Movement and Music

I participated in my first dance lesson today - and it was quite an entry into movement. The class was improv, and taught by a Guy Shomroni, a Gaga/people teacher, and produced by Strut Dance.

I'm not a dancer, nor a choreographer - but as I'm looking at performing more I want to understand expression through body better. Yesterday's singing lesson taught me to let go of the notes on the page and sing from a place of emotional connection... as I wrote the songs that was really easy, because the songs are all connected to very powerful emotions. By singing from a space of emotion, a lot of the technique that Sue and I had been working on just came through naturally... performances will become easiser as I continue to practise this.

But the dance class today - we were given specific little challenges, like move as if the room is being filled with water, or tense a fist and keep the rest of the body loose and challenge yourself to maintain that dichotomy throughout the body. The music in the background varied.... but there was always a beat and a differing emotional component to the music.

What I realised during the class is the visceral nature of movement, and (for me) the connection between the conscious mind evoking an emotive or almost intuitive sensativity that expresses itself through the body in a physical interpretation of that space.

When I got home later I ran through a couple of the songs that I'm preparing, and started moving with them... expressing the emotional aspect though words, music and movement at the same time. I wonder where this will lead. I am no choreographer, nor am I a singer - I'm just a composer. But maybe the next stage of my creative career is to let go of the labels and simply express as needed by the intent of the calling.

That's a hard one to unpack - the calling. It's the reason you decide that a certain emotion or incident is important to express - and the expression can take many forms. But the calling, that decision to externalise an internal world - is a seed that must spark A LOT of energy.... The energy to write the work, produce it, perform it, write applications about it, write marketing material about it. That seed has to be personally evocative and powerful enough to inspire me to flow through on all aspects of the work, not just lay some pretty chords down. I guess I've found I'm unable to fully express with music, which is why words, performance and movement are also coming into it.