Part III from Notes on Solo Improvisation

*More Performance Considerations

Working with a sense of play. Acting with a directness of intention.

Two scenarios come to mind: 1. A documentary film whose subject is itself asking what it is as it’s being made – discovery and presentation occurring in the same moment. 2. A skydiver jumps out of a plane, then must construct their own parachute with the materials at hand – a ‘no going back’ commitment to finding a solution and a safe landing.

The tensions arising from contradictory desires between the dancer and the dance all mix up in the soup of Past – Future – Then – Now – What Might be – What Hopefully Will Be – What Was – What Will – What Is – Is Now – Is Now...

Creation is unruly and wants what it wants. An impulse a choice a decision doesn’t know what it is until its emerged. This is the improviser’s psychological challenge; over riding the ‘need to know an outcome’ before we commit to the action, when in fact there never is a ‘right choice outcome’, a choice that works is an action that’s committed to. The completeness of ones decisions, absent of any hesitation or doubt defines the decisions effectiveness. The doing of the thing trumps the thing itself.

Basic performance ingredients: a human doing / a human noticing / a location they share / a beginning and an end.