Reading Movement

As we investigate the new choreographer and ourselves, I am finding that I have a new body.  All that injury and all that physical therapy and extra training has made a new me.  I am stronger in some places.  Much stronger than I have been in 6 years.  I also have some losses.  And some new compensation strategies.  I am trying not to call them tricks -- that makes me feel less real and less responsible.  Strategies seem more planned.  More careful.

I knew that I was different, but I am intrigued by how it is playing out in the studio.  I now have a massively trained, massively stable core.  It's like a tree trunk; yes, there are some bends, but the overall structure is solid.  And yet, it can flex.  It can even flex into extreme ranges without spasming -- most of the time.  But what I notice is that I can now rely more on my core stability for movement than on my arms.  And that changes how I dance.

More and more this week, I have noticed that I am trying to dance on momentum rather than strength (where strength equals arm strength and momentum equals the ride of the wheel).  I am still doing more or less the same things, but the impulse comes from a different place.  And the movement feels different.

That phrase I talked about yesterday.  Well, we met it again today.  But this time differently.  Our instruction was something like "take the phrase into your body."  We find ourselves spaces in the studio.  I like to pick a spot where the sunshine makes odd shadow shapes.  I review the original phrase.  I watch the others do it a couple of times.  I do it again and again myself.  How to explain?  It's like, well, it's like doing literary criticism -- each reading of the poem deepens your understanding of the text.  You come to know what it means and better understand how it speaks to you.  For a dancer, that process of reading is more a process of movement creation: to understand a movement phrase, you have to create a movement phrase.

In my corner, I repeat the phrase, all the while listening carefully for resonances in my body; I'm trying to sense where and how the movement falls.  You can't impose upon a phrase; you can only discern what it and your body tell you.  As I go over it again and again, I notice more that my head tilts that way, that I want to move my wheels, bend, arch, curl .... my arm slides up and out ...  Soon, I have my own phrase.

We perform individually for the choreographer; he makes developments, changes, suggestions.  We perform for each other -- seeing what we have each done, helps me understand the language of the phrase.  I try some of the moves that I've seen, feeling out the meaning of each interpretation.  It's rich, soft, subtle; I like this phrase.  But then, just as I'm feeling comfortable with what I've seen and done, the choreographer asks for another version.  A new "reading."

I wheel off to my sunlit space; the shadows have changed their orientation; I put my back to the light and start again.