Jennifer Monson, Scores for archiving indeterminate systems.

Scores for archiving indeterminate systems

Based on the BIRD BRAIN Osprey Migration creative research process by Jennifer Monson

Introduction

The scores in this pamphlet are arranged in categories that reflect conceptual frameworks developed in the BIRD BRAIN Osprey Migration to generate the creative material.

Some of the scores are notes from warm-ups and are about the preparation of the body; some are regular practices designed to research orientation and navigation through our senses and perceptual shifts.

The goal of this pamphlet is to encourage people to activate the scores and create their own. The extra room on these pages is for you to write in your own scores. Participate in the archive for this project by sending copies of your scores to info@ilandart. org. Learn more about Jennifer Monson’s work by visiting the iLAND website at ilandart.org and livedancingarchive.org.

Map “Mapping not the trail but the entire territory.”

s core For an outdoor setting. From a warm-up based in releasing and/or authentic movement, one person dances for a set amount of time. For example 3- 5 minutes. 2-4 other dancers watch the first person move. The second dancer uses the dance of the first person as a map for their own dancing while the others watch. The third person uses the dance of the first and second dancer as two possible maps to create a third dance and so on. The last person to dance is integrating the experience of witnessing all of the previous maps as a way of dancing their own map. Outside on the beach, the movement leaves a literal trace in the sand so the map can be quite literal or not. Specific locations begin to register and get reinforced in each dance of the map.

s core For two people. One person closes their eyes and is given a sensory map by the other person. The person giving the map, guides their partner to places where they want to give a specific sensory experience – for example touching a surface, opening the eyes to look at something for a specifically framed visual experience, placing the ear of your partner in a place to hear a particular sound or offering your partner a specific experience of smell or taste. Take your partner to 5- 6 different experiences. Once you are finished the person who received the sensory experiences uses those as a map to move through or translate the sensory experiences into a dance.

Orientation This score was used with the audience at the beginning of every BIRD BRAIN performance.

s co re Stand with your feed on the ground and close your eyes. Notice any variations in the surface beneath your feet and how your body adjusts its weight to these differences. Notice where the weight is falling through your feet and the connection of the surface of your feet through the surface of your shoes to what is beneath you. Sense how gravity is pulling you gently towards the center of the earth.

Shift your awareness up to the surface of the skin of your face. What kind of light is falling on your face? What does the movement of air feel like?

Notice the movement of the breath as the air passes through the lips and/ or nostrils and fills the lungs, passing back out from the body, slightly warmer and holding a bit more moisture from its interaction with the interior of your body. Watch the movement of the breath rising and falling in your torso, along the sides, front and back of the body.

Once you feel you have fully arrived into this place where your two feet are standing, with your eyes remaining closed, turn to face North.

At this point, if you are with other people you can open your eyes and discuss how you know which direction North is and compare your various strategies for orienting yourself in this place.

Then everyone close your eyes again, and this time turn to face your home (this can be defined any way you would like – where you were born, where you slept the night before, where your great grandparents are from – open eyes again and notice the various trajectories that each one of us brings to this place we are gathered.

Close eyes again. Listen to a close sound. It could even be a sound inside your body. Take several minutes to fully listen to this sound. Then listen to the furthest away sound that you can hear and listen to that sound fully for several minutes. Then imagine the space between the close sound and the far away sound. What is in that space? Can you measure the distance?

What does that space feel like?

Open your eyes. Look at an object quite close to you. Notice as many details as possible – color, shape, texture, how long it’s been there, how long do you think it will be there, what do you know about it, what don’t you know about it? Then look at an object that is very far away and extrapolate the same details you noticed in the close object. Again, sense the space between the objects. What is in that space? Can you measure it? What does it feel like?

Then start to notice movement and let your attention to movement start to move you through the space, either responding to movement with your own movement or simply moving towards and away from movement that you are watching.

Arriving/Departing s co re For two people. One person arrives in a position or place on the ground. The other person very carefully and specifically traces along the ground all of the surfaces of the body where they see weight resting on the floor. The person in the place has time to not only sense the tracing but also to define this particular place for themselves, almost as though it were a landscape. When the person is done tracing, the person in the place waits to feel an impulse to move to a new place. Very carefully watching as the desire or impulse to move arrives and then as the movement begins there is a departure from the first place and an arrival in a second place. The focus is on the transition and the shift from departure to arrival and vice-a-versa. Repeat this 3- 4 times. Then the person moving from place to place continues to move without stopping and the person doing the tracing can call out ‘stop’ at any time.

Once the mover comes to stillness the tracer traces where they see weight moving into the floor. Repeat this several times as well.

Discuss and change roles.

s co re This can be done alone or with many people and is related to the above score. Arrive in a position/place on the floor. Give your body a slight rock as though you were leaving an impression in the sand. Define this place for yourself in three specific ways. It could have to be where you are in space, how the light is falling on you. How close you are to certain sounds, what you feel like, what parts of your body are touching the floor. When you have clearly defined this space for yourself wait for an impulse of touch to move you towards a second place. Letting touch be the dominate sense in your experience as you move from place 1 to place 2. Once you arrive in place two, rock again and define this space in three specific ways. Choose another sense (hearing, sight, smell) to be dominate in your experience of moving as you move on to place 3. At any point you can reverse your journey and go back to place number 2 and 1. Noticing what is the same and what is different about each place as you revisit it. Continue until you have 4- 5 places you are moving in between. Then create an improvisation moving between each of the places with a focus on different senses and changing the order in which you move through the different places until new places and transitions emerge.

Navigation “A sense of space depends basically on knowing the relations between the varied places included in it.” -- Waterman, Talbot.

s co re For a group of people. In a defined space, it could be a room or a defined outdoor area, each person selects a point of origin at the edge of the space. Looking across the space choose a destination.

While looking at your destination, walk in a direct line from your initial point of origin to the destination. Once you are at the destination, this becomes a new point of origin. Choose a second destination and walk directly there in a straight line if possible.

Repeat this process 7- 10 times. Then stop. In your minds eye retrace your steps from the initial point of origin and then walk back through that pathway until you arrive at the initial point of origin. At this point you can have a discussion with the other participants about the experience of retracing your pathway.

Repeat the whole exercise but this time run in curved lines from points of origins to the destinations. When you are finished, discuss how straight and curved lines and walking versus running might have influenced your ability to remember your experience of space. At any point in the score or throughout, sense the traces your feet and head leave in the space.

Another version:Repeat the score at another time and specifically focus on different senses as you move from each point of origin to each destination. How does each sense influence your experience of moving through space?

s co re In your mind’s eye see how you arrived here to this place. You can choose a time range (since this morning, since a week ago, a month, a year). Draw a quick map of that journey. It can be intuitive, and doesn’t have to be to scale. Next imagine the furthest place you have been from here, where you are right now. Put yourself there and in your mind’s eye travel back towards this place. What are the major landmarks? Rivers, oceans, roads, cities, mountains and other geologic features. Draw this map.

Is there a way your body can hold the scale of the map? Can you generate a choreography for the different scales of your map?

Mover & Witness

Imagery These images are taken primarily from notes of Morgan Thorson’s Skinner Releasing warm ups.

Throughout our process we practiced the form of Authentic Movement outside. This simple practice involves a mover moving with eyes closed and a witness who observes the mover. Moving outside it was inevitable that the spaces themselves became witnesses and we became witnesses of the places we were dancing in.

s co re

s co re Nest of sea sponges in the solar plexus Ribbons of seaweed twirling from a nest of sea sponges in the solar

For two people. Decide who will move first and the amount of time they will move for. The mover starts with eyes closed, waiting and listening for an impulse or response from or to the environment to move. The witness holds the space, allowing the mover to move freely as well as taking care they don’t hurt themselves with eyes closed. After the time is finished, there is time to talk. The mover usually speaks first about their experience and this is followed by the witness speaking. Change roles.

plexus Melting in and out of the sand Internal spaces expanding infinitely in all directions Softness, soft creature Instant readiness Wide soft eyes on the horizon Spiraling smoke along the bones Spiraling bones Cloud-like spaces in the spine Melting into spiraling Extending focus into space while activating peripheral vision

Location Within the Osprey Migration creative research process, location was a word used to describe a dance situation. It wasn’t a place, or a space but a set of movement and spatial relationships that could be inhabited and recreated in different situations. Although technically a location is something that could be defined by one’s spatial co-ordinates, I was reminded by some Japanese students in Tokyo that it could be like a film location, something reproduced on top of an existing place. In the sense that we were using it in the Osprey Migration, we were defining our own coordinates in dance and choreographic terms. These coordinates were conceptual limits of movement, space, timing that created a specific location. The term of location was generated from ways of understanding ecosystem – a set or relationships of entities and processes that create something beyond their own boundaries through indirect interaction.

This idea of locations came from working with energy states. I was interested in defining movement states beyond movement quality or development and also to make room for the location to respond directly to the actual ecosystem it was moving in.

We worked with this concept of locations consistently throughout the Osprey migration. Often it was part of a performance score in which one dancer created a ‘location’. Once it was established another dancer would come in and inhabit that location and then together the two dancers would create a new location.

s core Start with observing both internal and external space in your immediate environment. Gradually begin moving, tracking and collecting data about your experience. Define the movement, space and timing of your experience and gradually begin to repeat and develop the relationships between these elements until a definable ‘location’ emerges. If you are working with other dancers, you can experiment with ‘inhabiting’ each other’s location. Take turns.

Sensing/Perceiving s co re With eyes closed move towards sound while someone watches.

Then move away from sounds. Change roles with the watcher.

s co re Spend a lot of time watching something move. Come into energetic unison with that movement.

s co re Sense the movement of the water and wind in stillness. Gradually begin to move with the sensation this evokes.