TOPIC FOR TODAY

“Improvisation in various artforms”

 OBJECTIVE

1. Utilize our body as the basic tool in expression and

communication

2. Strengthen our initiative and artistic sensibilities

 WHAT IS IMPROVISATION?
• Improvisation is the activity of making or
doing something not planned beforehand,
using whatever can be found.

•  Improvisation, in the performing arts is a

very spontaneous performance without
specific or scripted preparation.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisation
 CONTINUATION…

• Improvisation is the art of acting and reacting, in the

moment, to one's surroundings.
• This can result in the invention of new thought patterns
and/or new ways to act.
• This invention cycle occurs more often when it is
accompanied with a thorough and/or intuitive
understanding of the skills with which one is
improvising. 

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Improvisation
 IMPROVISATION IN VARIOUS ARTFORMS

1. Contact–body improvisation
2. Sound improvisation
3. Theatre improvisation

 Solving improvisational challenges

 CONTACT –BODY IMPROVISATION
• Or Contact Improvisation - is a form of improvised dancing that
involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by
using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement
awareness.
• Contact Improvisation plays with the artistry of falling off balance,
counterbalance, finding the shelves of the body, learning the
mechanics of the body in order to handle someone else's weight
or be lifted, breathing techniques, and can involve the art of
getting to know your partner past the physical point through the
physicality.
 BRIEF HISTORY

• Contact Improvisation is a form of improvised dancing that has been developing

internationally since 1972
• American dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton originated Contact Improvisation,
drawing from his past training in aikido, a martial art form, to explore and push
boundaries with his colleagues and students to develop this new practice.

Steve Paxton & Nancy Stark Smith,

in a Contact Improvisation
performance (1980).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_improvisation
 5RHYTHMS IS FLOWING, STACCATO, CHAOS,
LYRICAL, AND STILLNESS

Flowing- We  physically  practice  the  art  of  being  fluid  in  our  bodies.
Flowing  is  the  impulse  to  follow  the  flow  of  one’s  energy,  to  be  true  to  oneself,
 listen  and  attend  to one’s needs, be receptive to one’s inner and outer world. When
we open up to the flow of our physical beings, all other possibilities open.

Staccato-  We  physically  practice  the  power  of  masculine  energy.  

It  is  percussive  and  strong  and  promotes  connection  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  
Staccato  is  the gateway  to  the  heart.  
It  shows  us  how  to  step  out  into  the  world  connected  to  our  feet  and  feelings.
 It  is  the  part  of  us  that  stands  up  for  what  we  care  about  and  who / what we
love
Chaos  We  physically  practice  releasing  our  bodies.  
We  let  go  of  the  head,  spine,  hips,  feet,  and  move  faster  than  we  can  think.
Chaos  breaks  us  free  from  our  illusions.
It  takes  us  on  a  journey  from  ‘I  can’t’  to  ‘I  will’.  
The  simple  practices  of  Chaos  immediately  bring  us  back  to  our  bodies,  to  the
 moment.  
This  rhythm  liberates  us  from  all ideas about who we are and gives us a real experience
of being total, free, intuitive, and creative.

Lyrical  We  practice  how  to  break  out  of  destructive  patterns  and  surrender  to  the
 depths  of  the  fluid,  creative  repetitions  of  our  soulful  selves.  
Lyrical  is  expansive and connects us to our humanity, timeless rhythms, repetitions,
patterns, and cycles.
Lyrical is more of a state of being than a rhythm.
• Stillness  Being  still  and  doing  nothing  are  different.
Stillness  moves,  both  within  and  all  around  us.  
The  dance  is  our  vehicle,  our  destination  is  the  Rhythm  of  Stillness; our
 challenge  is  to  be  a  vessel  that  keeps  moving  and  changing.  
Each  time  we  dance  into  Stillness  we  practice  the  art  of  making  
humble  and  mindful  endings.
This carries  through  to  all  of  our  endings  in  life  
- the  end  of  this  dance,  this  day,  this  relationship,  or  this  life  cycle.  
Good  endings  mean  taking  responsibility  for  the  whole journey, distilling wisdom
from our experience so that we may begin the next wave or cycle clean of carrying the
past with us
https://www.ronhagendoorn.com/about-5rhythms.htm
 SOUND/MUSICAL IMPROVISATION

• Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the

creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which
combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental
technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians.
• Sometimes musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous, but may be
based on chord changes in classical music and many other kinds of music.
• One definition is a “performance given extempore without planning or
preparation.”
• Another definition is to "play or sing (music) extemporaneously, by inventing
variations on a melody or creating new melodies, rhythms and harmonies.
 THEATRE IMPROVISATION
• Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv,
is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what
is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously
by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, action, story,
and characters are created collaboratively by the players as the
improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already
prepared, written script.
• Improvisational theatre exists in performance as a range of styles
of improvisational comedy as well as some non-comedic
theatrical performances. It is sometimes used in film and
television, both to develop characters and scripts and
occasionally as part of the final product
 SOLVING IMPROVISATIONAL CHALLENGES

5 Basic Improvisation Rules

• 1) Don't Deny
• Denial is the number one reason most scenes go bad. Any time you refuse an 
Offer made by your partner your scene will almost instantly come to a
grinding halt.
• Example: Player A) "Hi, my name is Jim. Welcome to my store." Player B)
"This isn't a store, it's an airplane. And you're not Jim, you're an antelope."
• 2) Don't ask open ended Questions
• Open ended questions (like "Who are you?") are scene killers because they
force your partner to stop whatever they are doing and come up with an
answer. When you ask your partner and open ended question, you put the
burden of coming up with something "interesting" on your partner - so you
are no longer doing a scene together but forcing one person has to do more
work than you are willing to do.
3) You don't have to be funny.
• The hidden riddle of improv is that the harder you try not to
be funny the more funny your scene is going to be. Why?
Because it's the very best kind of improv scene you can do is
an "interesting" scene, not necessarily a "funny" one.
• When you do an interesting scene, a very surprising thing
happens… the funny comes out all by it's self.
• The best ways to go are to stick to your character, stick to
the story that is being told, and to stay within the reality of
the scene you are playing.
4) You can look good if you make your partner look good.
• When you are in a scene, the better you make your partner
look the better the scene is going to be and, as a direct
result, the better you are going to look.
• All too often, I've seen players enter a scene and I can just
tell they have some really great idea about the character they
are going to play or an idea they want to do.
• This is wonderful, but guess what? Your partner probably
has absolutely no idea what's cooking in your evil little mind,
and so has no idea how to react. And no matter how brilliant
your idea might be, it's practically worthless if the scene as a
whole goes bad.
5) Tell a story.
• Storytelling is probably the easiest rule to remember
but the hardest one to do.
• The real magic of improv is when we see the players
take totally random suggestions (like a plumber and a
cab driver selling shoes in a leper colony ) and
somehow "make it work".
• If all these unrelated elements are going to come
together then it's going to happen in the course of an
interesting tale. So that's just what the players are
going to try and do, tell us all a story.
THANK YOU GUYS!!!