Can I just throw it out there that sometimes taking a walk in solitude during a sunset with a cool breeze to embrace you is sometimes the only thing that can throw you back into reality. It made me calm down, forget the noise of life, especially that noise which is continually flooding my head, and listen to the world. It reminded me of my place in both space in time. Every child's laugh, every bird that flew by, even those decaying factories in the background brought me to a state of inner peace that I haven't known in I can't even tell you how long. I heard the universe telling me to relax because I am going to be okay and I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. I think I'll probably try to make a routine of it.
And also, maybe I shouldn't be so comfortable as to treat walking in Philadelphia alone as if I was walking in my own backyard...but maybe I'll just never report to home about where this walk took place...
Is your research question essentially a question about the emotions themselves, e.g. as a source of knowledge in our lives, or about the process of creating dance that emerges out of them?
To this, I'm not sure. I think it is essentially a question about the emotions themselves. As I continue along my journey, I've realized something alarming about myself. I am one of those thousands that is under this spell of societal numbness, as I discussed in my earlier blog entry. I have transformed from the gentle, romantic child I once was to this hard, stoic thing that I am. My question is why? And how do we fix this problem? How can I reach inside of myself to let myself feel? A big part of my ability to do this rests in my faith in others not to make me feel ashamed of being emotional and feeling whatever it is I feel. I need to know that no one will think I'm being a "foolish little girl" if I have trouble dealing with something. I need to know that it's okay to be anything other than solid.
And how does someone struggling with this issue reach out to a nation struggling? How can I move an audience who has been trained to be "happy" or "solid" to feel what I'm feeling? Will they accept that? And what happens when I don't express the emotion they're anticipating even if it's what I'm feeling? Can that be okay?
1. How can I come to know myself through the emotions, as I allow them to fully surface in my consciousness and become a source for my imagination?
Entering this process has already allowed me to know myself better. I have learned what triggers my emotions. I have figured out that I am not nearly moved as easily as I once was in a general sense; it takes extremely specific situations to extract a legitimate emotional response from me. I realize this is in response to my past and it is a defense mechanism. I know that somewhere along the line I convinced myself that even if I could never be what someone told me I needed to be for them, I could at the very least be strong, and if I was strong what they were saying couldn't hurt me. Choosing to be strong has dulled me both from good and bad.
I also recognized earlier in this year that when I was dancing, things would surface that I was either unaware of or trying to hide. For me, dance is a method of communication with myself and the world. If I can hope to be honest about what I'm thinking and feeling, even if it is contrary to societal expectations, that hope rests in dance.
2. How can improvisation as experiential inquiry make me more aware of my emotions and help me to process them?
The point of improvisation is honesty. With improvisation I cannot predict what I am going to do (if I am doing it correctly). In what I've been doing, I have been focusing on whatever I'm thinking and feeling and allowing it to truly manifest throughout my body. In that first improv posted on here, although you can't tell on the video, I was sobbing. In each session, I took everything I had and poured it into the space. So, this everything being channelled through my body in an honest way tells a lot. Am I choosing to throw myself? Am I touching myself quite a bit? Am I wandering? Does it appear that I know where I'm going? Is my body loose or controlled? Each one suggests a different emotional state. If I'm throwing myself, chances are I'm frustrated and/or angry with no other outlet. If I'm touching myself, I need to be made aware that I'm still here, in this world, or that I need comfort. If I'm wandering, I don't know what's next which suggests confusion...etc. There are also the memory stains that bleed out through my body, such as the right arm. That has no universal psychology behind it, but for me, a right arm is extremely telling. That is one of the most vulnerable parts I have, but it leads me into most of the movement in a few of the videos.
Watching myself process through movement points things out to me that I may not have realized otherwise.
3. What is the process by which I draw upon emotional states and changes to create choreography?
This question was actually brought up in the latest Diamond Scholars Luncheon as well. So, here we go, choreographic process. After reviewing the improv tapes, I pick out moments of significance where I feel as though I was really getting somewhere emotionally - ie. I feel as though I was truly immersed in what I was feeling or I was talking myself into a new level. I then recreate these moments. At first, I picked out about 35 moments (from only the first 2 improvs) and attempted to string them together in some kind of way that made sense to me. Then I tweaked this dance over and over, but with little to no improvement on my level of satisfaction with it. So, I kept improvising, and continued to remind myself of the process. This piece isn't about aesthetics (woa weird for me), it's about honesty and what feels right. The problem was it didn't look good and I couldn't justify that because it didn't feel right.
I then thought about the improv that I was most invested in, that I felt most true in. I took the basic movement motif in that and translated it into the main motif for the phrase. I also took basic concepts and pieces of movement from the first "dance" and rearranged them, integrating the motif whenever possible. And finally, something felt right.
I've also realized, begrudgingly, that emotions are completely dependent upon our relationships with other people in our lives. I can sit here and be as self-centered as I want and pretend that this piece is all about me, but that wouldn't be true. This piece is about me in relation to the world. I'm excited about being invited to hang out in a bar with my closest friend and her husband. I'm miserable because some jerk took my heart and ran. I'm nostalgic because I want to be home to see my little brother learn how to ride a bike while my little sister takes the wheel of my car. But all of these feelings are dependent upon the people who are in my life and mean something to me, even if it's only a momentary meeting. Holding on to this obvious, yet hard to come by information, I've decided to involve more people in the piece, which is comforting and I'm very excited about.
And lastly, although not a question asked by Joellen, why on earth did I start this blog? No, it wasn't to torture you with immense amounts of text on a page posted late each night. I've continually said that this piece is equally, if not perhaps more about the process than the product. That being said, it makes no sense for me to shut my audience out of what I'm doing. This is about me figuring out who I am, what I am and what I'm doing about and with that information. It's about me possibly causing you to realize something. It's about me asking you to accept whatever I say and understand that I'm only human, just like you. This is normal.
Please, if you made it this far, watch this video. I'm happy with what I came up with (aside from the occasional stumble). I'm moving forward with this, starting tomorrow.
Can you see my research coming through? I can =)
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