Systems of movement

SYSTEMS OF MOVEMENT - The development of graphic scores for movements and excerpts of choreographies came out of a personal need to visualise my thoughts on paper. Very intuitively, it became my attempt to capture the specific knowledge of a choreography and place it from the body on to the paper. This process naturally is a very abstract one and even though it is influenced and informed by many other systems of movement notation, the intent was never to map out exact instructions for a future reproduction of a choreography but rather to communicate movement through a different medium. The first scores were less a manual and more a trace of something. To achieve a visual and imaginative experience of movement, my system of scoring has to carry the right amount of information for it to set a scene without being overly explanatory or overly ambigious. As in the mapping of a landscape, the inclusion of an index and explanatory textual pharagraphs add to the process of communication between the scores and the imagination. They are a “way in” - the little push to go down the rabbit hole, creating an imaginary world of movement for an audience to experience their body as a dancing body, a body they might have never felt like this before. The imagination can take us places the body cannot. Mostly this journey of the mind is reserved for music and literature, movement is usually a spacial experience. Scoring movement removes this fixed parameter of a body moving in space and invites a more open approach to the matter. Since a drawing of movement can only capture a planar motion within a certain time frame and rhythm - What? When? For how long? - leaving out the spacial depth that a choreography usually has, textual components describing the spaciality both in space and on the body - Where? - and the quality of the movement - How? - add tremendously to the understanding of the scores. There are many forms this project can take. For the purpose of a communicative flow between the scores and the spectator the obvious choice for me seems to be a book. Something personal to take home, to a space where you feel safe to let your imagination wander – and wonder. But there is something rigid and limited about the format of a book. The constraint imposed by pages seems too stagnant for a flow of movement to pass through them. Therefore choosing a scroll of many meters of one paper connects not only back to ancient scripture but also to the limitlessness of the imagination. There are no rectangles, things move from one place to another fluidly and in circular motions. Combining the physical experience of unrolling a scroll, the sensation of the paper and the sound of friction with the visual experience of patterns, colours and letters is my attempt to create an inspired scripture. Systems communicate reciprocally with one another, a sense thus emerges through circular flows. A scroll filled with systems of movement invites for this kind of multiplicity, an endless exchange between the scores and the imagination. The act of thinking as the act of doing. Or in the words of Yvonne Rainer: “The mind is a muscle.” SYSTEMS OF MOVEMENT was presented in Reykjavik from August 16th-18th 2017. Additionally to the print file for the book scroll, a video documentation and pictures of the book launch and exhibition opening are uploaded to Skemman