Workshop with Dance Ensemble

For my third workshop with the kids, I planned on working with the idea of mitosis. Mitosis is a process that seems to be taught almost synonymously with DNA. As soon as DNA is introduced in a classroom, mitosis is sure to follow up close behind.

I was first introduced to the idea of dancing mitosis from Celeste, who used this exercise in the very first rehearsal last fall as we began rehearsing for “Small Elephant Stories”. We were given a photocopied paper that had little black-and-white figures of every phase within the process of mitosis. Underneath might have been a couple of sentences, briefly describing the phase that the image represented. Us dancers, in groups, came up with movement loosely based on the ideas stated on that sheet. This was the first time I had ever danced science and I loved the idea of using different steps of a process to build a movement phrase. However, for this semester’s purposes, I wanted to largely expand on this idea.

I have found that when dancers (myself included) are given a sheet of paper with scientific-esque writing on it and a concept made up of various intricate details, the information becomes overwhelming. I’ve experienced this not only from that first mitosis rehearsal but also this semester when we did a Wolff’s Law workshop.

Wolff’s Law: Bone in a healthy person or animal will adapt to the loads under which it is placed. If loading on a particular bone increases, the bone will remodel itself over time to become stronger to resist that sort of loading. The internal architecture of the trabeculae undergoes adaptive changes, followed by secondary changed to the external cortical portion of the bone, perhaps becoming thicker as a result. The inverse is true as well.

When we were given this definition in rehearsal and told to use movement to work through the definition, we never took the proper time or energy to learn the material. As we awkwardly stood in groups, we skimmed the convoluted definition and dove into movement material loosely referring to the definition. When reflecting on this experience with Celeste, we realized that studying and learning does not occur in this way. So why should it have worked similarly in the dance studio? To gain understanding of a concept, focused reading, processing the information, and application are all necessary factors. And this is what I think was missing from the workshops both with Mitosis and Wolff’s Law. I have mentioned before how important research is within the process of learning and understanding. The same needed to happen in the dance space.

At this point I thought back to another idea concerning movement research that Celeste introduced me to last fall. She had brought in a video of a dancer that she worked with who performed a short, 2-minute dance. We watched the video and then had to understand and dance the “essence” of the movement we had seen. This technique is one Wayne McGregor talks about in his delightful TED Talk as he describes the methods and processes he uses as he choreographs.

            With this in mind, I also thought about science in motion. Technology has not become so advanced to the point at which every process can be shown to public in real-time. What we visualize or understand comes from still images, either still photographs or figures that are to convey a process and the potential movement behind it. Mitosis has been captured with film, and some of the videos of mitosis that can be found on YouTube are quite lovely. So I found a video of mitosis to show at the beginning of the workshop. How amazing that this type of movement is occurring in our bodies at every moment in time.

I played the video for the dancers and had them sit and write about the type of movement they were seeing. What did the composition of each frame look like? What was the timing of the movement like? How big or little was it? Etc. After writing down their observations and ideas, I asked them to dance the “essence” of the movement. How could they focus each detail of the moving image and put it into their bodies? This was also meant to be a purely improvisational exercise, yet a focused warm-up. How detailed could they get? How could their bodies become an entire frame at every moment, like a film – a moving collection of stills? How much could they play with time and space? How literal or how abstract could they interpret the video of mitosis? How could they get mitosis into their bodies? How could they become mitosis?

Prophase

Prometaphase

Metaphase

Anaphase

Telophase and Cytokinesis

In this state of mind, I proceeded to part 2 of my workshop. Here I presented, in order, 5 stages of

mitosis. I used beautifully photographed images that came from my Introductory Biology textbook. With the dancers in four groups of four dancers, I wanted them to think about composition and showcasing all the parts of an image using multiple people within a dance. Thinking about composition is essential to being a thoughtful, creative, and aware dancer and choreographer and is a skill that can constantly be worked on and practiced as a dancer. I thought it would be valuable, as an ensemble, to practice thinking about composition together. I began by showing an image of Prophase. After viewing the image, they were to recreate a “still” of this image. They were to form a similar composition, like the image, with their bodies, one I could just as easily take a picture with, like the photographer did when the cell was in the process of mitosis. With this first still composition, I moved on to the next image, that of Prometaphase, and they did the same thing. They continued this process with an image of Metaphase, then Anaphase, then Telophase/Citokinesis. With these 5 still compositions ready, I asked them to make a dance in which they used these 5 “stills” yet transitioned through them using the quality of movement they had performed when responding to the video of mitosis.

In the end, each group had their own Mitosis Dance that consisted of 5 specific phases of mitosis, instilled with the quality of movement mitosis undergoes in real-time. Research, cooperation, synthesis, experimentation, stillness and movement all played a role within this workshop that, perhaps, allowed for a more authentic mitosis dance, one that was more deeply understood.

This was an exercise for artful composition making as well as practicing the importance of thoughtful and thorough research that allows for more information to be gained and, therefore, conveyed. The final dances that the dancers came up with were beautiful. Can you recognize the corresponding still images of the dancers and their respective photographed phase?