Improv performance - improvisational dancing

Dance Magazine, Jan, 1996 by Sharry Underwood

The set was an open rectangle with the sextet at one end; chairs for spectators were placed on three sides. There were seven dancers: six women and one man. It was obvious that the couples, the trio, and the ensemble itself had had hours of improvising together before this program; they were used to each other, willing to lead or to follow. The musicians began - with blats, short runs, insistent one-notes, sometimes playing simultaneously - and the dancers lounged on the perimeters of the stage, awaiting their impulses.

Gradually a structure became apparent as each couple entered the space and improvised for about ten minutes. As time went on and the musicians did their riffs, couples joined other couples, separated into single improvs, or became an ensemble for a time. Movements included a lot of body-slinging through space onto the floor. Moves initiated from a hip led to a fall, rolled into mulekicks, then went into body flips up into spins, all as though directed by magnets. Sustained momentum, often through convulsive impulse and response or pounding running, went the full length of the stage. There were long sequences of the women melding their bodies into one another, crawling, rock-and-rolling each other, then repelling. The young man went into a dance funk of sorts, an introspection that put him out of the action some time before he exploded into a long, out-of-control frenzy. His partner rejoined him at the point of exhaustion. The dance ended with two on the floor, three by the entrance watching, and two turning.

Dancers wanting to go on their own have found working in Vermont the answer. Turned off from standard techniques or dance in cities where competition is high and jobs are few, restless dancers have made Vermont a place to develop their own choreographic voices.

It hasn't been easy. When they arrived more than twenty years ago, there were no dance jobs, no ongoing state-sponsored ballet companies, no commercial dance opportunities. There was no social incentive to produce. Instead, dancers found a disinterested freedom to explore their personal dance milieux - and the necessity to create their own works. As dancers dug for dance material, they discovered new dimensions within themselves. This led to following impulse and valuing the truths of spontaneous movements through improvisation.

Bennington College - bred Penny Campbell has been a primary catalyst for dance innnovation here. After work in Japan and Germany, Campbell turned solely to improvisation, becoming a leader in improv performance. "Pure dance," she says, "is not always dance with sound, not always dance with a concept, not always dance with an image, but sometimes all of these. Sometimes it is nothing more than the present state of being of the dancer."

As she starts her students flat on the floor to get in touch with sensation right away, Campbell begins a running commentary to inspire moves that gradually involve the whole body. "You must move in order to perceive," she says, citing an exercise from improviser Lisa Nelson that gets students moving by gently brushing every inch of skin all over their bodies. "You find a way that triggers choreography and is also a warm-up. It leads students past oscillating thoughts - such as, `I don't like this' - and keeps them hanging in there." Working alone or in groups, the students consciously enter a mind-body research into the self, discovering things unknown before and finding their own movement sonal preferences.

Fifteen years ago, Campbell gave an intense but tedious forty-minute improv in Burlington's City Auditorium. In a recent performance, the sophistication of professional modern dancers could be seen: range and phrasing of movements, variety in dynamics, good execution and projection - all were in her improv.

At first Sarah Brutzman found it very hard to be in Vermont without the larger dance world of established technique; now she is grateful. Working alone has made her more sensitive to her personal base of movements, a consuming process that gave her what she says is a "a realness - a now-ness" to her own vision that has expanded her resources. By making herself improvise once a week, she became a dedicated improv performer. Brutzman, who has a dark brown braid that falls below her hips, wore a long skirt and a multicolored vest, to which she had pinned personal keepsakes "for confidence" in her latest dance, Tuven Fractile. Improvised to Mongolian music by that name, it has four sections: first, she is a male character from the time of Genghis Khan, thinking about horsemanship, guns, and a wife; next, she responds to the architecture of the performing space; then, she shows her personal response to the music; last, she moves into the unknown by slowly moving into the audience. Each of her eight performances has been very different, Brutzman notes; she has been affected by injury, by dancing outside, by being in an entertainment venue, by being among other dancers.

Although improv dancers work on their own, they also teach and dance with each other, not just in Vermont but throughout the world. "I've been to dance jams in Montreal, Seattle, West Virginia, West Germany, and Holland," Brutzman casually remarked. In Holland she took part in a weekly event called "The Fountain," where dancers brought new improvs and the audience wrote short critiques. Brutzman tried this in Vermont but found producing a new improv each week too demanding. The best part of improv, she says, is that "you know what you know."