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3. Time Machines
- University of Wisconsin Press
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Time slips through our fingers like sand through an hourglass. Pendulums swing, the earth turns. We measure time through movement . It’s not surprising that time shows many faces in dance improvisation . For example, rather than measuring the length of a dance by a clock, some dancemakers use cues from the body or the improvised material as the timekeeper for their dances, finding a felt ending as signaled by the body or an organic ending that comes out of the material. Body time is measured from the internal sensing of time as opposed to the time on a clock; it can be much slower or pass more quickly than clock time—time may drag or fly. In work that examines habitual responses or engages the reflexes to a high degree, we can experience the body as much quicker than the conscious mind. On the other hand, movement that focuses deeply on sensation can expand and fill our sense of the moment, making one minute feel like ten. Movement may be used in a more objective way as well, for instance, to mark time—a sudden shift into a fast section of dance movement creates a reference point from which to measure. Clock time is often used to section and end works. Time spans are set and signaled by lighting or music shifts, for example—some kind of arbitrary cue based on actual time passed. Time— it’s no longer the simple choice between a waltz and the tango; it’s a whole other dimension to be explored. A Chance Encounter: Katie Duck Katie Duck points out that because dance is a “time art” (i.e., a performing art, or an art form that unfolds in time), duration is of major concern, but that 60 3 Time Machines I am estimating here, but I would guess the history and the future of “from the moment” dance improvisation, when added together, is about 30 milliseconds. Perhaps less, when things are going well. —steve paxton, “The History and Future of Dance Improvisation” the dancer’s relationship to time is very different when improvising than when dancing set choreography. In improvisation, dancers choose not only what movements to make but when to make them. Because choice is available to the improvising dancer, time becomes a tool. That is, the improviser measures time through movement choices—when to enter, move, pause, or exit. Because of this, the improviser learns to juggle a whole other set of timebased skills, whereas in dancing set choreography, keeping time—often in regard to being in sync with other dancers or the music—is the dominant relationship . Duck talks to dancers about “remembering to exit” and “remembering to pause,” for example. These are choices of the improvising dancer— ways that a dancer has to create duration and to place, mark, or locate a dance in time. These choices of the improvisers drive the dance initially. Once an improvisation starts, the choices begin multiplying exponentially. “There are more choices available than the space can contain,” Duck says.1 In other words, a dancer, in the instant that exists after finishing a movement, could probably come up with two or three different choices to follow it but of course can only pick one. Very quickly, if you do the math, there are thousands of potential dances that didn’t happen! The choices made create a context to be considered, and so, as the dance progresses, there is less freedom for individual choice—suddenly a dancer can’t do just anything. Perhaps a certain mood is developed or a relationship established, which needs to be accounted for. Sometimes a dancer finds himor herself literally stuck with a choice, for example, sitting facing upstage and not being able to see what is happening in the rest of the space. At that point choices are few, and chance—the way one dancer’s choices and another’s choices intersect—becomes an operating factor in shaping the improvisation . By chance, another dancer’s path comes into the view of the one facing upstage, giving him or her options to respond to. As the dance progresses, it becomes more and more reliant on chance happenings. It is not choice that interests Duck so much as chance—she is interested in the aesthetics of chance. As she sees it, choice (when as well as what) and chance (the intersection of events) are the composers in improvisation. The dancers don’t compose, that is, make something happen directly through...