Sharing the Moment Through Dance Improvisation

Barbara Mason
Response to Simone Forti's Animate Dancing--A Practice in Dance Improvisation
January 15, 2007


Simone Forti is skilled at sharing the moment through both dance and writing. She captures the "now" of her felt experience and presents it to her audience, whether on a stage with movement or on the page with words.

Forti's career was greatly influenced since the 1950's by Anna Halprin and her "Dancer's Workshop." Halprin developed a system for teaching dance improvisation; and she collaborated with musicians, landscape-architects, visual artists, and people in theatre and psychology. Forti was impressed with these collaborations and also with Halprin's environmental studies where people would go into the environment, make sensory observations of the place, and return to the studio to improvise on these experiences.

Forti's description of moving to the image of "crinkly tree bark" reminded me of an experience I had in the early 1990's at a workshop called "Authentic Movement" in Amherst, Massachusetts. One of our assignments was to spend some time in nature tuning into the sights, sounds, smells and textures of a chosen place. Later we translated this sensory stimuli into movement. During my career as a dance teacher, I have known people who trivialize and mock dance improvisation by saying it is all about "being a tree." But it is far more than, for example, mimicking the gross shape and size of a tree; it is about finding the essences of the tree and translating these into human movement that conveys qualities of both the tree and the person who is moving. The mover is not "being a tree" but is using the sensory qualities of the tree to create new and interesting movement. Improvisation provides an effective way for artists to expand their creative vocabularies.

Forti, who was first an art student, draws many comparisons between dance improvisation and the teaching of visual arts. She states that the teacher gives a "point of departure for an exploration" and the students begin from there. She gives two examples: in art the point of departure might be to explore the various qualities of line; while a dancer might be asked to explore all the possible movements that can be made at the shoulder joint. Forti is emphatic that "there always has to be a context " for improvisation, even if that context is "waiting for a movement impulse" as Isadora Duncan did when she turned her back on classical ballet to develop a freer, more expressive way of moving.

I was especially interested in Forti's thoughts on rehearsal and performance. She says on page 20 of our New Ground collection of readings: "I like to think of rehearsal or preparing for performance as a wave that will crest into the lap of the audience." Although we may think of rehearsal as the process of discovering what to perform; Forti thinks that "the performance should be full of discovery" too (p. 20); that performance should include an ongoing awareness (by the performer) of what is being "made." She asks whether or not the performance is "fresh." "Is it going someplace?" "Is it accessible to the audience?" I believe that this perspective on the act of performing comes from Forti's interest in and emphasis on improvisation and sharing the moment as a means of creating performance. For her there is no clear separation of process and product. Process is part of product.

During her career Forti has found inspiration from observing the movements of animals, the news, gardening, landscapes and collaboration with musicians who are also improvising. Many times in the past I have enjoyed creating dances by improvising to the improvisations of one or more musicians. One of my favorite collaborative experiences was performing with a cellist. We were both on stage, sharing the attention equally. Sometimes I would move and he would "answer" my movement, and sometimes he would create a series of improvised sounds and I would respond to those. Sometimes we would "talk" simultaneously. Another time I choreographed a dance for five women called "Sea Watch," and during the performance a musician played structured improvisations on the inside of a piano to create eery sounds that might be heard in a harbor or out at sea.

Other fascinating ways Forti found to elicit creativity included "moving the telling" in which she moved and spoke at the same time about a particular subject. She feels that combining two methods of expression provides a way to "integrate aspects of our knowing." (p. 26) She also practices "timed writing" developed by writer Natalie Goldberg. A person has a specified amount of time to write continuously, without pausing, in a kind of stream of consciousness without self-editing. Lastly, Forti's "movement memory snapshots" exercise reminds me of a class I took where couples were asked to recall/relive an action-oriented memory then perform that memory through movement for a partner to first watch then try.

Many dancer-choreographers have been influenced by Forti's improvisational methods. Liz Lerman is one of these. I met her in Upstate New York in the early 1980's and attended an informal performance in which she did a series of solos using both movement and speech. Each solo was a wonderful example of Forti's "moving the telling." (Or could we also say "telling the moving?") Reading this article made me want to do some improvisational investigations of my own, to move a telling, to time a writing, to make a memory snapshot. To share the moment.


Discussion questions for my classmates:

1. What kind of improvisations have you experienced in your art field(s)? What have you learned from them?

2. Forti says that artists must ultimately "choose for themselves" what they want to do with their art. What artists in your field have broken with tradition or the taste of the times to take "the road not travelled?" In what ways have you done, or will you try to do, this yourself?

3. Do you agree with Forti that producing art requires a "context?" Why or why not?

4. How is this quote of Forti's pertinent to the non-performing arts: "I like to think of rehearsal or preparing for performance as a wave that will crest into the lap of the audience."

5. (Related to #4) Think about/discuss the concepts of rehearsal, performance, and audience in the context of your art form(s).