Between control and uncertainty by Marta Wörner Sarabia

"Between control and uncertainty" is a practice-led research that combines the kinetic study of the body as a structure and the implementation of media and expanded choreography tools to de-pattern the conventional relationship between body and space in performative environments. Moreover, on a meta-level, the investigation reflects on the tension between control and uncertainty in the act of research itself. With the firm belief that the body has inherent philosophical and epistemological knowledge which can be activated by experiencing and observing movement, I embraced the challenge to name and contextualize that knowledge. This inquiry started from my fascination for the kinetics of the body and its ability to reorganize itself in comparison with other micro and macro structures that do not move that way, such a, for example, the microstructures of materials like metal, rocks or the macrostructures built by the geography of the city and the Port of Rotterdam. The interdisciplinary research addresses the dichotomy structure-destructure and its application and affections to the body. In this sense, the research proposes a tool for de-patterning the habitual relationship between the body of the performer and the external space and offers to the audience a door for de-patterning their relationship with performative spaces. The research has been framed under the inspirational umbrella of the idea of performing the Deleuzian concept of “becoming”, (deriving from the Latin verb “devenire” which means “coming down, falling in, arriving to”). The physical inquiry is focused on the action of “falling in”, "devenire". The exploration led to an articulated and defined set of physical and interdisciplinary exercises that are the core of the dance practice ‘falling in’. In concordance with the practice, the findings of this research can be seen as ways of controlling and ways of facilitating, allowing, provoking uncertainty within the choreographic practice-led research frame. This research artistically materialized in the performance Falling in. Notes on body space and matter premiered in 2019.

Falling in, the practice in detail.

In this section, I share the findings I got from sharing the practice with a research group during three consecutive weeks, starting the 26th of February of 2019 at the studio of the dance platform Cloud at Danslab, the Hague.

The structure of the research phase was divided into six research sessions.

The research group was composed by a group of 5 people with different backgrounds, dance and choreography(Fernanda Morales and Anne-Florence), circus (Jakob Lohmann and Paula), and a musician and visual artist who "likes to swim" (Aleksandr Ivanov).

BEFORE STARTING THE RESEARCH.

I was excited about sharing for the first time with a group my findings and questions about my current artistic research. To be honest, I was not that excited to share my failures.

In fact, it was the first time I was consciously sharing with a group my own vision about movement, as the pedagogical and research activities I was sharing in the past were strongly based on other dance artists and pedagogues practices. Now, a process of digestion of those practices that where habiting my body, flourished in a pool of exercises that were answering my own curiosities: what are the physical, psychical and sensorial implications of the action of “falling in”.

DURING THE GROUP RESEARCH SESSIONS.

The transmission of my practice increased my awareness about the importance of elements like, for example, the relation of the practice of “falling in” with conscious breathing.

While falling in, breathing out is shaped as a tool for embracing gravity while allowing the parts of the body to multiply their possible range of movement between parts.

Normally, the conscious use of the action of breathing in was used to pull away from the centre of the body the extremities of it, provoking an unbalance of the structure of the body that we wanted to prolong in time while prolonging the breathing (in).

RESEARCH PHASE STRUCTURE.

The research was initially divided into three blocks:

-Articulated movement and falling in: How to fall in from a vulnerable body.

-Transformation and falling: How to transition from the fall to a body construction that allows you to fall again. How to never arrive.

-The dialogue between control and uncertainty, fall and resistance: How to resist/prolong a fall.

ABOUT THE STRUCTURE OF EACH SESSION.

The sessions were dived in 4 parts:

1º.Warm-up. The warm-up was lasting about 50 minutes. It consists of a sequence of manipulations that open the body by relaxing it and bringing space between articulations and a breathing exercise that connects breathing with the action of embrace gravity and bring the awareness to the back of the body.

The warm-up help the participant to re-discover the natural own paths and possibilities in range and direction of the movement her/his body has for initiating, taking and transforming the fall.

The movement quality that the warm-up works on is an articulated non-muscular movement quality in which the body looks vulnerable and available.

*Modifications during the group research:

The sequence manipulation was modified during the workshop. For instance, by the middle of the workshop, I understood that the arms were remaining less available and more stiff for the practice so I introduced new arms and hands manipulation that solved the problem.

The feedback of the participants (Fernanda Morales) helped me to understand that the repetition of this exercise through time was effective for the whole understanding of it. Along the second week of practice, the practitioners could receive the information from their own body that the partner was activating by the manipulation and apply it to the rest of the session.

About the breathing exercise, although I started to research if the exercise was more effective while standing or laying on the floor, I could not conclude a definitive answer yet.

Finally, I concluded that, as in research phases that I carried before, the breathing exercise is more effective when the participants are with the eyes open, as the bridge then between that exercise and the upcoming ones is more affordable.

2º. The specific exercise of each block:

In this part of the session, we were embodying different task-based exercises that were working in a specific research sub-theme of each block: How to fall in from a vulnerable body, how to transition from the fall to a body construction that allows you to fall again, how to resist/prolong a fall.

In contrast to the warm-up, these exercises were usually practised individually. Moreover, these exercises were performed using the whole capability of the space as the tools from the warm-up now were applied to let the body de-structure itself in relation to space, exploring the limits of each task.

You can try some of this exercise in the section Falling in. Practice space.

*Notes and modifications during the research group phase:

I could notice that in this part it was useful for the participants to observe each other. The participants could observe how the other was embodying a task and then embody the task themselves. In this sense, we were working in feedback and feedforward embodied process in which every participant was questioning the interpretations of the rest, sometimes discovering by themselves learning procedures that were planned for after in the structure of the workshop.

My role then was to listen to the particular learning curves of each participant and embrace their own process, going forward or back in the proposed learning agenda, and re-define or specify the task when the interpretations of the participants were far from what I was proposing.

I also could notice that external limitations help to the learning process of "how to fall". For instance, one of the exercises that were carried in couples were one participant mark with her/his own body a horizontal line that is parallel to the floor. The other participant had to, within his/her own fall, go under that line with her/his torso. In this way, the participants were working on the horizontality and inversion of the torso applied to the fall.

Moreover, I discovered that other times, widening the possibilities of movement, worked better. In this kind of exercises, also developed in couples or group, the participants were supporting the fall of his/her partner by performing the task of, for example, being his/her net and facilitating the other person experience of his/her own limits. Other times, the participants were physically informing each other about their own habits concern to falling and working on wider their possibilities.

The feedback that I received from the group (Fernanda and Jakob) is that these exercises were helping them to be conscious of their own habits and expand their possibilities of movement by going over them.

In this sense, now I can reflect on how the embracement of the uncertainty I was talking about has a direct clear relation to the habits of each person. The transformation of a body and its acquired behaviour through the action of "falling in" it is necessary for both the embrace of the unknown and to access to the knowledge that the body has to re-organise itself.

3º. Application of tools to the choreographic process:

In the third part of the session, we applied the tools acquired during part 1 and 2 of the session to the embodiment of a specific movement sequence.

*Notes and modifications during the research group phase:

In this part became evident how variables as the speed of the movement and the breathing connected to the movement were related to the kind of qualities and dynamics I was looking for. For example, it usually happened that as quick as the movement was, easier the articulated quality it seems to perform. But on the other hand, with speed rise more easily the participants were coming back to their movement habits. Related to the breathing, I reaffirmed my findings, as it was clear how breathing out was facilitating an articulated fall while breathing in was facilitating the transformation of the fall into a new body construction.

Later at the last block, while researching the breathing necessary to hold a balance while experimenting with the limits of the balance itself, I concluded that there are two kinds of possibilities that interest me: one it would be to hold the breath and the other one to very slow breathing out while balancing.

The contrast of kinds of breathing and speed were offering me findings in the inquiry of qualities and dynamics that I could apply to a performative work within my research.

Also at the last of the blocks, we could inquire about the application of the acquired tools to different duo compositions.

My feeling is that this third part of the session helped the participants to let land the information received by applying it.

4º. The warm-down:

At the end of the session, each participant receives a message that works on the relaxation of the muscles (especially the ones that surround the spine) through the application of pressure by another participant.

In this part of the session, the goal is to leave the body in a good state for the next session and eliminate the tension provoke mainly while "holding" a fall.

*Notes and modifications during the research group phase

As the manipulations at the beginning of the session, these ones work on another level related to trust between participants, necessary for the work.

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