Brief Analysis of Research Questions and Aims/Objectives

Ò  Considering that dance is a predominantly visual art form, how can one create choreography without sight?

Ò   Does the absence of sight induce an instinctual way of moving?

Ò  Does removing sight allow us to disregard the idea of being aesthetically pleasing?

Ò  How does the communication between the choreographer the dancer influence improvisation without sight?

Relating to our processes through practical experimentation, choreography can be created without sight in a variety of ways. Each experiment differentiates in themes such as being taken to an unknown location, using a score and touch with audio being the key features to choreography without having the expectancy of sight.

In relation to our aims and objectives, these processes have been opportunely successful to create movement without sight by feeling the space, the use of stimuli, textures and atmosphere to influence the minds-eye to devise movement from these factors.

Removing sight allows us to disregard the idea of being aesthetically pleasing through moving instinctually. The absence of sight makes you think less about making your improvisation or choreography pleasing to an audience, you then consider the thought process behind the movement. Due to not being able to use the appearance of the space around you to create or inspire, you have the chance to use your mind and imagination to its limits. This was proven through the process of Terri and Jess taking part in the photograph experiment. Their movements were completely instinctual though being influenced by the body language and behaviour that was given to them. Jess and Terri state that they have not improvised like this before; they performed movements that do not come natural to them, however they happened instinctually through this process.

In terms of the relation between the choreographer and the dancer consists of the choreographer’s voice to provide safety and security when improvising. With each experimental process we have collaborated and advanced our trust of each other by working as a team practically and theoretically. Equally we have researched into gathering information about practisoners, experiments and methodologies with commitment by building a strong collaborative team throughout the process.

We were planning to use non-visual scenography to influence the performance atmosphere, however due to the time-frame of this practise; this aim unfortunately was not experimented and can be explored in the future.

Brief analysis relating to Mana Hashimoto

• Process and improvisation structures draw on concepts of touching, embodying an experience and/or visual imagery as stimuli to create movement material. These techniques are shared with Mana Hashimoto, a Japanese dance artist who provides workshops which aim to “develop the awareness on the senses such as smell, touch, sounds without using the sight information, researching the movements hidden in human bodies.”
• Hashimoto lost her sight in 1998 and explores and shares movement using her other senses. Reference points took the foundation of her concepts and transposes them into other environments to develop the idea in alternative directions – seeking to discover the possibilities of how our bodies move without visual factors, such as visual imagery, spatial awareness and body awareness through touch and sound, awareness of our exterior and interior atmosphere/experience.
•  Our resulting movement material was developed through using this concept in improvisation experiments then choreographed with composition considered. Material is mainly constructed from original improvisation – which demonstrates instinctive responses to experiments.
•            Progress and exploration was very productive and efficient – meaning that instinctive movement came naturally, therefor work was produced quickly.

Hashimoto, M. (year unknown) Available at: http://www.manahashimoto.com/bio/ (Accessed: 20/05/2014)

Terri's score workshop

Terri devised a session, in which she took the role of director - providing Amy and I with instruction and a score - which we used as a stimulus, whilst wearing the cotton filled goggles, forcing us to use touch to understand the score. Terri's score was made out of paper and tape to form angular patterns. She also instructed us to consider pathways and relationship with the space.

This was the first time I had improvised with the complete, absence of sight. My balance was off and I often needed to go back to walls to work out where I was in the space. These moments interrupted my improvisation, however Terri made the choice to keep those elements in the choreography, as they showed how I instinctively began to feel or reach out to understand my spacing - enabling me to move confidently in the space.

The improvisation itself made me consider how my body related to the space in angular moments and pathways, with an emphasis on touch. By this I mean, I felt the space, it's linear flooring, walls and edges, I felt myself extending and moving parallel to lines, contrasting with how I normally move in space - which is to judge spacing and aesthetics through looking.

Regarding interpreting the score, although shapes were angular, textures were slightly rounded and uneven. This translated into movement, were I played with angular pathways in which my body's rigid movement deteriorated and became more indirect with moments of softness/flowing.

Working, sightless, with a stimulus that provokes touch, forced me to move differently. I dabbled between simply moving in the space, using touch to understand the space and relating to the space with improvised angular pathways and movement. The workshop ended up being very productive - so much of my movement was just 'feeling' - instinct - which was a direct result of feeling the score and space Terri provided. The involuntary elements were interesting. Balance, my need for a reference in the space or the splaying of  toes and fingers could be seen as instinctual, however if Terri's structure had not contained spatial and angular references - would I still instinctively be attracted to those reference points? It raised a question for me: What is the line between instinctive movement and reaction to situation/environment, or as a human species - how much of our movement is actually instinct, and how much is culturally influenced? This would be interesting to research in the future.

Sound & Fury Theatre Company

http://metro.co.uk/2012/02/28/cutting-edge-theatre-company-sound-fury-revelation-is-born-of-darkness-333580/

An article interviewing two founding members of Sound & Fury Theatre Company, Mark Espiner and Dan Jones, about "what the absence of light can do for the other senses. In particular...it makes the whole audience acutely sensitised to the whole world of sound."

Terri – Unseen photos experience

I found Amy’s experiment very interesting. She picked 3 photographs to work with as stimuli and for each one she placed Jess and I, both wearing goggles to block our sight, into positions relevant to the photo. Once I was positioned I tried to imagine myself as an image of stimuli and questioned the possibilities of what situation I may be in. It was also interesting as I knew Jess was in the space but I had no idea if she was in the same position as me, where she was in the space in relation to me and therefore what image we were creating together. Following Amy placing us, she then gave an emotion or behaviour each to take on when improvising. For the first two I was given cautious and upset/depressed. For these I was less of aware of Jess and became very embodied into my own movement and reactions to the stimuli. For the final image I was told to be sneaky, which in turn led me to listen out for Jess in the space so I could follow her or be sneaky around her. It felt very humourous and almost like a game of cat and mouse and when watching the video footage back, it was funny but also something that could go further into creating a piece.

Each time we did this it really made me less aware of trying to make something aesthetically pleasing to watch, and more about internal expression of possible behaviours and using my imagination of what I was and how the position felt to create movement material. From this I discovered new movement that I may have never used before in this context if I had not done this exploration with Amy.

Terri - Score workshop exploration

For my individual experiment I decided to make the score (I had already created as explained earlier) accessible for Amy and Jess to touch. From this they both spent some time feeling the score, and I then asked them to improvise from what they interpreted from it. From feedback Amy said that she took into consideration the idea of curves and edges and paid attention to what her hands were doing whilst feeling the score. Her space was based on the section of the score that she felt repeatedly during the exploration. Jess had awareness of the direction of her body and where she was placing certain parts of her body. Jess aimed to keep it direct through the space and used the corner of the studio as her reference point.

There were many possibilities for movement that could have been interpreted from the score due to how I made it. Although I like working with angles and geometric shapes, I chose to create the score using rolled up pieces of tissue paper to create a texture that Amy and Jess may have chosen to work from. I could of chose to use something harder with defined edges but this risked both of them going back to movement they may have already used rather than using the score as the stimulus. The material that was created reflected the score in various ways and the space in which Amy and Jess performed it appeared to work on a similar plane to one another even though they were unaware of where each other was within the space. I found this interesting, as again, planes of which movement is performed is something I have explored in the past and this brought my attention to how aware I can be of movement in space in the future.

Here is the score and an edited video from the workshop:

Amy - Experiment for individual choreographic development

After much thought and discussion of ideas, I decided to work towards progressing as a director/choreographer and to experiment with the idea of directing my 'goggled/blind' participants through poses using a photograph. The photographs I used for the experiment were:

 www.funnyvooz.com
www.dreamstime.com

www.elitedaily.com


For these images I placed Terri  and Jess using voice and touch to direct the girls into the exact position of the photograph and gave them both a mood/emotion to inspire their movement for improvisation. Through this experiment I am hoping to create the image and make the photograph come to life through the participants awareness of body language and feeling/dynamic. With the absence of sight and complete sense of voice and touch, this can inspire movement and imagination for choreography by feeling aware of a particular shape given to your body. This embodied experience can assist ways of choreographing through the use of direction and knowing where to start. In the videos, (I will post shortly) you will see how Jess and Terri took the detail of the pose into consideration throughout their improvisation as I also asked the girls to be aware of choreographic devices when improvising such as fragmentation, instrumentation, etc. 

We will be using this experiment in the lecture demonstration as a live product to involve the audience and gather how they felt from this experience and what they thought the pose was and how they might have been performing. As the audience are goggled, they will have no knowledge of the pose they are taking or what the situation of the photograph may be. It's all part of the experiment and the experience. 

It will  also be interesting to see what different qualities immerse from each individual and if it works as a piece of dance... We will see.  

Humour in dance: Where is it? - CJ, Soleau

http://search.proquest.com.login.library.ucs.ac.uk/docview/215778220

Susan Leigh Foster's - Choreographing Empathy

http://search.proquest.com.login.library.ucs.ac.uk/docview/752072869

Mana Hashimoto - "Dance Without Sight"

Mana Hashimoto is a blind dancer that provides workshops for people to experience dance using all other senses such as touch, smell and sounds without using sight information to create dance. Mana's workshops stem and share very similar information to our ideas and will be interesting to research more into her work. 

"To dance is to surrender my body and soul to unknown possiblilties. I hear, I smell, I feel, I live, I dance." - Mana Hashimoto

http://www.manahashimoto.com

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/280110  -  "Dance Without Sight" Workshop information.

The Senses in Performance

We have been reading from selected chapters in this book:

Introduction by Andre Lepecki and Sally Banes
Chapter 12 - Seeing Nothing, Now hear this... by Martin Welton
Chapter 14 -Tangible Acts, Touch Performances by Jennifer Fisher

Banes, S. and Lepecki, A. (2007) The senses in performance . New York; London: Routledge. (Worlds of performance).

Tales of the Bodiless

http://www.eszter-salamon.com/WWW/talesofthebodiless.htm

This webpage gives insight into a performance called Tales of the Bodiless. It is a piece that predominantly uses sound and light to play with the audiences senses. It consists of four 'tales', which requires the audience members to re-adjust their listening and looking as each tale take place. The 'effects' of fog and lights make the audience question whether the performer is moving or if the light is moving them.

Instinct or Intuition?

We have previously spoken about how removing our sight can induce an instinctual way of moving as you are not influenced by anything or anyone around you. In discussion the question was raised of 'do we mean instinct or intuition?' To start investigating this we found the definition of both words:

Instinct:

noun

an innate, typically fixed pattern of behaviour in animals in response to certain stimuli.

"the homing instinct"

adjective

formal

imbued or filled with (a quality, especially a desirable one).

"these canvases are instinct with passion"

Intuition

noun

the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

"we shall allow our intuition to guide us"

a thing that one knows or considers likely form instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.

We found that a synonym of intuition is instinct, therefore in the case of our practice as research we are focusing on creating instinctual movement from the unseen stimuli we are working from.

These definitions can be found at:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=instinct+definition&rlz=2C1TEUA_enGB0536GB0536&oq=instinct+defin&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l4.2942j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=instinct+definition

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=instinct+definition&rlz=2C1TEUA_enGB0536GB0536&oq=instinct+defin&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l4.2942j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=intuition+definition  

Quote

"In writing history, theory, or criticism of the senses in performance, one is faced with significant challenges. For instance, a descriptive language for tastes, textures, aromas, and sounds (as performance devices) that is as rich and detailed as that for sight and musical or verbal sounds has yet to be developed."

This is an interesting quote from The senses in performance by Sally Banes and Andre Lepecki that relates to the experiments/explorations we have been doing. We have found as a group that talking about what we feel, hear and smell has been a lot harder than we first thought. It has also been difficult to fully translate this into choreography. How do you choreograph a movement that represents a texture, sound, or scent? This is something we are taking into consideration whilst choreographing material for a short final piece.

Banes, S. and Lepecki, A. (2007) The senses in performance . New York; London: Routledge. (Worlds of performance).

Unseen Objects

We had a small improvisation session at home using unseen objects as our stimuli. Here is a short video of each of our responses to the object we were given:

Terri - Unknown Location Experience

Jess led us to an unseen location and Amy and I were wearing goggles stuffed with cotton pads to block our sight so we had no sense of where we were or where we were going. The journey to the location felt like it took a long time and consisted of various surfaces, such as bumpy, uneven ground, smooth concrete pathways and grass. When we arrived to the location I felt slightly paranoid that I was being watched even though we were told there was no one around. Jess placed Amy and I into the space and gave us instructions and things to focus on, for example how our balance was, what the space felt like and how our perception of time felt. The time felt neither fast nor slow due to the noise of cars. This regular rhythm of the cars made me feel like time was continuous. My balance felt fine whilst standing still, only that my right leg felt higher than my left due to the uneven surface.

Although we could not see I could still take in the light. My starting point appeared dark and therefore made me feel like the space was small around me. As we started to move I bumped into what felt like a wall, this enforced my imagination of a small space. As I explored the texture of the wall I discovered that is not what it was. It had a curved top and was very rough.

As we explored the location further I used my feet a lot to identify if there was anything in front of me. I was very cautious and careful with the way I was moving and did not feel confident to be more open with my movement; I remained closed in throughout.

There were many textures at this location, such as rough but circular edges, smooth stoned walls with sharp edges, soft sponge-like grass, rough paving slabs and even paths.

Unknown Location (1) experiment

Materials

• 2 dancers - Amy Bell and Terri Carter
• 2 pairs of goggles and cotton wool to eliminate sight
• Voice recorder and/or video camera

Improv. structure

Starting point: Atrium building. Amy and Terri place goggles with cotton wool in over their eyes.

Amy and Terri are guided, now completely sightless, to Location 1.

Note: Goggles were applied before reaching location to experience a journey without sight and so that they had no visual reference points that would influence their movement. This was to ensure movement purely comes from touch and sensations.

Arrive at Location 1.

After being placed in the unknown space, bring awareness to surrounding atmosphere - noise, air, texture of the ground beneath feet. Take a moment for stillness and then bring awareness to the body - breath, how do you feel? i.e. nervous/claustrophobic or confident/free. Is this reflected in posture/movement?

	Space	Time	Balance	Touch/sensations
i.e	Restricted/open	Slow/fast/broken	Controlled/falling	Soft/rigid/attract/repel
Terri	Space feels small, conscious of walking into obstacles, uneven ground.	Journey to location felt long. In location – nearby car noise gives a sense of regular time. As the experiment progresses to quieter area, time feels longer – maybe because she cannot use car noise as reference. Journey back to campus – quick.	Off balance when ground is more uneven i.e. slopes to paths.	Cold stone/walls. Dry hands. Disorientated. Using shapes of objects as reference points. Dark areas/sunny areas in location – affects temperature. Repelled by soft furry textures – moss/webs. Movement is small, nervous “I don’t feel like I want to do any dancing” even in an open space. Repeats padding of foot a lot. “I don’t think I can”…do proper improv.
Amy	Space feels open, like a “big bubble”, air feels thick through fingers – like water. Hair keeps tickling face. Soft grassy ground.	Long journey to location. Now in location, time feels normal. Intensity of lots of sensations affect sense of time – time begins to drag. Journey back to campus – quick.	Feels grounded – balance not affected.	Car sound really close. Disorientated. Repelled by cold, stone, rigid objects – imagining gravestones and sentimental value. Dark areas/sunny areas in location – affects temperature. Attracted to softer textures – grass. Tends to reach and extend to feel surroundings –fairly confidently - with occasional padding of foot in smaller spaces – “I know that that’s a really key movement I’ve done”. Agree with Terri – moving/dancing properly seems unachievable in this environment. Hypersensitivity in touch and sound begins to make her hungry.

Location has remained unknown to Amy and Terri to prevent visual/concepts to influence movement.

The experiment did not go exactly to plan, but was still very productive. Originally, movement was to be improved in location, however, the experience was much more intense than predicted - making the girls feel that it was not possible to begin to dance when they had not yet felt comfortable in moving normally without inhibition. Though this feeling of stunted physicality was shared by both Amy and Terri, their movement quality on location was contrasting.

Amy was generally more confident without sight, she took my hand on journey to location, where as Terri felt more comfortable by linking arms. Amy's movements were generally open and stretched out, regular speed with occasional padding of foot or tracing surfaces to help with spatial awareness. Terri's movements were minimal, lots of padding her feet and feeling objects in location. Movements from each dancer reflects their initial response to the space - where Amy felt like she had lots of space to move freely in - like a "big bubble" around her, where as Terri felt the space had obstacles that she was worried about knocking into.

Terri and Amy's experience was then used as the stimulus for a short improvisation back in the studio - attempting to recreate postures, sensations and movement they used on location. They also drew pictures of what they imagined they had touched and wrote down what they felt to be key in the experience - which was reflected in movement qualities and shapes during the improvisation.

Next step - adding audio, playing with speeds, playing with placement -on Mon 19/5/14

Notes from today's experiment - Unknown Location (13/05/14)

Terri - Individual Choreographic Development

As a choreographer my style often has a strong focus on the use of shapes, particularly geometric shapes. I am generally influenced by linear and angular lines of stimuli, such as architecture of a building or objects with similar qualities. I also enjoy creating abstracted imagery, such as taking the literal use of an object and making it so it may no longer be completely obvious what I am trying to portray. To further these interests within our practice as research I will devise a phrase using a score. The score will come from a filmed improvisation with the level 5 dance students, which has already taken place, by watching it several times, making decisions on different focus points each time and marking them on a piece of paper, for example the first time I watch it I may choose to mark every time I see a bent elbow. These marks on the paper will then be joined together to create a score, similar to a children’s dot-to-dot picture. From this score I can then create a short phrase.

Linking this to the idea of making choreography without sight, I could use Dr Suparna Venkatesh’s method of teaching choreography to blind dancers on Amy and Jess. Venkatesh performs her movement and at the same time her dancers touch her to learn the movement material; from doing this Amy and Jess would hopefully have an abstracted version of what I have created as it will come from their own interpretation.

Another idea I could explore is to make the score accessible to touch so that Amy and Jess can create choreography from it without needing to see it. They can interpret the shapes in whichever way they may experience it and translate this into movement and pathways.

And a final idea from this could be to use the score as directions and use verbal communication to give instructions to determine pathways and movement. This then uses hearing as the primary sense rather than touch.

I need to play with all three ideas to see which can create choreography without sight most effectively from the performers’ (Amy and Jess) and my point of view.

Northampton University visit to UCS

We did a workshop with Matt Gough from Northampton University, which turned out to be extremely relevant and insightful to our current practice as research. He focused on contact improvisation in pairs; however one of us at a time had to have our eyes closed. The objective was for the person with their eyes closed to do a solo and the other person had to stop them from dancing doing the least amount of work possible.

When taking part in this improvisation I found it interesting how it made me really aware of my own body – the relationship between my body and the space, my body and my partner and between different body parts. When we were in contact with one another there were moments where, although I couldn’t see the movement, it felt like it may appear interesting to someone watching.

Having my eyes closed effect the way I improvised to start with as I kept all of my movements small and didn’t travel very far but as the workshop progressed I became bolder within the space, taking my movements bigger and through the space. I feel this relates to trust between one another. Although I didn’t know my partner’s name at the time, she made me feel reassured that she wouldn’t let me bang into anything or anyone.

In terms of connecting this to our practice as research into creating choreography without sight, I wasn’t really focusing on what movement I was creating, but more so the sensations I got from doing improvisation with my eyes shut. It brought my attention to the space around me and my sense of self and it also made me focus in on the instructions we were being given whilst participating.  

Dancing in the Dark: Experiencing Dance Without Sight

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-new-york-public-library/dancing-in-the-dark-exper_b_837787.html

Amy - Individual choreographic development:

To develop further in terms of my own choreographic voice, I would like to experiment with audience participation. I am interested in a more humourous style of choreography, as I am told. I create work that has a theme of humour however I never seem to realise this until my work is finished, which makes me want to further investigate opportunities of humour in choreography and dance. When it comes to style, I am more interested in what I can explain is a combination of gestural movements, release technique and the essence of William Forsythe (e.g. shapes, isolated movements, edges).

Within this practice I would like to include a live experiment in the final lecture demonstration to test how humour can be created through improvisation with the audience's participation without sight and my role being a choreographer and director. 

Ideas:

• Poses - I will pose a series of gestural positions and the blindfolded audience participate will use touch for 30 seconds to determine what poses I am portraying. The participant will then create that pose which they believe is the one I am showing.This then creates movement through the use of touch which means the lack of sight encourages individuality within movement that isn't usually shown when you have your sight and you look to others for inspiration when you are lost. 
• Building a set (scenography) - The blindfolded audience members will be directed one by one by me, to place a box in a certain place, however without their sight they cannot see where the box is to be placed they must remember through their direction and touch. The end result could be a completely different. 
• Directed poses to create a 'photograph' - This is the idea I am more likely to include within the lecture demonstration; Three audience members will be blindfolded (in our case 'goggled') and accompanied by myself, Terri and Jess for safety and will be directed by me where to stand until further notice. I will then project a random photograph on the screen behind the audience which shows a situation/group photo of people/animals/anything as a stimuli for the audience. When the photograph is projected, I will go to each participant and direct them into a certain pose that is shown on the projection, to re-create the photograph onto the stage. The certain photographs I chose will be at random with 3 particular beings (people/animals/anything) to match with the 3 participating audience members. These photographs may not be humourous, however, when experimenting I will ask the audience members to change their facial expressions, moods and possibly ask them to improvise by whispering actions to them that could create a humourous atmosphere, but this is all part of the test. Meanwhile the remaining audience members that are watching will see the outcome. Depending on the number of goggles we have, the experiment may use more than 3 members of the audience. I may however, use objects as well in terms of scenography. This experiment is to see how the audience react when participating on stage without sight to create an image for the remaining audience and will further my skills as a director and choreographer. 

First Experiment p2:

Following my last post, The second video down shows me teaching Terri my short material of 2 counts of 8. This task for me was more difficult then it seemed, as you have to take into consideration each detail of the movement and what vocabulary to use in order for the obscured sight dancer (Terri) to understand what to do and where to go. I had to keep reassuring myself what movement followed the last and how to direct Terri as simple as I could. 

1. Final product:
2. Myself teaching Terri:

First Experiment:

This video here shows the final product of Jess teaching me 2 counts of 8 worth of choreography to test with my eyes closed, only focusing on direction of voice and touch. 
I just wanted to share my experience of this and how I felt throughout this process. 

In terms of direction, Jess was very clearly indicating what the movement should look like and how she created it. I felt that Jess' touch was more significant when she was teaching me as I could remember her touch more than her directions verbally. 

Jess was also very clear on facing and texture of the movements, i.e dynamics and speed as she spoke the counts out loud for me. 

This exercise was being experimented due to wanting to see how easy/hard it was to learn material without sight. This was tested when our group were leaning towards the idea of a more educational purpose, however our ideas have shifted towards a final product choreographed by the idea of obscured sight and a keener focus of our other senses. 

Learning from the Northampton workshop

Improvisation task. 
Lead by Matthew Gough - Senior lecturer in Dance at Northampton University.

Partners in the space. (For clarity, label one, A and the other, B)

A closes eyes, begins to move/improvise/solo.
B observes A dancing - attempts to locate habits and a place in their body where movement is often initiated from.
B stops A from dancing - by limiting their movement from the place they commonly use (i.e. - A's legs are often used - B restrains A's legs, thus preventing movement)

My own experience and realisations:

It felt like a game... which is most likely because I found it so amusing that I had never really realised how much I used/relied on my pelvis and abdomen to begin moving. Within 10 seconds of me soloing with eyes shut (as A), my partner tackled my hips. Though I was pre-empting this moment, it still threw me - and I felt stunted for a second. I then began flinging my arms around to attempt to keep moving with the same quality as before, then my partner pinned those down too. It was only then, that I instinctively dropped to the floor to escape her grip - in which my legs were the initiators of my direction.

Now this had happened naturally - I wasn't consciously thinking 'go to the floor' or 'use your legs!', but it happened.

Two important points here:

1. This task forced me to realise and break habits, leading to seeking other possibilities in the situation on the spot. This develops fast, creative thinking, but more importantly, I didn't think - the movement was simply consequential and instinctive.
2. I had my eyes closed - preventing me from picking up any useful improvised material from peers also dancing in the space.

To summarise: 

Movement was natural/instinctive. Movement was original. Movement was stimulated through controlling habits I so often use to 'dance', such as my pelvis and eyesight.

Relativity to 'Reference Points'

Improvisation tasks in Reference Points will have a control factor: which will be the absence of the dancer's sight. The dancer's stimulus will be to explore places/objects through touch. One aim of this method is to find some original, instinctive movement for choreography. Matthew Gough's improvisation structure demonstrates an effective way of meeting these aims by forcing the improvising dancer to break habits and think outside the box due to physical restrictions - whilst maintaining this original element to their dancing - by having closed eyes, therefore not mimicking other dancers in the space.

More simply, I felt like this way of improvising inspired an idea that we need to step of our comfort zone to further our creativity. How would it feel to be somewhere unknown, completely blind and use that experience of moving, sightless and disorientated, to find new movement for choreography? Would it be productive? It would be interesting for sure...

New Proposal

Research Questions

•       Considering that dance is a predominantly visual art form, how can one create choreography without sight?

•       How can the absence of sight heighten other senses?

•       How does one experience performance without sight?

•       How does the use of non-visual scenography contribute towards the atmosphere?

Aims and Objectives

•       To use objects and locations as stimuli for improvisation with the absence of sight.

•       To explore how the absence of sight induces our instinctual movement.

•       To use non-visual scenography to influence the performance atmosphere.

•       To conduct unseen individual experiments to further each person’s choreographic development.

•       Enhance our awareness of how trust can build a strong collaborative team within the creative process.

Methodology

•       Improvisation tasks without sight:

1.       Studio based with unseen objects/materials

2.       Site-specific explorations in unseen locations

•       Devising movement from improvisation experiences

•       Transposing movement into performance context

•       Experimenting with scenography in relation to heightening the senses of the audience by eliminating sight.

•       Individual explorations/workshops

•       Playing with sounds/speech and touch as communication methods

Makaton?

Here is the Alphabet in Makaton that is designed for communication with individuals with hearing impairments. I have some experience with this language due to having family work in the care industry and have been practicing with my partner as he is currently in training. I feel this idea would be great to entwine within our practice and performance as a way to communicate with our audiences and create choreographic material through these signs. 

I did say that my mum has a book on this, however she no longer has it so I will search the library and web for further information on Makaton. 

Video with The Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired - Inspiring

This webpage/video shows one the leading dancers at The Martha Graham Dance company. His name is Brdnik and he met with the students at the Indian School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to teach and tell the students that "we are all dancers". . The video shows some footage from his time with the students and how they connected. 

"No matter who we are and what we do, having that little bit of dance in our lives is going to change how we think and how we are in our lives"

The video link will be found at: 
http://wishtv.com/2014/02/07/visually-impaired-students-express-themselves-through-dance/

Short film about blind dancers

I found this really lovely short film about dancers who have vision impairments and their different experiences of dance.

http://www.scorpiontv.com/we-also-dance-blind-dancers

Possible research questions

Here are our initial ideas for research questions:
How does physically obscuring senses affect the audience/performers experience?
Does obscurity heighten other senses?
How does absence of eyesight/hearing impact on movement memory?