Emergent Improvisation
“I am a beginner improviser and I find myself in a space with ten dancers moving back and forth along a diagonal pathway. I have a hard time concentrating on what I will do, but I focus on my breath, and it allows a sensation of calm to come over me so that I can look around. I notice that everyone on the diagonal has an arm raised, so I try that too. There is something satisfying about joining them, although once I am on the diagonal, I forget that I am in a line and concentrate instead on the dancer next to me, who has made eye contact. We begin an arm exchange of long sweeping movements, and I begin to see that some dancers have dropped out of the diagonal and are moving downstage. I begin to understand that I have to concentrate on many things at once: what movement choices I want to do, where I am, who is around me, and what patterns are we making. This is really exciting, and a challenge.”
Solo Practice
Ensemble Practice
Emergent Forms
Ensemble Practice
In the ensemble practice, dancers compose with one another. This is a complex system in which the dancers’ personal movement vocabularies are embedded within compositional patterns or structures, and emergent structures are embedded within larger organizational patterns that we are calling forms.
While making choices in the present moment, an improviser attends to multi-levels of organization: local, regional, and global, while focusing on movement patterns, spatial relationships, signals from the other performers, and development over time. With an articulate solo movement vocabulary, a dancer is able to bring ideas into quick-moving windows of opportunity in ensemble improvisations. The ensemble engages in a constant selection and refinement of material while, in a process of trial and error, they focus on the emergence of the material and how it is being shaped.
Signaling Techniques
Signaling techniques are essential tools for non-verbal feedback while selecting and developing patterns during the improvisation. They develop amongst the performers and support global, collective, self-organizing behavior that mirrors the selection and pruning process that occurs in complex systems in nature. For example, the focus and direction of the eyes can indicate connection and location of attention in space. Dynamics and speed of gesture, as well as touch, can signal rhythm, tone, and timing.
Assessment / Reflection
Assessment is integral to the ensemble work and embedded in our practice. Verbal discussion develops a collective history, heightening the ability of the ensemble to adapt its choices in the development of a composition. Individuals directly share their perceptions and experiences in tracking the memory of how a structure occurred and point to choices that felt particularly effective or ineffective in the unfolding of a form. In this phase, the work can be critiqued, technical skills advanced, structures and forms identified and developed. We’ve explored three approaches to observing structuring principles in improvisation; the systems approach, the developmental approach, and the psychological approach. Each approach acts as a lens for viewing and discussion.
To experience improvisation through the lens of the systems approach (with parallels in evolutionary biology), we observe how the dancers continually adapt to new movement material, form relationships that result in patterns, and integrate new structures as they arise.
To experience improvisation through the lens of the developmental approach (with parallels in morphology), we observe how the movement patterns emerge and dissolve over time, and how individuals and the ensemble create structural variations by building on the initial material.
Experiencing improvisation through the lens of the psychological approach involves consideration of the arising of meaning or metaphor as a significant aspect of the complexity of ensemble composition.
Like organic structures in Nature, the ensemble practice does not have a preconceived aesthetic. It can incorporate any and many movement languages. An aesthetic arises out of the negotiation between improvisers—a consensus of movement material and verbal opinions—as the group builds a history of shared experience.
How does the ensemble form judgments about whether a structure works or not? Most importantly, a collective decision arises as much from choices made during the improvisation as from reflections made verbally afterward. We have observed two overall desires implicit in the improvisers’ experience. One is for coherence. The other is for a structure to have enough order to make recognizable patterns and enough openness to allow new or unpredictable possibilities to arise. These desires are notably represented in the science of complexity in the principles of order for free—a result of continual selection within the zone between order and chaos, and integration and differentiation—a balance between order and openness.
While this balance appears naturally in organic systems that can benefit from a time scale of many years to select, adapt, and refine their structures, in the short time context of a human dance improvisation, this relationship is often elusive and difficult to attain. Too many available choices make it difficult to create recognizable patterns, while too rigid a structure does not allow new possibilities to arise. Our challenge is to discover structuring principles that can be repeated with enough freedom to create new emergent possibilities.
Compositional Exercises for Entering an Ensemble Practice
Broadening from Solo to Ensemble Awareness: Starting with a solo practice, the transition to working in an ensemble can begin with bringing your sensorial attention to the dancers immediately surrounding you and then gradually expanding your attention to include an awareness of the whole space. We facilitate this expanding attention by forming duets, merging duets into quartets, then quartets into small ensembles until all of the dancers in the space are part of a single ensemble. This provides the practice of tracking at local, regional, and global levels in the development of a composition.
Duets: The Duet form focuses on bringing Solo practice into listening, responding, and developing a composition with another. The structure begins with each dancer creating a movement phrase of her/his own. Then the two come together and, without discussion, begin to mimic and trade each other’s material, making spontaneous choices about who is leading and who is following, noticing the shared patterns that arise out of the activity. As each dancer incorporates into their own phrase select gestures, rhythms and textures of the others in a continuous exchange, their vocabularies mingle until a third shared phrase emerges which they can perform together
Ensemble Worlds: (One can name this exercise after the soloist who begins the composition, e.g. Susan’s World)
This exercise gives an ensemble an opportunity to explore how they can build distinct compositional worlds by listening, supporting, embodying, and responding to the choices of a soloist. It gives a soloist practice in making clear movement choices. The focus is on establishing a shared world. The first dancer initiates solo material. Ensemble members then enter to join the soloist, selecting particular qualities, gestures, contrasts, or phrasings that seem central to the movement that the soloist is creating. The initial soloist can enter or exit the dance throughout the exercise, and also calls the end of the exercise once he or she feels the world has been clearly established.
Initiator, Responder, and Framer: A dancer initiates solo material. A second dancer then joins and responds by, e.g., taking on similar qualities, gestures, and phrasing, or contrasting the material. A third dancer then enters to frame the duet.
Framing involves directing the focus towards the duet by various means: e.g., anchoring the space through stillness, echoing a gesture, creating a boundary through a repetitive spatial pattern. The exercise gives a chance to explore possibilities of three different compositional perspectives. Its clear constraints regarding roles give a range of experiences to draw on when roles are nonverbally negotiated within a larger ensemble.
Compositional Tools
Compositional tools are practices that enable the individual dancer and the ensemble to build and recognize complex structures, which in turn enable them to build and recognize more encom- passing complex forms.
Tools for establishing basic patterns and relationships within movement material include: Unison, Spatial Patterns, Solo/Chorus, Retrograde, Rhythmic Patterns, Narratives/Images, Foreground/Background, Repetition, Interruptions, Sudden Changes, Entrances/Exits, Stillness, Shadowing, Partnering, Framing.
Referencing brings back or repeats an earlier compositional choice in order to emphasize or contextualize its meaning. A dancer can reference a gesture, quality, spatial pattern, or narrative. The ensemble can also reference patterns that have previously emerged within a composition.
Amplification occurs when a movement is made by one dancer and is subsequently mimicked by several dancers through- out the space. It often serves to visually multiply a gesture and quickly establish an ensemble pattern.
Nesting is the practice of shifting attention between the local, small group, and whole space until one is able to sustain awareness on all at once. We also call this a topology—the spatial- temporal relationship among elements and their interactions —where the improviser is tracking and mapping this information at all levels simultaneously.
On the periphery of the composition, I observe a dancer enter the space and begin to develop solo material that references pedestrian gestures. I notice her repeat a series of quick, sharp hand gestures, and I enter to frame the development of her solo with this repeated gesture. As I enter,I make eye contact with three other observers, who enter quickly after and join me in chorusing the solo. We begin to expand on the initial hand gestures. These develop into full body movements, causing our chorus to encompass the soloist. We enter a more chaotic structure of five coexisting solos sweeping the space. In this transitional space, the movement of another dancer catches my attention and I begin to unison his material. Once the other dancers recognize this unison as the focal point, their movement begins to dissipate as they move towards the periphery of the space and exit. Left behind is a near‐unison duet of slowly shifting sculptural forms.
Emergent Structures
In the ensemble practice, we define a “structure” as a set of patterns in an interactive relationship. Space, time, and movement are elements of these relationships. Structures emerge, morph, dissolve, and shape the development of the composition. A structure can appear within a larger form or emerge into or become a form in itself, depending on its complexity and the scale of its developmental arc.
The following Emergent Structures have repeatedly occurred in our practice:
Wash: A pattern where the ensemble crosses the space together at an even energy and speed, allowing individual dancers to drop out when they wish and drop back in on a subsequent crossing. Variations occur when the dropouts improvise movement phrases, or interact with each other from across the space.
Charge: A Charge is a group impulse. It usually has high energy and speed, e.g., a mass movement across the space.
Main Event/Chorus: This pattern is very common in EI. The activity in space becomes more ordered as attractors set up a “hot spot” or main event, where the focus of the complex pattern resides. Like a Greek chorus, the others comment, respond, frame, react, or other- wise relate to the performers in the Main Event.
Waves and Eddies: A pattern where the ensemble travels together forwards and backwards through space, using unison movement patterns with constantly varying energy. Often originating on a long diagonal, smaller ensembles separate out from the wave like shells suspended in eddies.
Pathways appear in various ways. They can be structured through travelling geometrically through space, through focusing attention or gesture along a trajectory, or by standing in a group configuration.
Landscape is a global pattern and appears when the visual rhythms and textures of the ensemble movement create a set of spatial relationships that fill the whole space, recalling attributes of a natural landscape. Relationships include symmetry or asymmetry, foreground/background, varying levels in space, stillness and moving.
Field is a type of landscape that involves a scattering of dancers throughout the space. Just as fields of daisies, wheat, or evergreens have different characteristics, an ensemble of performers can create a variety of fields with different textures, speeds, and levels of energy. Fields give a sense of critical mass to space.
Tableau is a structure that develops visual imagery. An image can be abstract, relating to lines and geometry, or relate to specific content contained in a narrative. Dancers can build a tableau by accumulation or spontaneously all together. Tableaux contain their own logic, sometimes task-oriented, sometimes surreal. Some appear as still poses, and others are in motion.
Glacial Erratic: A structure in which a large ensemble, in their travel, leaves behind a small ensemble that further articulates the large group material and resolves the composition.
Communication
Communication—the exchange of meaning—within a dance ensemble, relies on awareness and responsiveness to the choice‐making of others. While many individual skills contribute to an ensemble’s ability to self‐organize, several have emerged as central to this work:
Pattern recognition is the ability to recognize patterns as they emerge within the development of a composition. Patterns can appear on many levels, including physical—textures, geometries, or spatial patterns, energetic, metaphorical, or narrative.
Negotiation of roles occurs within the composition with full attention to the range of relational possibilities.
Listening is amplifying and supporting the choices of others. This does not always mean agreement (one can make choices for opposing textures or juxtaposed timings, etc.), but it asks for an awareness of relational possibilities and shared responsibility for compositional development. It is important to consider that listening can involve many senses, including but not limited to aural, visual, and kinesthetic modalities.
Tracking is the ability to simultaneously track at the local, regional, and global levels of the composition, in any given moment, enabling complex local interactions without losing recognizable pattern formation of the whole.
Attention to development is the ability to track the development of the composition over time and contributes to the collective decisions in selecting and adapting patterns in the unfolding of a form. Attention to development builds on the skill of tracking and is strengthened by familiarity with developmental arcs and time‐based compositional skills (referencing, retrograding, accumulating, etc.).
Balancing Individual and Collective Choice‐Making is a self‐regulating system where the dance ensemble requires feedback to enable continual adaptation of patterns in the development of a composition. Feedback occurs in the looping process of initiating and responding by individuals and the group.
Because development is dependent on the emergence of an ensemble consciousness, the relationship between individual agency and ensemble is a crucial and delicate balance. Agency is highly valued, as the contributions of individuals enable ensemble forms to develop with a rich unpredictability. In turn, individual agency is strengthened through the process of co‐creating, as the support of others can expand one’s perception and range in choice‐making.
Working through states of transition from one pattern to the next is an essential phase in self‐organizing systems. It is here where the value of co‐creation overcomes conflict between the individual and the ensemble. If improvisers cannot collaborate in making decisions in the transitional spaces and do not recognize patterns forming collectively, the system cannot self‐organize. For this reason, a significant aspect of agency is the willingness of an individual to participate in the process of co‐creation.
The capacity for communication is central to emergent structuring processes. We recognize that this form of communication in improvisation has implications for other contexts such as governance design, business, and conflict resolution.
Performance
The performance of Emergent Improvisation adds a dimension to engaging in the complexities of ensemble communication. New considerations arise to make apparent to an outside viewer how a group of distinct individuals collectively create meaning. This places value on exposing communication and decision‐making processes within the group. To communicate with coherence to an audience has required an extra attention to pacing of development and clarity of beginnings and initial material of each form.
Questions that arise in the performance of EI are: What responsibility does the performer have to the observer? Where is the line between the inherent exploratory nature of this work and the
commitment to communicate with an audience? What value are we placing on selection of movement, relational possibilities, developmental arcs, narrative content, virtuosic dancing, and conveyance of meaning?