“TOTAL! DANCE! – reflections on choreographic process, based on interplay between children and professional dancers” – an article from the WM call
By Ellen Kilsgaard
’I’ve been wondering: I’ve been wondering how we all suddenly were in it. And I was also in it!” (quote: first grader, boy – a participant in the creation of TOTAL! DANCE!, November 2013)
Introduction
TOTAL! DANCE! is a new choreographic format, introducing dance to primary school children. The stage and the audience are one and the same, and the children are free to move spontaneously, between the dancers. The children receive no verbal instructions during the performance, it is rather their curiosity, desire to participate and the contagious energy of the dance that invites them to participate.
TOTAL! DANCE! is a lively aesthetic environment to be in, both for the dancers and the children. It is simultaneously a performance where children experience dance through all of their senses, their entire body, and also an educational arena that focuses on interaction, dialogue, and non-verbal communication between all parties, across age, position, and prerequisite.
The project is in the midst of an exciting developmental process, which started in November 2013 at Forsøgsstationen (The Research Station)[1] in Copenhagen[2]. I’ll be continuing this process in 2014, at Åben Dans (Open Dance) in Roskilde, where we hope to create a living work in 2015 that many hopefully will benefit from. Here, I’d like to survey the premise of the work, and reflect upon my experiences from the initial phase of the project.
An example of the choreographic process
We’re about 15 minutes in: a group of children are sitting against the wall with their teacher, attentively watching the dance. Four of the children started to mimic the dance from the very beginning, remaining in their place near the wall.
They’re sitting far away from the teacher, on the other side of the room. The dancers take eye contact with the children, dance close to them, pull away and come close again. All of a sudden, a few of the children sitting closer to the teacher, begin to follow a dancer into the space. There’s a continual rolling movement from the wall and into the room. More children join in. Another dancer joins the four children who are sitting on the other side of the room, and they follow her. There are now two groups of children following and mirroring a dancer. The choreography becomes more complex, more vital. At times there is a magical synchronicity, and at times there is chaos, that again regroups into organised formations.
The choreographic starting point
The base of the project is the mutual human communication process, embodied, simple and natural. It is essentially the same kind of communication that unfolds during a meeting: we meet something different and alien and are driven by curiosity to decode, calibrate, and learn from it.
The impressions the children receive from the dancers, the music, and the space are immediately translated into expression. The children’s movement co-exists with the movement of the dancers, because they are in the same space. The dancers relate back to the children with a mix of spontaneity and rehearsed choreography. This interplay has its own inherent choreography, unique to each group.
The dance itself is communicative, without symbolic value. The sensory experience of the dance creates pictures, stories, and fantasies within each participant, but not as dictated by a specific theme.[3]
Several levels of interaction – the children’s response in movement
Two people meeting for the first time involves complex processes of assessment, on several levels. Susan Hart, a neuro-affective developmental psychologist, and Marianne Bentzen, a movement therapist, both refer to Paul MacLean, who developed the theory of the triune brain in the late 50s, which categorises and explains the brain as three levels of assessment and informational processing. MacLean’s theory works around three parts of the brain: the reptilian complex, the paleo-mammalian complex, and the neo-mammalian complex.
When the children first come into the room, their bodies vibrate in expectation, alive and inquisitive. They assess the situation on a basic level: Is this a safe place to be? What’s going on? Hart and Bentzen describe the most elementary structures of our brains, the reptilian brain:
’…it’s down on this simple level that the basic circuits for attention control and presence are to be found.’ (Hart and Bentzen 2005)
Throughout the performance, the children are attentive and observational. Sometimes they stand completely still, sometimes they are more animated.
The further into the performance, the more the children dig in and become one with it, mirroring the movements. They learn and decode what’s going on in the dance, intimately through their own intelligent sensory-motor-systems. It often happens that the children (especially in large groups) mimic a dancer so quickly and precisely that it becomes completely synchronised – completely unison in dynamic, orientation, and form.[4]
The physical mirroring is intrinsically linked to emotional mirroring and attunement processes, and we, the dancers, can feel how we have an effect on atmosphere and expression in the children. Hart and Bentzen describe the paleo-mammalian complex, also known as the limbic system:
’…there is an emotional attunement which has an effect on both parties.’ (Hart and Bentzen 2005)
They go on to explain that it is through the empathic resonance that:
’…you can understand your own, and others’ inner world.’ (Hart and Bentzen 2005)
The children’s response resembles precisely the dancers’ way of being, their atmosphere, intentions and way of moving. If there peace and calm and a good connection between dancers and children then organised form and togetherness arise in the room. If there’s an uneasy atmosphere, it fragments the choreography[5]. It’s very clear that the children can’t help but be swayed by the dance, each body a small antenna, picking up all the vibes around it. We work with this mutual influence and channel it into an aesthetic, poetic expression.
There’s a point during the process where the children shift effortlessly between being part of a group, and being present in the moment as an individual. They explore their own dance, and elaborate it with their relationship to what’s happening around them, either alone, with one or two classmates, or alongside one of the dancers. Hart and Bentzen explain the circumstances of the neo-mammalian brain:
’It’s in this part of the brain that the emotional and mental impressions are collected and directed, and actions are planned.’ (Hart and Bentzen 2005)
It is also on this last level that language takes form. Hart and Bentzen explain how ”embodied, sensed, perceived, motoric, and emotional experiences” (Hart and Bentzen 2005) contain the basic patterns for verbalisation[6] and the ability to create ideas about ourselves and others in the world we all live in. In other words: the patterns in which we ourselves move, the ways in which we decipher others, and organise ourselves in groups, are the basic patterns for our thought processes. A playful, poetic, and aesthetic exploration of non-verbal function has the potential of creating new perspectives of our self-image and the different contexts we find ourselves in. Hart and Bentzen conclude:
’It’s about integrating the embodied sensory, perceptive, motoric, emotional, associative, and rational functions, and bringing them into a mutual ”dialogue”.’ (Hart and Bentzen 2005)
The ”culture” of the group
The teacher, the adult, who leads the group of children, determines the dynamic, and mood of the group. We always mimic what we’re in contact with, and the group leader has a special role in how children enter the space. The starting point for each performance’s unique way of unfolding is the dancers’ meeting with the ”culture” that the teacher brings with the group. In other words, the starting point is the dancers’ meeting with the already existing ”choreography” of the group.
You could say that TOTAL! DANCE! is the developer fluid that encourages the exposure of a new, fresh and danced expression of a group’s dynamic.
We see examples of children, who, in the usual class setting are considered unruly, become trailblazers with an extraordinary dynamic force. Or we experience children, who, in ”normal” social settings fall behind, add an extra facet to the group dynamic as a whole. Others still, who in the daily environment are reserved and quiet, find a way to participate and observe on their own terms without being pressured. They experience a unique performance, that includes their classmates, and they have an important role while discussing the experience afterward: they praise the other children.
Togetherness
With TOTAL! DANCE!, we create an aesthetic environment where we, children and adults alike, explore our togetherness through embodied sensory experiences, and explore our togetherness in our own temporary community. The aesthetic experience of dance opens new understandings of how we interact and affect each other. This inclusive, playful, and poetic[7] approach facilitates a new understanding of ourselves and the contexts we find ourselves in.
After the performance, we talk to the children about their experience, and invite them to ask us something. Can we try again? They ask.
Bibliography
Cooper Albright, Ann and Gere, David, (ed), (2003) Taken By Surprise, Wesleleyan University Press, Middletown, Connecticut
Deleuze, Gilles and Parnet, Claire, (1987) Dialogues, London: The Athlone Press
Hart, Susan and Bentzen, Marianne, (2013) Kursus i empati og medmenneskelighed, Esrum Kloster
Hart, Susan and Bentzen, Marianne, (2005) Psykoterapi og neuroaffektiv udvikling, Psykolog nyt, Årg. 59, nr. 2
Hewitt, Andrew, (2005) Social Choreography: Ideology as Performance in Dance and Everyday Movement, Duke University Press
Levin, David Michael, (1999) ‘The Ontological Dimension of Embodiment’, in The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Donn Welton (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
Manning, Ering, (2009) Relationscapes, The MIT Press Cambidge, Massachusetts, London, England
————–, (2013) Always more than one, Duke University Press Durham and London
MacLean, P. D. (1990): The triune brain in evolution: Role of paleocerebral functions. New York: Plenum
Nørretranders, Tor, (2013) Vær Nær, Forlaget Tor.dk
Williams, David, (1996) ‘Working (in) the In-between: Contact Improvisation as an Ethical Practice’ Writings on Dance The French Issue 15
[1] ’Forsøgsstationen is in service of the experiment, and its main purpose is to spur innovation in Danish performance art through training, research, and developments.’ (www.forsoegsstationen.dk)
[2]Choreographer: Ellen Kilsgaard. Participatingcers: Anamet Magven, Birgitte Lundtoft, Anne Nyboe, and Ellen Kilsgaard. Live music: Gert Østergård Pedersen or Henriette Groth. The development of the project has been supported by Statens Kunstråd (The Danish Arts Council).
[3] In the mid 60s, dance pioneer Anna Halprin became famous for her choreography ’…shaving ever finer lines between life and art’. (Cooper Albright and Gere 2003: 41) and her approach is related to the one of this project. She says: ’I cannot approach art symbolically or literally with any enthusiasm.’ (Cooper Albright and Gere 2003: 42) See the chapter ’A Search for Informed Innocence’ in ’Taken By Surprise’ ed. Ann Cooper Albright and David Gere.
[4] In the animal kingdom, for example in a starling murmuration or a school of fish, observations can be made of the spontaneous organisation of a group of individuals, as a result of their innate and mutual synchronisation process (Hart and Bentzen 2013). This exceptional tuning means that order can come and go, roll back and forth, disappear and reappear in fascinating and unpredictable patterns. There is no one individual leading the group, rather, the group organises itself.
[5] Child psychiatrist ’…Daniel Stern has expressed that we are all born to participate in each others’ nervous system.’ (Hart and Bentzen 2005)
[6] In conversations with the children after their dancing experiences, we often hear how they process their sensory impressions with imaginative imagery: ’There were some lions, and a lioness with her cubs’, ’there were people spying on us’, ’I was sitting in the bottom of a big, warm pot’, ’there was fairy dust.’
[7] The etymological definition of poesis is ”to create”. It indicates the potential of innovative creation through poetic experience and activity – creating one’s self and one’s context.