School of Fish

Accompanied by yet more rain we met again on Friday for the second session of Choreographing Community. After a recap of what we had covered the week before we managed to integrate our four new members into our name game AND remember our name actions from the first week.

We whizzed through a warm up using the five actions we had started with the week before (jump, turn, touch the floor, suspend and swing)and trying out some improvisation based on body part isolations. This nearly fell apart when I suggested isolating middle fingers because I was then faced with 23 people swearing at me! I will think more carefully about the body parts I suggest next time.

Temporarily splitting the group into those who were able to attend last week and our newcomers gave us time to recap the duets and trio from last week and teach the phrase of material we learnt to those it was new to. We then shared this revealing some tweaks and amendments to the choreography created last week.

Beth led an exercise called 'school of fish' which consisted of two groups moving in unison and organically changing directions and movements seamlessly. This was quite entertaining to watch, particularly when the concept of a rebel fish (off shoots of each group) was added.

Following this fun but silly explorative play we developed two phrases of movement in two groups. This was done through accumulation of individual moves contributed by each participant. The brief was to teach your action/move (developed from the stimulus of 'identity' - in whatever way you interpret that) to everyone in the group and then as a group find ways to link them together. Once the group was confident they could remember the sequence they played with how to perform it. e.g. in canon, different speeds, different facings. When we shared the results we danced to Regina Spektor's 'Us' and several people commented how emotional it was to dance in unison to such lovely music.

Although we hadn't quite got through everything Beth and I had planned for the session I was so impressed with how willing everybody was to take part and contribute creatively. There was lots of laughing alongside the productivity!

Installment two was topped off with a lovely trip to The Angel pub on the river front...a perfect way to finish a spot of community bonding!