@maxine it would be a good resource for people to respond to during CM if they ever need some inspiration, complication, discursive prompts or a place to notate a new discovery.

@choreomarathon Falling back, shifting weight, circling, rising, reaching, pulling, pressing (oh Laban), staying in, changing rhythms, speeds, levels, emotional tone... aren't so many perceptions non-visual non-aural?

i feel like this forum is developing my perception of the archive. i feel it is a process archive that has many lungs.

yes, i like how you do this describing in the studio and i think it would be a great gift in the online situation where we can't really see one another. i often try describing as a development tool for new material. i believe we have practiced that skill in your classes, Maxine. what am i doing and why? calling myself out. letting language direct movement and movement direct language.

i appreciate your wild ering... ! i use video when i am working alone. i get what i can and something unexpected is built in the editing between what i consider "found footage" and my original intensions.

nice!

yes, in terms of "What performance techniques do you use to energize online movement?" And "what choreographic techniques do you use to create energy of the dance?" - how close or far i am from the camera affects the speed. different size and scale in the frame has a different timing, e.g. it only takes a second to wipe a big finger across the screen, but a body in the distance could take a few minutes to get from edge to edge. and i feel like there are such different connotations in orientations of body to screen and i am dancing but the reading of the movement is affected by the framing.

i have worked in a couple of situations where i am online and the movers are in a studio together. i don't know what it feels like but it's funny to me because i think they are seeing way more than they might see in person. there's a looming presence. the wall sized boxes become the environment one is dancing in, the zoomers become the wall. perhaps they were having to mentally navigate the glitches! i have no idea what they felt but it was interesting to be alone in the room and know that i was being seen by a group who were responding but i couldn't see them fully and yet i could feel them and hear breath and footsteps and brushes of clothing on the floor. very trippy. as the facilitator i felt i had failed completely but apparently they all felt energized and inspired by the end. phew! hard to navigate when i'm unable to see their response. but to get back to maintaining focus, i was following my own imagination and sensation journey, i needed to take my own instruction to feel my way through the experience and hoping something would be received. i think i came to trust a little bit more in my own poetic licence during the pandemic... and then checking in. what the heck was that like for everyone? i could feel something even in the silent pauses of check-ins. there was always a sense of surprise, delight and investigative drive - where are we? where do we want to go? how will we get there? no one knew but everyone was forever ready to try things... dancers are amazingly generous people, can i just say that?

@maxine i'm not sure i can imagine dancing without the "somatic base of your dance"... how can we know what people are experiencing, other than the pleasure or struggle to be in their bodies? don't we all speak to the language that we feel? perhaps it is a shortcoming... to only have an experience from our own bodies... perhaps you as a longtime teacher use words that you don't feel but know others understand? why do you ask about these words, Maxine? i think you are operating from a frame of reference that is beyond me, but what kind of words are you looking for?

I think there's an interim step: Nourish the courage, knowledge and resilience to stand up to governments and companies that inflict climate injustice so we can continue us to thrive on this beautiful planet. Listen closely to the knowledge keepers that are here with us now.

I definitely think working at home has blurred the lines between life and work. I don't need to wait to get to the studio. I am aware that work begins at home. That said, maybe delineating work and living space is helpful in terms of feeling a sense of completion, the work space is a container.

what is the difference between impulse and intuition? The impulse is the inclination, the tendency, or excitation toward an unpremeditated action. (of the body) The intuition is apprehension, insight, power of direct knowledge without rational thought or inference. (of the mind) online inspires new impulses as a i relearn how to communicate across devices.

@jpm50go i don't think you have any reason to not be resistant, and i don't think it's inevitable. given climate change, i imagine we will be using less devices in future as the e-waste piles up. but it's interesting you connect less freedom to be online... i feel less energy and less inspiration... but not less freedom. Maybe it's a sense of needing to be responsible to be seen?

i appreciate your thoughts and description. i like the way of knowing there is a physical route in. myself i just start moving and eventually intuition shows up, but i like how you describe these clear actions.

@choreomarathon i have been in practice rooms (e.g. Power Shift's Daily Improvisation Practices with Sherwood Chen) wherein people have their cameras and mics off and the choreographer is offering proposals and we are all working unseen. I sense the intensity of a held space and time for that proposal and yet i am uninhibited in my imaginative capacity to invent outside of expectations, i can be in what i am in and i know no one is judging what is visible. the emphasis is on my experience. i feel this is great for practices that take a long time to refine, as an artist i am able to be in my own time scale of absorbing the material. i don't need to make anything visible until i feel i have something to show.

i am conscious of changes and developing skill because i am feeling more coherence and flow of actions. performing online, i am immediately seeing in the video the effect of what i am doing. i am creating for the camera. when i am co-practicing with someone online, i am not looking at the screen. i have also videotaped rehearsals in studio and performances AFK (away from keyboard), but i rarely go back to the visual footage. I trust what happened in the moment. with online the visual is compelling because i'm seeing myself. live in studio i don't use a mirror. i navigate via kinaesthetic sensation. the online work is weighted toward the visual. that is helping me create work for the camera, but doesn't help me in the live in-person AFK audience experience. I worry sometimes that i will bring my online visual sense to the live AFK performance space. i see these as two very different worlds and i need my live AFK awareness when sharing space with audience. the bonus is that i miss being with audiences so much that i feel it will heighten my awareness in the performative state. i will feel i will not miss an opportunity to be with people, I will be more ready than i have ever been.

necessary to relate to the directionality of the frame. i can draw a line along the edge, from edge to edge. i can direct the viewer's gaze. the frame can be mobile. the audience can receive close-ups. i can approach one audience member in a live situation but only that person sees the detail. in the online space everyone can receive that. so it changes the grammar a bit. somethings don't need to be repeated to be seen. other things need to be repeated to be seen - when people are in the room, i can feel if what i have done has been received. I hear or feel their response. online i'm in my own bubble so i may need to repeat something for it to be seen. my improvisational skills are helping me to dive in, but my improvisational skills are not necessarily helping me be clear because i actually know only what has happened since March 2020 in terms of what i do and what that looks like and how it is received. live improvisation skills have been developed over 40 years. so skills help but everything is in a new frame and so i have beginners mind and i also have beginners luck or mistaken judgement... !

online has been generative for me, i'm working more visually than ever before because that is the primary sense involved in watching a screen, as well as the kinaesthetic sense of reception of watching the work if we are dancing together it is also visual but there is a kinaesthetic sense of being in relation to what i am seeing in the other person's screen. these days i have been proposing and working on moving away from the visual in the shared online space, i am cultivating other sensations and going back to having other interests in developing work beyond the visual. it's not a placeholder. it's a work in itself. e.g. i am working on vulnerability. how can i do that within the context of a dispersed audience, how can i work on that through my body and is it possible that the audience feels something of what i am working on that goes beyond the visual? can the visual relate the feeling in the video? i have a sense of how to create a feeling in a live in-the-room audience space. i am trying to develop my awareness of how to do that online by practicing online.

the digital space is a shared space. what is shared is the moment together. even when we are together as live bodies in the same physical space, we have different sensory-kinesthetic experiences. we are sharing noticing our bodies in this shared online space.

it is feeding me in terms of i have been able to be with people teaching and practicing, developing ideas for this live-online situation. i also feel a surge of energy when i see people online, however it is draining to maintain this kind of eye involvement. i get wiped out online. when i am with people i am able to move more, the energy of being with other bodies inspires me in ways that doesn't happen when i'm alone in my room.