At this stage in the process I’ve been asked by my mentors and professors to “dig into” my work and expose the true intention behind what I’ve created. Since the beginning of this process I’ve been resistant to this step of defining what is happening for fear of getting stuck. Sometimes assigning meaning can be useful, but other times I find that it prematurely solidifies something that still needs time to grow and change. I’ve been focusing on following my intuition and allowing my body knowledge (whatever that means…) and my subconscious to tell the story of my identity. However, with the winter performance coming up it is time for me to take a step further into the work and start digging around. Although this seems like an easy step to take, I AM STRUGGLING WITH IT! I can’t seem to share exactly what I am trying or want to say or rather what I am feeling in the piece. Lab 4: is about trying to understand what my motivations are for “digging in” and how I feel about being stuck.

RQ: How to create meaning that is not representational of an idea, image or memory, but rather an experience that generates the feeling and intention of a creative intention?

Prompt: Use elements and objects such as the silver unitard to explore the relationship to the environment (i.e. internal vs. external self).

Outcome:  The confrontation and struggle I faced while trying to move with the silver unitard still attached to just my hands and feet was genuine. The materiality of the unitard was both bound and elastic generating a complex physical experience for me trying to escape its grasp. Although I willingly entangled myself with the unitard, the experience was simultaneously unsettling because I was searching to let go of my attachments to it. My relationship to the unitard developed in this experiment provided a strong undercurrent of dependence and identity in both works.

I feel like I need to be triggered (not in traumatic way, but in a way that allows me to access my feelings about what I am doing)… but I am not exactly sure how to make that happen. This is what I am hoping to investigate next!

My current state of confusion and stuckness also relates to Anne Lamott’s text Shitty First Drafts. After reading her work in which she discusses the challenges of writing, I feel as though her process is directly related to the way in which I choreograph a dance. I’ve been following my gut and allowing the “child’s draft” as she calls it, to bear its head. However, I am not sure if the current draft of my work is as “raw” as it should be. I still feel like there are parts that are unexplored and unclear, which is why I might need to widdle away at the ideas that are already present in the space. Writing and choreography feel intrinsically linked for me.

What are transitions and how do we pinpoint or locate them in language and movement?

We have been discussing the topic of transition and transformation in one of my Graduate Seminars at Sarah Lawrence College. As I mentioned in my last post, Professor Sara Rudner is directing our class through a semester filled with complex movement explorations and inquiries. I had a type of break through in class today after we took a common movement phrase and created physical limitations in order to explore its logic. As a class we discovered that by eliminating the “transitions” or transitional steps in between the “star” movements or main movements the so-called logic of the phrase disintegrated. This process of elimination and discovery led us to realize that the transitional movements of the movement phrase are necessary for the “flow” or logic of the phrase to move from one moment to the next. Without the distillation and limitation of the phrase material we would not have arrived at our conclusion.

The concept of transition speaks my thesis and choreographic work because it relates to the process of changing from one set of norms to another. I am mainly curious about what happens in the in-between space between transformation.

The explanations below is a description of how I’m starting to understand transition and transformation as the process relates to language and movement.

Transition: The process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.” (Google)

Transition in language”: The “lag” time in between the switch from one language or concept to another. The moments/ words that fill the gap between two concrete ideas.

Transition in movement: The in-between experiences of the body that stitch together events or states of being.

rehearsal today and my personal analysis

Today in rehearsal I approached my lab process differently than last time. I chose to create first and analyze at the end of rehearsal instead of prompting my rehearsal with a proposal. My process today was especially useful because it provided me with the creative space I needed to generate movement material. As of right now I’m spending a lot of time changing my appearance throughout the work. Whether I am shifting my clothing or hairstyle, I am constantly adjusting the way I look and present myself. This realization led me to the idea of locating the transitions.

There are many moments in which I am engaging in a transitional processes and I am curious about what it would mean to explore only the transitions next rehearsal…My research questions for Lab 3 are: What would it be like if I only looked at the transitions between identity shifts? How does the practice of shifting make up my identity? Can I extract the movements and bodily processes of transition to generate a type of rhythmic phrasing? How do transitions make up change? What does this look like in a choreographic process?

We discussed this topic of transition in graduate seminar this week with Professor Sara Rudner. She prompted us to explore “transition” through movement aesthetics and approaches. This might be why I was drawn to the concept of transition during my practice today.

Today was my first time using the video camera in my rehearsal process as a way to capture my “lab” experiments. This is a pre-experiment that was incredibly informative and provided me with some clarity regarding the way in which I want to proceed and conduct the rest of my thesis PaR (practice as research) process. Blending the theoretical, practical and physical can be challenging! Tonight the filming process and analytical reflection on camera proved to be a bit intrusive on my creative practice. I will need to re-evaluate how to move forward in my PaR.

RQ: How can I challenge my body to react and respond to two languages in one environment (MacCracken dance studio, Bronxville, New York)?

Prompt: Answer 5 biographical questions and assign one movement to each answer while switching from German to English. Questions include: full name (Ingrid Dehler-Seter), age (twenty-five), place of birth (Northampton, Massachusetts), name of college (Sarah Lawrence College), area of study (Dance).

Outcome: The movement immediately became the steady reel of activity that bound together the memory of the physical and verbal answers I gave during this exercise. As the laboratory progressed, I increased the tempo causing the continuous verbal switch from English to German to fluster my ability to perform the movements without a delay. The outcome exhibits an internal and external relationship that is seemingly in synch until the movements become overwhelmed by the verbal switching. As the first laboratory, I found the situation was forced, which meant that the usual emotional component experienced when code-switching did not exist.

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