Back in rehearsals

Back in rehearsals with Dance Ensemble/ACTivate.  Fast and furious.  Only one month and we have charged through many things, but haven't had time to really deepen any of them.  Fabulous group of movers and thinkers.  Brief overview:
We have: Responded to a writing prompt based on the old expression "Keep the wolf from the door", did a personal writing response, "What is the wolf at your door?"  While also creating a word = movement phrase for the words: "wolf, at, door" (Which I also did with Big If)

I created some movement for the word "Gleaning" in homage to Agnes Varda's documentary, "The Gleaners and I", movement created by "spelling" out the word.  But I didn't get to share why the word gleaning.  Here is a link to a teaser for Varda's film http://www.fandor.com/films/the_gleaners_and_i

We also revisited material from "the artist's phrase" from the Fall.  Now retitled, "Rest-Less Questions", the text drawn from a writing prompt last Fall, "When you think about your life, post-Grinnell, what are the questions that roll around in your head late at night?"  Blog post from the Fall explains the source material http://dancingwolvesatthedoor.blogspot.com/2013/10/updates.html
Now our job is to revisit, figure out how it integrates into the set and other such fun matters.

The set.  Designer Melania Lancey has created quite a playground for us.

We used the Richard Bull improv structure 3/3/3.  Improvise for three minutes, when timer goes off - exit.  Reset the timer and your starting place - try to exactly recreate the first three minutes.  Repeat again.  We did this several times.  One time the prompt was: "If the set is a metaphor for 'The Economy' - how do you respond?"
Amazing movement and writing came out of this.  One of the timed improvs:
watch here


More to come.