Movement Parameters
ACTIVITY
Movement Parameters involves three steps: improvisation, response, and exploration. It is most effective in an ensemble or class setting. Dancers work peer-to-peer, each taking a turn and benefiting from responses of the full group. In this context the exercise goes as follows:
Step 1. Improvisation: Performing before fellow ensemble members or a small group, a dancer improvises for several minutes. The dancer is encouraged to be as free and comfortable as possible; no tricks are necessary, just moving in a way that feels good and right to the person dancing.
Step 2. Response: After the improvisation, the group describes what they have seen. Their language is based entirely on physical movement descriptors, like “shoulders up and focus down” or “movement initiated from the pelvis.” Descriptions should not use imagery, metaphor, or emotional content, as these will not help the dancer. The challenge for the describers is to not say “like a waterfall” or “tender” but to figure out the movements that have suggested these ideas and say “torso twisting downward” or “slow circling arms with hands turned out.” Dancers may feel there are rights and wrongs in their natural movement style; these descriptions are offered and accepted in a positive spirit that affirms the kinetic individuality that the dancer has conveyed.
The group then changes focus to offer “parameters,” new directions that the dancer could take, again stated as unqualified physical movement description. If the dancer tends to originate movement at the center of the spine, group members might say “start your phrases from your finger tips and toes.” If a person keeps a constant flow of movement, the parameter might be “add pauses.” The dancer listens, and may join in a discussion of what new directions hold the most juice for exploration. Dancer and the group settle on three or four movement parameters.
Step 3. Exploration: The dancer does a second round of improvisation based on these parameters. Very often the dancer will not be able to sustain focus in their new directions and group needs to help by shouting supportive reminders: “Move from the fingers!” or “Put in the pauses!” After the exploration, dancer and group may discuss whether they chose the best parameters to expand the dancer’s movement style and vocabulary.
APPLICATIONS
This exercise can be the first step in developing new choreographic material. After each member of an ensemble has had an opportunity to work the structure in front of the group, each can work alone to develop movement phrases based on the specific commands they received.
The basic Parameters concept is to expand range by giving positive assignments that expand beyond an artist’s natural tendency. This idea can readily transfer to other art forms: A photography or poetry class, for instance, could review a small body of work from each student, then agree on specialized assignments for each designed to get them to explore new expressive possibilities: “Compose your images vertically and position something in the foreground of each picture.” “Write a poem with short rhythmic lines in the voice of a fictitious character.”
FOOTNOTES
It is essential to phrase the parameters in Step 2 in positive terms. Negative commands like “don’t focus down on the floor” or “try to avoid moving from the pelvis” do not convey any information for new directions. They can force the dancer into a process of inhibition and an effort to counteract it. The principle is this: to break a person out of a pattern you say what to do rather than what not to do.
This discipline benefits not only the dancer, but those offering the commentary, encouraging all participants to develop their ability to describe movement in direct, concrete terms, a valuable skill for many aspects of dancemaking.
