Exploring Resonance and Identity in Contemporary Dance Improvisation

The project I am presenting is a series of improvisational dance works that I have edited together into a dance film. A large percentage of dance training emphasizes set choreography: “knowing what they were doing in the moment and being certain of what movement came next,” meanwhile improvisation is “the act of spontaneous dance composition comprised of implicit (habitual/prereflective actions) and explicit (consciously directed) choreographic actions” (Martin, 2017). The current project explores the continuum that exists between choreography and improvisation. To drive and inspire the movement, I utilize a score of ideas that internationally renowned dancer/educator Anya Cloud helped me create. The current score includes explorations of physical movement prompts, emotional prompts, imagery and imagination, relationship to time, space, and light, perceptions of gender, performativity and internalization, fantasy and reality, as well as anything else that may arise in a specific moment in time and how that moment relates to infinite other moments. The current dance film is also a part of a broader ongoing project. Two other Dance BFA students and I take videos of our dancing once a week, then share a snippet of that performance each week for eight weeks. The version of this project that I am currently sharing is an edited film that includes dancing from the first three weeks out of the total eight. Another cumulative version of the dance film will be edited and shared at the end of the eight weeks