Assessed Artistic Project

My artistic project is to be assessed on the measure of understanding connections between my cross-disciplinary explorations and my understanding of my tertiary dance course. An exercise of dance improvisation from studio a few weeks ago stands out the most; as though each of us were rag dolls, we were to lie on the ground as deadweight so that our partners could feel the actual mass of our skull, limbs and body. Although our brief on how much energy the person lying down could apply, at the beginning of the exercise they were to do no work at all, and the partner, 100% of lifting. I felt like a rag-doll being manipulated and manoeuvred, and made to sit up, stand up, fall down, roll over. The most challenging thing was to relinquish the last bits of control we had over our own bodies.

         In my mind, this was how a puppet lives, fully and totally influenced by the puppeteer, with no control over its own inanimate limbs or movement pathways. Its movement pathways are dictated by the strings holding it up, and this, as an external source of control struck me as an interesting starting point.

           When we dance, how much of the control we exert over our bodies is from an external constraint, a space or environment that limits our freedom of movement? How much is determined by the state of our inner, or our mind, of our mentality and of our emotions? How does a physical constraint influence our movement and how much does the mind really influence the body's dancing?          

          It is almost as though the two opposites are the mind's dictation over the bodily movement in dance, and the body's structure affecting the status of the mind. There is evidence into which I wish to research, supporting the claim that changing one's body position can re-frame the thinking of the person.

           Then again, the body's movement is perhaps governed by a conflict of internal and eternal sources of constraint.

           Whether movement shapes thinking, or vice-versa, or whether movement is decided on the basis of external surroundings or of internal state, I would like to conduct constraint experiments to be able to reach some conclusions.

           A real challenge is choosing a discipline; I identify as a musician, a dancer, a photographer, a sculptor, a writer and a poet. A blog enables me to undertake a selection of cross-disciplinary mini-projects that will shape the thinking of this assessment.