Introduction
Am I moving through time?
Do I move my body and ‘hear’ time?
How do I experience time and duration while I am moving?
Following my theoretical investigation during the first year of Comma, I started my practical research, focusing on the ways I could find resonance between theory and practice. I experimented on a fundamental improvisational task in relation to my research theme, testing pre-formulated questions derived out of my readings and writings. I let my body move, observing the implication and embodiment of theoretical threads and strands.
Regarding my area of inquiry, my aim is to develop processes and articulate new understanding in the perception of time, offering not only the performers but also the spectators the opportunity to perceive and experience time and duration. Thus, considering my design plan, I focused on a bodily exploration of time and duration during this initial phase of the first research cycle. I emphasized in observing and reflecting on the ways the body interprets time and duration while moving. I, therefore, formed three 'wide' questions for research and experimentation:
-Am I moving through time?
-Do I move my body and ‘hear’ time?
-How do I experience time and duration while I am moving?
These questions stand at the central point of my practical research within this initial phase of investigation. I understand that my research theme is enormous and that the questions are quite vague. My purpose, though, was to see how the dancers perceive time and experience temporality in movement without specific initial direction at that point. I am interested in the ways diverse perspectives could affect, enrich or transform my ideas.
I chose to start my practical research with bringing the performers’ bodies into the experience of time and duration while moving. If the performers move ‘in time’, they will be able to share their experience with the audience. The spectators could in this sense receive the time perception and experience of the dancers.
Methods
Due to lockdown in Greece during corona virus pandemic, my practical research in this initial phase is based a lot on my personal physical exploration and observations. My tools of documentations include mostly diverse forms of writing concerning the outcomes and insights of my daily attentive bodily practice.
Also, I've shared the aforementioned questions with the performers who will contribute to my research, agreeing that they would explore the questions on their own for a period of time. Then, they would send me either a sequence of video recordings or a singular video-summary of their everyday bodily practice. We would meet online afterwards for feedback and feedforward.
This has been an on-going procedure. After each of our discussions, the 'task' is informed and enriched.
Investigative tool-box:
- Exposition: discussions on my design plan with dance artists and students from the COMMA cohort / interventions with dance artists external to the process / sharing the research theme with the dancers.
- Exploring and embodying fundamental, wide research questions / texts with notes and instructions- as an improvisational task- in relation to tim and duration.
Improvisational technical tasks: e.g. straight, curved, twisted lines
- Focusing on the bodily practice (…forget the theory): see in what ways and at what extent theory is emerged.
- (Meanwhile…) reading: looking for theory that offers new understanding or enhances the practical research (you could find relevant sources in the material, as well as a separate file with all the references).
- Personal trials: try-outs of the questions and texts on my own and record.
- Sharing with the dancers: they work on the questions and texts on their own separately, share their video recordings and give their feedback.
- writing: keeping a diary/ notebooks/ writing down in detail -mostly in creative writing- the outcomes of the practical research (personal trials and dancers’ testing).
A guidance through the material
One could start looking through the material with the exposition (investigative tool) where they can find a zoom discussion on my design plan with my COMMA peer Eleonora Ilia, a response on my design plan from the choreographer Avgi Progidi / an intervention with the dance artist Milena Ugres / my first sharing of the theme with the dancers.
Afterwards, they could continue with the personal trials (investigative tool) which includes video recordings and creative writings concerning the outcomes of my personal try-outs.
They could go on with the sharing with the dancers (investigative tool), consisting of video recordings of the dancers’ practice and experience, as well as writings concerning my insights of the dancers’ try-outs.
(For extra information) one could find a reading (file) with my daily diary, as well as a reference list.
At the end of the catalogue there is a mind map - guiding tour to my thinking process concerning the articulation of the explorative questions.
Travel into the catalogue, following the lines
Exposition
In this area you could find:
1. Extract from my conversation with the dancers concerning my area of inquiry.
2. Interventions (a responding game with the dance artist Milena Ugres).
3. Discussions on my design plan 1 with COMMA peers (zoom discussion with Eleonora Ilia) and dance artists external to the process (a 'poetic' response from the choreographer and dance teacher Avgi Progidi).
Discussions on my Design Plan 1
One of my investigative tools regarding this initial phase of my artistic exploration is exposing my research theme to artists external to the practical research.
I’ve sent my design plan 1 to some of my COMMA peers, as well as to artists from the dance field. I asked them to arrange a meeting in order to discuss my research theme. I also gave them the option to send me a written response which might be a general feedback, a formulated question (feedforward/ explanatory/ rhetoric etc), a conclusion etc. Regarding their ways of writing, this could be either formal or informal, associative, creative (e.g. poetic) or a combination of diverse ways of writing.
- Here is our Zoom discussion with Eleonora Ilia – Dancer, Dance teacher, Choreographer, COMMA Cohort
- A poem of T. S. Eliot, as a response to my design plan by the choreographer and dance teacher Avgi Progidi.
Intervention
I played a little game - as an intervention to my practical research - with the choreographer, performer and student of the last COMMA Cohort Milena Ugres. We call it 'responding game' and we've been playing it since June.
This time I sent to Milena a short video of my daily practice. I asked her: What do you think my research theme is?
Here is an extract of our email conversation:
Milena: I got the image that you remembered something or that you embodied a memory of something or someone and you are telling with your movement your memory.
Despina: my theme is time and duration as an expansion of time - a wide now experience in instant composition. I was trying to understand how do I experience time, while I am moving so the theme of memories arise: how do they integrate in the now... so yes, you are right!
- Stern,D.N., (1985), The Interpersonal World of the Infant, Basic Books, INC., Publishers/New York.
- Stern, D.N. (2004), The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, in Kindle, Retrieved from Amazon.com.)
