflect on for the purposes of my studies, and the inherent advantages, limitations and ethical considerations around that. 

Many interesting questions around the relationship between performing artists and audiences came to light after Rhoda shared her emotional response to being filming during a performance without prior permission or consent, and it's jogged my memory of Anna Halprin's notion of 'witnesses' (Halprin, 2019), which I'd like to unpack further. In her writings about her creative process, Haplrin suggests that whilst an audience member might come to a performance to be entertained, her work encourages connections between those watching (witnesses) and those performing that deepens the experience for everyone;

'Being a witness is different from being an audience member. A witness participates by watching and then sharing her experience of what she saw.....no-one is outside the circle of the performance: the dancers do it for themselves and the witnesses; the witnesses watch it for themselves and to support the dancers'. (Halprin, 2019, pp.79). 

For me this seems to suggest that there is potential for witnesses to learn something about themselves through watching the performers, and that being an audience member perhaps isn't always a passive role. And, through engaging in a performance as a shared experience, how might we deepen or enrich the ideas we're exploring or expressing? 

Whilst my research is predominantly concerned with the first person experience, and in this sense isn't about performing something to audiences, I wonder what might emerge through working in this way; moving in the presence of a witness, and witnessing another moving. How much might a witness need to know about 'what' is it I'm exploring, how might we share our thoughts/reflections on watching each other with a critical eye but without judgement? What might be uncovered through a cyclical process of moving, witnessing, responding?


Halprin, A. (2019) Making dancers that matter: resources for community creativity. Wesleyan University Press. 

Comments

  1. Stella28 September 2020 at 06:14

    Hi Sophie - Great blog - I'll have a look at Halpin's work it sounds interesting.
    I'm interested in the audience as witness but also in the people we dance with as witness and extending out to how we witness ourselves. I'm reading Kinethetic Empathy (Reynolds & Reason), it talks about co-constructed meaning in the witness process. Which I think is interesting for research, the notion that all meaning is co-constructed because there is always the action and the witness to that action (even if they are the same person).

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

'White Moments'

After chatting with a family member this morning, I've identified that I'm allowing myself to feel a little overwhelmed with the scale and depth of MA study, and noticing some self doubt creeping in. I seem to be going over a series of distracting thoughts at the moment; have I got the study skills for university-level work based learning? Can I manage dedicated study time alongside my work commitments? Where do I start with the recommended reading? Why am I doubting my ability to tackle this new challenge? I was grateful to have these questions repeated back to me over the phone, and hear and identify that ultimately I'm lacking in confidence and I'm experiencing this having a knock on effect to the way in which I'm approaching this learning journey. I think we all can identify that having a lack of confidence can impact our sense of well being, and it's encouraged me to think more deeply about how I perceive the impact of confidence (or lack of in this case)...
Read more

Shifting Expectation to Intention?

A number of lines of inquiry seemed to emerge from the Skype discussion group on Sunday; the mind-body presence of self in our training and current practice, and the notion of expectation, evaluation and assessment stood out for me.  Both topics have continued to feel pertinent to me this week. With one of my freelance hats on, I'm starting to rework a piece of choreography created with and for the youth dance company I work with. This time round, the cast has changed, and it's been months since we've rehearsed the piece.  During the youth company session yesterday, I found myself opening a discussion around our expectations of reworking the piece and I found myself trying to strike a balance between the expectations I have of myself,  the expectations of the performers, the expectation of the audience, and the expectations of the producer/technical team I work alongside to make the performance happen.  To a certain extent, I can adopt strategies which support me to...
Read more