Carrying out Workshop #3

Again, much of the beginning of this workshop consisted of silence and quiet contemplation. Each dancer then picked their resistant image and began working on interpreting the image as a map. Two groups of two dancers formed. Each group, however, still shared the same resistant image.

After they performed their movement phrases, we came and talked about the experience. One dancer spoke about how bad she is at reading maps, so this only exacerbated the feeling of resistance for her. Another dancer spoke about how she focused on the image, but could not separate the “science” of the image from the non-scientific approach I was encouraging them to approach. Yet another dancer commented how this way of thinking and moving allowed for a personal investment to be felt with both the movement and the image, and in this way they had ownership of both. One dancer followed this response by stating how before she couldn’t give the image her own meaning, but now having explored its intricacies and developed her own movement from it, she can. And another dancer added that adding life to a seemingly lifeless and static image made the image simpler to digest, allowing for a sense of curiosity to be more easily generated, as was the ability to ask questions pertaining to the image.

In questioning what people’s interpretations on the map idea were, one dancer explained that she took on this exercise by thinking of a map “… someone had drawn for you on a napkin. So, if [she] had translated that into movement, [she] would take each part separately, because when someone draws a map on a napkin it’s very much landmark based and there are different steps involved.” Another dancer commented that when she thought about a map, she didn’t think about a physical map, she was thinking about what is a map, which ultimately leads you places and used this as a transitioning tool. Another dancer remarked how she thinks of maps like a treasure map, but was impressed how other’s interpretations were done less literally, where the movement took on a more topographical element, or color gradient map like demographic maps or atlases where you view a map completely visually, without directions or background.

I deviated at this point from my workshop, by discussing what we interpreted a map to be, and asked the dancers to use a different interpretation of a map to change their movement – a sort of edit of their first movement phrase.

These responses again allowed me to reflect on the definition, the benefit, and the necessity of a map. For some individuals, thinking of a map helped them gain a familiarity with the image that they didn’t possess before. For others this translation upon translation seemed to only make the situation more confusing and less meaningful. The feedback that I was given was helpful in allowing me to reflect on my new perspective and approach to the scientific topic and concept of DNA as one that is not the most effective or useful for all individuals, thinkers, and learners.

One final observation that I had was pointing out the fact that not one dancer had used Image 3 as the image they found most resistance to, nor did it come up all that often in any of the other questions that I had asked from Part #1. Image 3 is the classical double helix image from an atomical point of view. The dancers responded by saying how this image, to some of them, seemed the most 2-D of all the images. Others simply shrugged, saying that it didn’t really stand out to them in any way. Every dancer seemed familiar with the image and knew what it represented. In its familiarity, it seems it has lost its intimidating quality, yet it has also lost its appeal. Why is that? Do we equate common images and concepts with predictability and banality? Why does this image become invisible to our senses? With this in mind, I also thought about the popularity and the frequent posts that end up on my newsfeed on Facebook from the “I f*cking lovescience” page. The page, started in March of 2012, includes posts of everything Elise Andrew, creator of the account, finds interesting. As written on a Mashable blog: 

“As a nation, we tend to push science education onto a younger generation –which is fantastic, don’t get me wrong – but we leave out this group of adults who want to “catch up”, in a sense. Andrew has captured this demographics attention. She makes science digestible – hell, she make it fun, even for the layperson.” 

Andrew has created an opportunity for individuals to observe the intricacies and fascinating qualities of science, but making it more accessible, easier to obtain, and easier to digest. So could my workshops accomplish the same? I can’t speak for the dancers, but from now on, if I were to give them the image they had chosen as the one they found resistance to, they might not be able to describe in scientific terms what the image is, but they do have a connection with it, and they do have a grasp on it that no other individual will ever possess. That’s got to be something, right?