The showing of my seed residency with Jo Pollitt was on Saturday and thank you to those who made it down to the Ludwig Studio!
I cannot, in all honesty, say that that was my first public improvisation – many choreographers I have worked with have incorporated improvisation into their works at some stage or another. It was, however, a first improvisation co-devised by me and Jo and therefore the onus was on myself to make it worth watching. And it being a “showing” of process rather than of polished product protects one from the sort of criticism one might expect from of a paying public. Next on the agenda, however, is crossing number two, in Noumea, where a paying public will decide its worth! Onward and Eastward…
Posts Tagged ‘Strut Seed Residency’
A First Crossing
October 20th, 2010 by EmmaStrut Seed Residency
September 30th, 2010 by Emma
Emma is into the second half of her seed residency with Jo Pollitt. Much has been accomplished since July. Together they are working with the improvisational processes of Jo’s ‘Response Project’ (a series of compositional and performative strategies Jo has been developing and working on since 2000). Using this technique your body is as much a thinking, relating organ as your brain. 
How you feel and respond physically is equally important to how you think and intellectualise a response. Along these lines there are a lot of written exercises that go hand in hand with the physical improvisation and dance.
The work relies on the fact that the body stores information just as the brain does and over the course of one’s life and career you accumulate physical knowledge, patterns and reactionary traits. The work provides a means of accessing and recognising this information and the next step is making decisions about what to do with it and how to use it.
Serena Chalker and Quindell Orton of AIVDT came into the Ludwig studio a couple of times. Their presence and their experience of the work provided Emma with more to respond to and also helped show how others respond physically to you.
Cass Mortimer Eipper, Timothy O’Donnell and Rhiannon Spratling are currently joining in the practice from time to time to give Emma further physical feedback and responses to her own practice.
