I was just reading that Anna Halprin [http://www.annahalprin.org/ ] believed one's personal story/myth is contained within how one experiences one's own body, so the improvisationist is revealing her own myth as she dances, and the dance/movements are her own personal ritual. The audience is then invited to construct a meaning from her ritual, thereby giving shape to their own mini-myths.
I felt this from the beginning of what MAE (the Movement Artists' Ensemble) is doing: that the larger picture of watching our kind of film is itself a ritualistic experience between dancer, film maker and audience wherein deeper meanings can be accessed.
The dancer's movement/ritual takes us to "... that strange liminal world..." (Halprin) where "life discloses itself at a depth inaccessible to observation, reflection and theory." The Members of MAE know this from 1st hand experience! And the film maker/editor (in these kinds of films) becomes a 3rd party participant, embedding the dancer's experience into her (the film maker's) own experience, her own ritual which is the film/crafting.
I think the new "dance film" genre films are mostly about the dancers, their prowess, their art making, and their dances are shown in a linear way so that their "story" is told, as stories traditionally are... linearly. Whereas "my" dancers are abstracted by the cutting & pasting, so it becomes more about the dance of the abstracted images, rather than the dance of the dancers or a choreographer, since all our movements are pure improvisation. As the editor, my process is to remove everyday world contexts of time & space, and put what the dancers do into a different, non-ordinary context, hopefully that "liminal space," creating with the film maker's tools, new worlds w/in which to view the dancer's expression. All this, so that imagery with new meanings can be brought forward for the dancer, the film maker & the audience's considered regard.
This is beginning to sound like a lot of blah bah blah... but what can I say, I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing here!
Speaking to a few audience members' stated desires to see more dance in the films: this means they brought expectations with them of more traditional dance films... and could also mean that what we presented instead didn't engage them as something in itself, for its own sake. Well, critics walked out of Halprin's early works, so I say we let the audiences have their own reactions & continue to focus on our hearts & intuitive guidance. Do what we're pulled to do, let the chips fall where they may
And yes, it's true... at this point in our lives, the members of MAE (all women over 40...some well over!) can't be "dancers" in terms of our culture's definition... only a certain body type, degree of fitness, and age are allowed that. That definition is looking for tour jetes & pirouettes to a degree that we can no longer deliver. But we can use movement to explore ourselves, & express what we find, and that can be beautiful and it can be art. Still, the focus is not on the cultural context of "dancer." That's why I wanted to be the Movement Artists! It doesn't conjure up that huge category of what "a dancer" is supposed to be and do.
Each member of our ensemble brings her unique style, her unique personal myths and rituals to the movement mix.I want to abstract us out of the "dance" expectations, and put us into the realm of myth/imagery/ even archetypes. Aren't archetypes an abstraction of all the concrete forms of a thing?
I think also sometimes I'm treating us like dream images, as though we are dancing a joint dream each time, & when I get us edited on film, I'm putting us into that dream, making it visible. And ea film represents only one possible dream of hundreds of dreams that were possible out of that one improvisation experience. It's such a gift that my fellow MAE's let me do this with their movements-- such a personal part of themselves that they open up to the world each time we meet and move together!!
Have a good wkend, All... healing & life-ward...
