Conscious Trance

Towards the end of the process - in the week of the performances - I introduced my dancers to what I later decided to call "conscious trance". This term emerged in classes with Kristel when each of us (the students) had to share their practice and methods. As I was sharing my things the term "conscious trance" came up and I could immediately connect to it. It fit so well with what I was describing and so I decided to take it. The idea behind "conscious trance" is to be here and now. Nothing is planned, I am in the space and in the now and that is it. I connect to myself and my body and I follow it. This kind of reminded me of the instinctive perfromance classes that we had with Gui and V in the first 2 years at Fontys. I think this conscious trance came out as a result of combining these classes together with my own practice (esepcially the one I do in my room). The conscious trance was done to one song going on repeat and before we started I only told my dancers to follow me. While we were moving - for around 20-30 minutes - nothing was said.

What About It?

• Music

• Contrast

1st & 2nd Years Feedback

This is the feedback I got from most of the teachers in my first 2 years at Fontys:

• "You can speak out more"
• "Trust yourself"
• "Believe in the movement you do"
• "You have a shy and innocent appearance"
• "You need to come out of your shell, you need to show yourself more"
• "Do not be shy"
• "Break the wall you have built"
• "Be more proactive"
• "Try to engage more verbally"
• "Quiet"

Hearing this repeatedly in each feedback week really put me down at one point. It broke me down so badly that I even started to question if I should continue with dancing. Why am I dancing if apparently I am too shy and too quiet for this path? Why am I dancing if apparently people like me will not make it? It was so devastated by this that one day I thought that "I will prove them all wrong". Why do I have to get rid off my shyness and quietness if I can use it as my strength? Not everyone has to use their voice, not everyone has to show their face. I want to go in the opposite direction. Just because I am more introverted it does not mean I am worse and will not make it, which I think many people still think that. I want to use this as a source of inspiration for my duet.

Showing

In the last week before the May vacation I had 3 rehearsals. I decided that on the 1st one I will do a showing of my duet to get some feedback, on which I can later work on during the last 2 rehearsals before the break. I invited around 10 people - BaCh students from 3rd and 4th year, some 2nd and 1st years dance academy students and one teacher. I also thought of inviting a few musicians I work with to have a different perspective but I ended up not doing that as I did not want to have too many people, I wanted to keep the group a bit smaller. Before the showing I had 1h with my dancers to warm up and to go through some changes.

Blind Warm Up

One evening I suddenly got an idea for a warm up for my next rehearsal, which was partly inspired by the feedback I got in the showing. One person said that I can work on the intention of the "spider hand" - is the hand feeling the muscles and bones? Or is it rather delicately walking through the body? - and also on the hands covering the face - is it that the dancers are looking through the hands? Do they try to go through them? What is the idea behind it? - and this gave me the idea to do a "Blind Warm Up". The dancers cover their faces in the duet a lot, thus they do not see much (the space, each other nor the audience). Moreover, in the beginning when the "spider hand" is walking through them I want them to feel as if the hand belongs to someone else, that this is the hand of the loved one that passed away and they feel their presence through that hand. When someone is blind the other senses are much more sensitive and active and through this warm up I wanted to especially activate their sense of touch. I do not want the “spider hand” to just walk on their body, I want it to have purpose and meaning. I want the dancers to imagine that the hand does not know what is is walking on, that through this walking it discovers what it is walking on and at the same time the body figures out what it is that is walking on it. The hand does not know and the body does not know because they cannot see - what other way to research and go deeper into their sense of touch than to take the vision away? (specially that not seeing and covering the eyes plays a big role in the duet).

Space

The space kind of unfolded by itself. I started with creating movement material and I did not take into consideration the space, however, once I looked at what I have, the space made sense. The only thing I changed was the beginning position. I wanted the duet to start in the left front corner but then the following diagonal would not work so I changed it to right front corner. I also thought of changing the position at the end because most of the duet is happening on the right side but I decided to let it be as it is. I thought that I should balance it more on both sides but I actually like how it is mostly on the right and that the whole ending is empty on the left side. It connects with the topic because for me the empty space represents that something (in this case someone) is gone.

Hear, Feel & Imagine Warm Up Improvisation

I decided to go further with the "hear, feel, imagine" exercise. Until now I kept is as a tool to get inpired from the music - what kind of feelings can specific music trigger, what images come to mind? - so it was more on the cognitive level and I wanted to bring it to the physicial level. Here is the structure I created for the guided improvisaiton with "hear, feel, imagine":

1. Chose a spot in the space, you can stand up, lie down or sit down. Close your eyes, listen to the music and arrive in the space.

2. What do you hear? 

3. Now we go into the second level - what do you feel? How does this music make you feel? As you think about the feelings, start slolwy waking up your body - you can shift the weight, roll your shoulders, be gentle with your body.

4. Now we go into the last level - what do you imagine?

5. From your imagination choose one image. Now you can open your eyes and move with that image through space.

6. Now the image is gone, you can never come back to it, it is like your mind is unable to recreate the image - how does that change the quality of your movement?

7. Now you start hiding your face, it is like you do not want to show people how you really feel about not being able to recreate the image or you do not want to see anything from the real world and thus you hide.

8. Find each other, give each other weight, receive the other body, support and help each other in this difficult situation.

9. As the music slowly fades out find your end position.

The music I used was "1 C A c 08.2.2" by Aleph-1 & alva noto. It played on repeat 2-3 times. This is something that came back from my research from my solo, that playing one song on repeat helps me to dive deeper into research. I used this here as well becasue I wanted my dancers to be influenced and guided by what I am saying to them and not necessarily by the music. I started the improvisation by going through the hearing, feeling and imagination levels and later I connected it with the topic of grief. That is why I told them that the image thay have in mind is gone and they can never come back to it, which is the same when a person passes away and you can never see them again. So this was not only to bring the "hear, feel, imagine" exercise to a physical level but also to connect with my concept.

Connecting With Yourself & The Topic

For the first few rehearsals I used the same kind of warm up. I started by playing a song that is more chill, a song that you can have fun with and just dance for yourself instead of showing what you can do. I played afro, house or techno music. The point was to simply connect with your body, enjoy yourself, enjoy the music and get the body moving. I told my dancers to move how they feel like moving, to imagine they are alone in their room and nobody is watching them. That was the first part of the warm up and in the second part we went into guided improvisation and research. After the first song I played different genre of music such as soundtrakcs from movies or electronic music and I guided my dancers. The tasks I gave them were for instance:

• Imagine your body is being pulled by strings from the ceiling but you do not want to be pulled up, you want to stay on the ground.
• Imagine the strings are only attached to your head so your head leads and the rest of the body follows.
• Imagine the strings go crazy and they throw you around the space.
• You want to go to the other side of the studio but it is really hard, there are obstacles on the way.
• Dancer A is the leader and dancer B follows.
• You are two magnets, both of the positive sign, you try to get together but you can never manage because of the force that is pushing you away from each other.
• Play with the idea of hiding your face.

• Play with swinging and circles.

Balance Between Planning & Instinct

I am more and more trying to give more space and allow the instinct to play a role. I learned in my solo research that going with the instinct and not knowing beforehand what I am exactly going to do in a rehearsal can get me to very interesting and valuable places. Planning is my strength and it is a great thing to have but I have to learn how to let go of it to some extent because having everything planned out stops the other things to come in, the ones that come out from instinct and spontaneity. I am figuring out what is the balance between planning and instinct and how I can use it. For example, for the "connecting with yourself & the topic" warm ups, I had a structure, I knew I want to start with connecting to the body and enjoying the music, which would be followed by guided improvisation that would be based on the topic, however, I did not know what exact tasks I am going to give my dancers and I did not always know what music I am going to use. That came on the spot, I observed the dancers, saw what happens and based on that I decided on the tasks and the music. The same balance between planning and instinct was used in the "jumping & developing" warm up. I knew what jumps I want to do, I knew what other exercises I want to include but I did not have everything set up. We would start the warm up and then I would let myself feel what is natural to do next, maybe we slow down a bit and bounce instead of jump or maybe I challenge my dancers and we go down to the floor. I activated my instinct and made decisions as things were happening. This balance between planning and instinct also came in in the creating process. Sometimes I had phrases ready for the dancers and I simply taught them but there were also times when I saw something in their warm up improvisation and I created on the spot during the rehearsal with them. 

Duet Feedback

There were 4 things I asked from the audience (in this exact order):

• What worked?
• What did not work?
• What would be your feedforward?
• What are some images, thoughts or feelings that come to your mind when watching it? Does it remind you of anything?

Changes

• Accepting breath 

In the beginning one dancer breaths in and out which is a cue for the other one to start her spider hand. It was just a regular breath that served as a cue and because it was just a cue it felt a bit of out of nowhere so we worked on it and saw how we can connect it with the theme. I told the dancer that the breath it is like an acceptance breath, you know what happened (someone passed away) but you accepted it and are in peace with it now so it is a long breath in and a long breath out.

• Stomping heel as a cue

When the dancers go down and up in the beginning, at first they had to count so that they would go at the same time but that was not really working so I decided that dancer that is standing will give the cue by stomping their heel on the floor. It worked well because as she is developing the shaking the feet start to go off the ground a bit so the heel comes naturally.

• Falling down when rolling up

In the beginning (after the last drop where both dancers take some time to stay still in their position) they roll up to a standing position looking up. Originally they were both smoothly rolling up but I added a fall/losing balance to one of the dancer's rolling. It looks more real and it is also like a small teaser/introduction to the being off balance and waving after the rocking walking part.

• Rocking walking not choreographed

The rocking part is fully choreographed but the last part, after the 1-and-2 quick change something was off for me. I wanted the dancers to switch positions with it and then come back to the original one but it was not working, it looked very forced. During one rehearsal I took time to change it but it was very hard and it was not really working. I eventually told the dancers to keep the steps and the essence but that they can do the steps as they want and they stay connected with each other, so for example if one of them changes the direction then the other one follows or they both go in opposite direction etc. That worked quite well because they are in synchronization the whole first part of walking and rocking, then they break out for a little bit and then they come back together for the repeated movement. 

• Fall and throw instead of bump

Fall and throw brings already the circular motion which connects to the next part (rolling and floorwork). The bumping did not feel honest and it kind of disrupted the flow.

• More "hands under"

In the floorwork part there was this moment where the dancer do 3 circles with their hands going under their body. In the showing one person said that it was a very nice moment but that it was gone relaly fast so maybe I can make it longer or have it also somewhere else. I agreed becasue the other thigns that are in the floorwork part keep on repeating and are done multiple times so that the audience can see it over and over again and that one was done only once. Due to that I boruhgt that movement earlier a few times (but only one circle) and at the end (the 3 circles) was like the accumulation of the ones that took place before. 

• Music fades out and voice fades in

I decided to not have the silence between the song and the voice. I played with the editing of the music and the voice and it worked really well to fade the music out and at the same time fade in the voice so it is as if the voice is making its way through the music. This worked really well because at the end of the song there is this one continuous sound and the voice accompanies it well. What is more, in the showing I did, one person said that you can hear in the music that it is about to end, it is predictable and that it is a bit strange to have silnce and then another sound. That was also the reason why I thought of trying something else.

"Carbon 15 - Ningxia Province, China"

Graham Hadfield

"Valsalva Maneuver"

Pomassl

"Lassie 2005 soundtracks-01 - school gates"

Adrian Johnston

Lights

The lights, similairly to my solo, came as the last part of the process. I had two things in mind but all the rest evolved at the end. One of the things was that I only want to use white lights, I do not want any other colors like blue, green or red. I want to keep it simple with black costume and black space and white light. Having these two opposite colors connects with the idea of life and death. The other thing was that I wanted to have a spotlight for the beginning. The dancers stay on one spot, the hand plays the main role and I wanted to give all the attention to that. There were similarities with my solo, especially with the idea that I like to keep the space quite dark and only have the dancers visible. Here, however, that was not always possible, especially in the floorwork part. For that section I needed to use top lights as the dancers are all in black on a black floor and with the towers (which I use a lot) they are not visible so I needed something to lighten the floor. I am not a fan of using top lights but in this case they really worked. In comparison with the towers, top lights make the workl more heavy and that really went togteher with the floorwork part as it looked like as if the lights were pushing down the dancers onto the floor.

Jumping & Developing 

After some rehearsals I decided to stop with the guided improvisation as a  warm up. It was due to the fact that I had enough of research to put into the duet. Before I started rehearsals with my dancers I already had ideas for the movement material as I did physical research myself and I found some new things by observing my dancers. Thus after a few guided improvisations I did not need to look for more things as I did not want to end up like in my solo where I put way too many things in one short choreography. I thought of changing up the warm up also because I wanted to introduce the dancers to something different, to give them something new to experience and also to practice the stamina as there is a part in the duet that is very physical and fast and stamina training would be good for that. I decided to go back to jumps which I do a lot myself to warm up my body. I would start with jumps, which I had planned beforehand, and later on other things would come up. We shaked the shoulders, threw the arms in different direcations, went to the floor and did some exercises on a diagonal such as rolls or dragging yourself to the other side. This was all happening in one flow, there was no stops, one thing was smoothly transitioning into the next thing and this would last for around 20 minutes. In this warm up, similarly to "connecting with yourself & the topic", both planning and instinct were used. 

What worked?

• Repetition - diagonal, hand circles & one hand that covers the face (nice that it comes back), repetition + its build up
• Contrast with the music
• Choice of music - it goes in the same direction as the dance
• Hiding the face
• Spider hand 
• The simplicity is inviting, the face is covered and the simplicity of how it is hidden keeps is open enough for the audience to feel invited to watch the piece

Swoje przeżyłem, wszystko w życiu mi przebiegało bardzo dobrze. Mam rodzinę, mam dzieci, mam wnuki, jak się trochę jeszcze pokręcę to może się jakiś prawnuk znajdzie. Także pośpiechu nie ma i się nie spieszę nigdzie, ale też jak mówiłem już od życia nie oczekuję niczego, już nic więcej nie mogę się spodziewać, mam dobrze poukładane w tej chwili. Stan życia taki jaki istnieje w tej chwili może istnieć, to może istnieć, a jeżeli przyjdzie koniec to nie będę niczego żałował, no bo taka jest kolej rzeczy i tak to wygląda. Uważam, że życie miałem dobre, że wszystko przebiegało jak trzeba no i koniec, tyle, no. Kolacyjnego byś coś zjadł? Pewnie byś zjadł.

I lived my part, everything in my life went well. I have a family, kids, grandchildren and if I hang around a lil longer then I might have some great-grandchildren. There is no rush, I am not in a hurry and, like I said before, I don’t expect anything from life anymore, I can’t expect more, I have it all settled at this moment. The state of life that I am in now can stay and if the end comes I won’t regret anything because that’s just the order of things, this is what it looks like. I think I had a good life, that everything went as it was supposed to go and that’s it. Yep. Would you eat something for dinner? I think you would. 

Few years ago, before my grandpa died, my brother did an interview with him. Christmas Eve of 2022 was the first one without any of my grandparents - my last grandpa passed away in September that year. My brother edited a short audio clip out of the few hours of the interview and my dad played it as we all sat at the table. We all got tears in our eyes, it was a very special and emotional moment. As I decided that I want to work with grief, I asked my brother if he can send me the audio clip that was played in the Christmas Eve so that I can see if it can be something I can use for my duet. The 2 above texts are extracts from that clip that I am thinking of using at the end of the performance. I would project the translation on the back wall as I think that what my grandpa says is very beautiful and he speaks very positively which will bring some lightness into this heavy topic.

Ja lotnikiem będę, na samolot wsiądę.

Motor warczy szur szur szur, a ja pędzę pośród chmur.

I will be an aviator, I will get on a plane

The engine roars vroom vroom vroom and I am flying through the clouds.

Analyzing Movement

For the duet I took a different approach than for the solo. For the solo I was very busy with analyzing every movement, I needed to know for myself why I am doing it and what is its meaning. For the duet I had movement ideas such as not showing the face, grabbing with one hand the elbow of the other arm and keeping it there as well as circular movement but I did not think about why I want to have these movements or how they connect with the topic. I just felt that they need to be there so I put them there. Once after a rehearsal one of the dancers asked me if we could once take time to talk through the piece, like what is the intention in the different sections and the meaning of it. I also did that for solo bis with my dancer and I think it was good for the dancer to know where it is all coming from and get a bit of insight of my thinking process. After she asked that I took time to actually think and analyze the movements, I was like "ok, let's look at what I have, what are the things that keep appearing, what are some things that are always there, name them and think how I ended up with them". You can see on the photo on the left the things I wrote down (which I also later shared with my dancers).

As for the first solo and solo bis, I did the "hear, feel, imagine" exercise, I decided to continue with it as in both processes it was a great tool to get inspired and to get some input from the dancer (solo bis). The 3 songs on the left are the ones I used this time. For the last song I used soundtrack from "Lassie Come Home", from the 2005 version. I loved to watch that movie as a kid and I also love the soundtrack. Once, when I had a breakdown over my grandparents not being here anymore, I was listening to that soundtrack. My breakdown was actually to some extent triggered by it. It was because with many of the songs I felt two opposite things. On one hand I felt joy, on one hand I felt sadness. I found it interesting how one sound can make you feel two very distinct things. I chose this song because of this and because of how I connect with it (I love the movie, the soundtrack is beautiful, it reminds me of my childhood years) and also because I wanted to see how my dancers would react to it as I do not know if they know the movie or if they would recognize that the music comes from there.

Why Prodigy?

I started randomly listening to them one evening as I followed them on Spotify and liked some albums but never really listened to them. I fell in love with their music, they were giving me a little bit of a breakdance vibe because of all the drums and the speed at which they are played. It was giving me a lot of energy so I started to dance to it in my room. Some of the songs that I danced to and that I really liked were:

• "Breathe"
• "Breathe" - Mefjus & Camo & Krooked Remix
• "Firestarter"
• "Take Me to the Hospital"
• "Fight Fire with Fire"
• "The Day is My Enemy"

Creating On The Spot

There were times I came to a rehearsal with a prepared phrase that I was going to teach but there were also times when I did not have any material ready and I would create on the spot. I realized that the presence of my dancers helped me to create movements and to create them at a fast pace because there was this pressure coming from them, that they are waiting for me to create something that I will teach to them. I do not mean it in a negative sense, I mean it in a way that this allowed me to create movements without analyzing and thinking why I do it or how does it connect with my topic. I simply went with the feeling and used my instinct to create movements. I did not want my dancers to be waiting for a long time, so them being there helped me to really rely on my instinct, feeling and intuition and not go into my head and overanalyze every movement I make. 

Hear, Feel, Imagine - some words from my dancers

Black horses coming at me with full speed

.  

Diving in the ocean

.  

Melancholic

.  

As if I am dying over and over again in the most painless and peaceful way

.  

Losing stability

.  

This is the last time I will see you

.

Beauty & The Beast

.  

Sad but happy

.  

Like I have everything in the world I could possibly have but still feel completely sad

.  

I am in a wind storm

.  

In a memory

.  

It made me feel sad, wanted to curl in bed and stay there forever

.  

Wedding & farewell

.  

Drowning in the ocean gasping for air, sucked in a big black hole in the middle of the ocean

.  

Nostalgic

.

Grey walls

The Procedure 

I brought with me two hats for my dancers to put on so that it would cover their eyes. They put it on and I placed them in the studio far away from each other. Their first task was to find each other. They had to move (dance) carefully through the space and activate other senses except vision to find the other one. After that I did not know what I am going to do, so here again I had this balance of planning and instinct. Once they got together I let them move for a bit - I remember that I did this once, that I was dancing with someone blindfolded and it was so interesting becauce I never knew which part of their body I am touching (or I knew but after some time) and I wanted them to experience the same. Later I started to put objctes around them in the space and told them that once they come accross it they try to figure out what it is they are touching and they can incorrporate in their dance.