About maps and choreography

• The Installation "About maps and choreography" was the result of the residence Inkubator developed in April and May of 2016 in the Tanzfaktur in Cologne. One of the outcomes of this residence was the creation of maps. These maps were drawings, which symbolizes the trajectory developed during my creative process. 

• This installation was created having these maps as starting point. It guides the audience to a thinking trajectory, using this trajectory as creative methodology.

An idea is a network. Creativity is not something, which happens linear, but it follows the logic of going forward and backwards, makes circles and alternative trajectories.

The way created in this post is a representation of the way I think when I am creating. One can say that it is my methodology of work.

In the next pages and in the next rooms I invite you to go through my way of thinking when I am creating a choreographic work.

To start the trajectory you need to have an idea or a topic that you would like to work on.

This trajectory is a suggestion and it works for me and to my creative process. You can follow it as I am suggesting, but you don´t have to. You can also find you own way to follow these instructions and to go through this path.

Take an idea, a wish, a topic you want to develop. It can be an image, a theoretical text, a journalistic fact.

Why did you choose this topic?

What motivates you to work on this topic?

What interests you most in this topic?

How or in which format you want to express your idea?

Do you imagine to make a piece, an installation, a film or another format or a hybrid format?

Where would you like that your idea to take place? (Theater, gallery, open space, public space, a house, etc …)

Task: Create a map of your ideas, where you draw what is going on in your mind.

To create the map, you can use the paper and the pencil placed near to the window. When you finish it, continue following the instructions on the wall.

What makes this idea specific from you?

What is your personal vision about this idea?

How could you communicate your idea in one sentence?

How do I translate my idea artistically?

This part of the text is dedicated to figure out strategies that can help you in the process of transforming ideas in one or more than one concrete creative proposal (s).

I invite you to play with your idea, in order to find one idea that you are going to work on.

In this fragment you will find stations. Each station is a suggestion about how you can work on your idea. I invite you to visit the stations and to try out what each station suggests.

You are encourage to move on the space, go to a studio or big room, to use the objects and people around you to work on that.

Station 1

-      with what do you relate this idea?

-      How can you relate this idea with some images, movement, text, etc?

-      Which are the key words of your concept?

Create another map based on these questions

Collect images

Or texts you could relate with it in case you still don´t have it

Station 2:

Catch a key word of your concept. Words are also images.

Let´s play with this word.

Create a task with this word. This task can be:

- Imaginative/memory: exploring a memory or an imaginative situation

- in relation to the space: try a clear task in relation to how you use the space and relate with it

- a movement proposal: a movement quality or something that can lead you to a movement quality

- a game between the dancers which suggests an interaction.

When you create a task think that you are giving a rule for someone else that will follow it.

Station 3:

Repeat the task you create in Station 2 in different ways. Create and recreate your own proposal.

Play with it.

And don´t think too much.

Overlap tasks.

If you create one, try it and now overlap it with another one, creating tasks even more complex.

Station 4:

Use objects to concretize your idea

You can create a task exploring the objects or create a choreography with them.

End Station:

Now that you went trough this phase, I ask you to pick up one or two ideas that you like most, before go into the next room.

-      But … what to do when I don´t have any idea?

-      How a state of not knowing can be creative and direct me to knowing?

-      How to Know the unknown?

Use the not knowing as creative impulse and let yourself be guided by this fear of not knowing.

Trust your intuition.

The next part is dedicated to the outcomes of the trajectory you create until now.

Here is the space to focus your thinking in just one idea.

(I mean, one task, one image, one insight from the many ideas you had before)

This one idea can also be a combination of ideas, which generates a third one.

 Take the idea that most makes sense to you and that mostly dialogues with your concept and develop it.

Find the layers, textures and contradictions that belong to this universe you are creating.

On the other posts you can see other outcomes from my thinking process.

If you want, you can expose your map or your maps on the wall and organise them

day 9 and the weekend

May 1^st

Collecting and analyzing what I have been doing in the last two weeks.

I realized that I am going trough a process that sometimes look like schizophrenic. Actually, schizophrenic is not the right word, but it is a process of analyzing and doing at the same time in order to turn consciously for myself how I work and develop tools I can use in any creative process.

I realized that in the first week I was strict looking for definitions and tried to make clear for myself what I am busy with when I create a work. Actually it was not about the moment I am in the studio rehearsing a work, but about how to work with an idea and transform a concept in something touchable and real for the others.

In this analysis process, I mostly looked to old experiences in order to recognize how I created my last works. But then, each work is a work, right? Would these tools be really useful in my next one, specifically the one I am starting to create now in May?

In order to answer this question, I needed to focus my research during these 3 weeks of Inkubator also in the development of the idea of post-capitalismus as motto for the development of a performance. In this way I was putting myself in the situation of creating a work and at the same time analyzing it.

As first strategy for that, is the constant dialogue between theory and practice, or the world of my mind and the world of my body. For each idea, reflection or insight I was creating a map and writing it down on the paper in the wall, creating a mural of ideas. At the same time, I was experiencing these ideas in my body.

Interesting from this process is to observe the two mind sets in each moment, the moment of improvisation and creation with the body and the moment of creation with the mind. It is two different and at the same time complementary mind settings and one needs the other. It is interesting the capacity of changing to one mind set to the other and also to let the creative and spontaneous mind setting influence the analytical one.

I realize how complex and how many layers a creative process and a project can have. The blog, the analysis, the concept, workshops, setting, rehearsals, they are all sides of a same project, layers of a creative process and complex how it has to be.

I realized that one of my current methodologies is the repetition and the non end exploration of an idea.  Working with contradiction, I started to explore many different ways of dealing with the word and with the image of “contradictions of capitalism”.

But in the rehearsal I found myself dealing with the question: how to find what I am looking for, if you don´t know exactly what it is? How to be creative?

How to direct myself being a director?

Task for this week:

-       systematize my system, mapping more clearly the way I am building by myself in order to find what I am looking for

-       giving myself tasks that will help me to create this piece in a quickly way.

Day 8 : contradiction day

April 27th

A process, its huge amount of information and different kind of layers.

I remember when I was studying in Stockholm and I heard from the master creator, Chrysa Parkson, that the idea of create the master New Performative Practices came from the wish to don´t throw away all the things you collect when you are creating a piece. The one hour piece is always one small part of what we create in our process.

By reflecting about my methodology, way of working and specially in the context of this residence, I recognize two spaces and issues that dialogue and contradict themselves.  One is the space of collecting material, trying different things and allow yourself to move in this different layers of creation – this blog, the workshops, the exchange via facebook, the table feedback with others, the mentoring.

The other is a real goal: a performance next month, that I have in mind, but I don´t want too much to focus on it because I am afraid in decide too early what could be decided in another point.

It´s a contradiction, between focusing and not focusing, opening and closing, have the capacity to move here and there at the same time.

Contradiction. It was the word that I finalize my mentoring session yesterday.

Contradiction of doing this project, of creating a piece about postcapitalism using this system. Contradiction that exists in putting yourself in the dance markt with this idea. Contradiction in applying for funding. Contradiction in eating supermarket food when I try to eat mostly health food. Contradiction of being part of a system you can´t go out of.

Contradiction of trying.

Contradiction is now my impulse to create material, searching for different ways of answering this provocation. Answering using images, using objects, relating with the space, creating actions.

Day 6 and 7

April 26th

Today and yesterday I continued putting in practice the tool of catching a central word of the concept and create scores with it.

On Monday I took one of the central ideas from capitalisms, and it is the principle of having a system which just works in the moment that a small group of person concentrate most part of the wealth.

From this principle, I started to create different choreographic scores, exploring the relation between the dancers or the relation with the space. By giving this task to a big group of dancers, they suggested that they would be in a competition.

After the improvisation with the group, I continued working on this idea with one of the guests. Each time we improvised, we tried to reinvent this score and create variation on that.

From this experience, I recognize another tool:

-       Finding variations for the same score.

Today I continued working on with this tool, but with another group and with a new idea, the idea of a wave. To explore that, I worked systematically, building up slowly ideas, starting with easy scores and making them each time more and more complex.

Build up was:

1.Explore the idea of wave/reverberation with movement –in circle, one start to give impulses to the other.

Once we made by touch and after without touching.

Accelerate the transmission of the information from one body to the other.

Opening to the space.

2. After having the dynamic of the score clear for the group, we added one more element, the sound and the idea of use the space as a musical instrument.

From this experience I can pointed out the importance and the quality of build up slowly an idea, putting one layer after other.

Afternoon: mentoring. Since the provocations from a mentoring are still reverberating in myself, I prefer to resume this conversation to the came out of it: the contradiction of living in capitalisms, reflecting about it but at the same time being part of it.

Day 5

April 22nd

The concept of “sharing economy” is related with the idea of decentralization of big companies of production to small companies, which are responsible to more than one sector of production.

Score created from the idea of centralization and decentralization.

What is centralization and decentralization in the body.

1.Working with the idea of having one center in the body and moving from this center.

2. Exploring the idea of having more than one center in the body.

Centralization and decentralization in the space.

1.group moving as a center

2.expanding centers in the space.

Question for next week: create a score based on the dynamic of neoliberalism system and its crisis.

Day 4

April 21st

Somehow, in the process of finding definitions, I started to work on the idea of “sharing economy” as imput for the creation of tasks. Postcapitalism and sharing economy is the topic of my next piece, that will be developed during 2016.

I applied the task tool number 1 (creating a task from a word) choosing the word centralization and decentralization to create different kind of tasks. By working on this task, the task was transformed in the trajectory of the choreography and I started to looking for subtasks and scores, which composes each moment of the choreography.

In a certain moment I didn´t know if I was developing tools for improvisation and creation that can be used in any context or if I am just creating a new piece. I don´t know, perhaps both. By dialoging about this crisis with the group, I want to experience one thing: what happen if I assume that I am creating tools to work with postcapitalism in choreography? What happen if I start to develop a way of create choreography that is connected with a critic to our social and economical system?

From this reflection I came to the follow questions that are going to support me in the development of this research. They are:

How can the body dialoges with the idea of postcapitalism?

How to develop a poscapitalist way of creating choreography?

How can dance be political?

Day 3

April 20th

Today I focused in the idea of task and score. Actually I started thinking about score and finished realizing that I meant task. I will come to it tomorrow in order to try to define for myself what score is.

Task is what the body does and what happens during the trajectory of the piece. There are different kind of tasks. It can be:

Physical: focused in the mechanical of the body

Imaginative: an image, an abstract situation, an image

An action: a verb

Energetic: exploring a movement quality

A memory: physical or emotional memory.

Task tool number 1: Choose a word that is related with your concept and from this word create a task.

Task tool number 2: Think in a situation that dialoges with your concept and try to create a task from that.

Together with Sara Basco, we found a definition for choreography that would synthetize this way of thinking choreography:

Choreography is a concept represented by acteurs destined to an audience in the space with a certain duration of time inside a trajectory that is divided in tasks that define the choreographic composition.

Day 2

19.04.2016

I continued today with my experiment, applying the choreographic system in the construction of a short choreography of 5 minutes.

Statement: today 50% of the welth is on the hand of 99% of population of the world, and the other 50% in the hand of 1% of the population.

Body: human Body in relation to objects.

Dance: ?

Tempo: 5 Minutes

Relation to the audience: Italian stage, audience has a contemplative position

Dramaturgy: as you can see, dramaturgy is the new element of my choreographic system. I understand dramaturgy as the trajectory of the piece, connected with what is happening in the sense of actions. 

Choreography of inequality:

In order to transmit my statement, I decided to create this graphic on the space. I will have 100 pieces of paper that in the beginning of the piece are share in the whole space. In the end of the piece, 50 pieces of paper will be placed in a small square, which represent 1% of the physical space. This trajectory is also the dramaturgy of the piece.

Having it in mind, I found myself with my first question: how I am going to do the action of redistributing the pieces of paper.

I had the main action (redistribution) but not the subactions or what happen during the development of the trajectory of the performance. In other words, it was missing the dance. It was the point I started to think about the idea of score and tasks as part of the choreography, and it will be the topic of tomorrow.

In order to solve my problem, I started to experience different ways to reach make my trajectory. For example, using different movement qualities and dynamics, telling a history while I do the action, running or just doing it. But the one I most liked was the idea of counting until 50 many times and in different ways, mixed with different movement qualities. 

Inkubator - Tanzfaktur day 1

April 18th

Anniversary research

Today we/I started the residence. What I most enjoy in being here is to be able to make that is dedicated in research and dissemination, without having the pressure of coming up with a fantastic result in just a few days. It´s rare to find these opportunities outside the academic context. These weeks mean time for myself, for an artistic reflection and to organize the tools I have been developing in the last years.

The next 3 weeks will be dedicated in the development of choreographic scores and systems, specifically, in the development of choreographic tools organizing it in a toolbox that could be used for anyone. I am interested in systematize a working process I have been working in the last two years that is the translation of philosophical, sociological or theoretical concepts in choreography. These 3 weeks will be dedicated to recognize, systematize and document this process and artistic methodology.

My first step in this first research day was to make a map. I like maps and I always start my projects drawing maps and maps, I let the room full of draws, lines, words and connections between these words, trying to visualize what is happening in my mind. So the spacialisation of the abstract ideas is the first tool in this process of translating ideas into performative tools.

Since I am interested in scores and in choreography, I decided to start the research first asking myself what choreography is made of ? Which are the elements, which compose a choreography? Then I created the choreographic map, you can see on the top of this page.

Basically I selected the elements that to me belong to a choreographic object. I see choreography as a theatrical and artistic expression, composed by the following elements: body, dance, space, audience, tempo and concept. What I understand regarding each element is:

Body: is the performative agent. Body can be a human body, an object, an element of nature, an animal, an E.T., etc.

Dance: dance is what the body does and how it moves.

Space: is not just the place where the action happens, but define also the relation with the space and function it performs in the choreography.

Tempo: duration, rhythm and musicality.

Concept: it is similar to the idea of statement, that is the idea behind your work. What does move you to create this performance ? Which is your artistic question?

Audience: is about the relation you develop with the audience and what (or if) it has a function in your performance.

 

Based on this map and on these guidelines, I put it in practice in order to explore how this system works. Since I am mostly working alone in the studio and I don´t have animals, dancers or ETs with me, so I decided to start to make experiments in choreographing objects applying these principles.