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2. Try this exercise from Susan Rethorst, based on a game she learned from Simone Forti (to be published in A Choreographic Mind by Susan Rethorst): The Game consists of moving five objects between two people one at a time by turns. The playing space is defined by the space between the two persons sitting on the studio floor, and should remain more or less constant. The objects are ordinary things that might be found in a handbag or student’s backpack, none much larger than a watch or pair of scissors, but different as to shape, color, texture and function. The first step is to gather more objects than are needed into a pile from which each couple chooses five to take to a playing spot. The game has no goal or ending, only the ongoing placing and replacing of these objects one by one in relation to one another. Attempts to make it something other than this are beside the point. I sometimes say, “If it bores you, be bored.” 3. Select two objects. Make an arrangement with them for each of Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints: space, shape, time, story, emotion, and movement. 4. Pick an object and research it for a half hour. Research could include moving with it, finding out how it moves or might be moved, and also what stories or memories it evokes for you. Then, based on your research, improvise a three- to five-minute duet for you and your object. If you do this with a group, perform your duets for each other. This exercise is from Keith Hennessy, Performing Improvisation/ Improvising Performance workshop (Earthdance, Plainfield, Massachusetts; Fall 2006). 1 I N T E R L U D E 4 The Objects Begin to Speak Walking along the road with my dog, Nellie, I asked myself about objects— I wanted to teach myself about them. Lisa Nelson says that objects communicate to us, we take instruction from them. I understand that in a sense, but I don’t feel it yet. What can I learn about objects right here, right now? I am on the road, and I follow the path. The path defines where I walk—the path instructs me where to walk. I got that much! 154 INTE RLUDE I look at things on the path to work with. A thorny bramble. No, too prickly. A log, what would I do with it? It has a crack with dirt in it. I could touch it, but I don’t feel like bending over to pick it up. Then Nellie is panting and I want her to drink from the stream ahead. We go down the bank, but it is too shallow right there. I see a deeper pool clogged with branches. I call to her and start clearing the area, throwing the branches onto the bank. I catch myself reaching for another branch—OH! Aha. I had just rejected similar interactions with a bramble and logs. But now. . . . I wanted something . I needed to clear the pool. I picked up the branches and threw them. Objects are talking to us all the time, telling us how to use them. Sit like this on me; pick me up with two hands; don’t touch me, or I’ll stick you. It is so automatic that we forget that they are speaking to us with their shapes. We read them, their shapes and their uses, infer what an interaction will be like, then try it out and adjust accordingly. It was this weird moment—mid-reach, when I caught myself engaged in activity with a branch—that it became clear to me. Things in my environment were calling. I kept missing them when I tried to arbitrarily create an interaction. I had to catch myself midstream, out of the corner of my eye. INTE RLUDE 155 ...

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