This score is designed to foster paying attention to both one's own moving and to that of others. Paying attention to others through a screen adds another level of challenge to an already challenging proposition, inherent in any collaborative improvisation, of paying attention to yourself and to others at the same time. This combination of inwards and outwards attention can be key to collaborative improvisation, and especially useful in the context where online collaboration presents this additional challenge. To prime for that, the score starts with a kind of specific challenge: participants taking turns doing brief solos. It's important to emphasize that there's nothing particular that one needs to accomplish in doing these solos besides "showing up", being willing to be seen and pay attention to how it feels (and also being brief). Conversely, those watching the solos have the opportunity to experience paying attention to someone else, while still noticing thei

Contact Improvisation offers extraordinary opportunities to explore movement cooperation with others and with oneself. I've been curious a question about how to find in solo moving the kind of inspiration that can come from dancing with others. I had been exploring a practice for a long time before the COVID pandemic. Having to concentrate on solo moving during the pandemic has given me the opportunity to resolve some questions about how to describe the practice and its purpose, enough so that I feel ready to describe it. One of the things I love about doing Contact Improv is a sense of attunement that happens, with others and myself, through just mutually following the points of contact. For many years I've been curious about what helps to cultivate this, and have experimented with ways to do so in solo moving – in my warmups and general solo dancing. During the COVID-19 quarantine I have had more opportunity and heightened focus on this exploration of solo movement (in-person

We've noticed that comments submitted from Apple Safari (Mac or iPhone) are dropped without any notification if the blog is set with Comment location = Embedded. Having set it to Pop up (I think), it worked. We're going to try some more tests. That's what this post is for! From the comments testing we discovered some useful things: Using Comment location = embedded: Is necessary to enable replying to specific comments. Comments posted from Safari (laptop or iOS) are silently dropped. It looks to the person posting the comment that it went through, but the blog moderator sees no sign of it at all. Using Comment location = Pop up or Full page: Inhibits option to reply to other comments – no comment threads Enables comments from Safari The trade-off is clear. Losing comments from people who think they submitted them successfully is not acceptable. Particularly from a prominent browser (currently estimated to be a bit less than 4% of users). I just hate to lose comment threadin

I had early experience with the  Underscore  a few times while  Nancy Stark Smith  was developing it, before she found a name for it. Since those early days it has gotten a name and continued to grow, and it has become a practice for many, many groups around the world. I have been leading Underscores for the DC Sunday jam almost every month since the December 2013. I love how the Underscore works, love the sharing situation that it tends to foster. In recent days of the Coronavirus quarantine, a group exploring sharing of movement online has started to explore adapting the Underscore for online sharing. I've had the opportunity to try what others are doing, and an opportunity to adapt it for an online session myself. I wonder, can we arrive online at the often open and receptive shared presence if can foster? I'm not sure, but believe that something is possible. Whatever we discover, I know it will be different from an in-person Underscore. Online meetings are different in cru

Barbara Dilley developed a shared dance/meditation practice called Contemplative Dance Practice – CDP, a "dancer's meditation hall". I've been exploring adaptation of this score for online sharing. The aim is to share meditation and movement across the gap of social distancing. (See below the score description for online meeting logistics and further info about the practices.) (The framing of this score is a work in progress, continuing to change. Revision information is at the bottom.) Score Description The score is divided into sections. At the beginning of each timed section the facilitator says which section it is and arranges for a bell to sound at the beginning and the end of that section. Opening Circle : Time for brief introductions / check-ins and to review the outline of the score (essentially, the bold headers below). Meditation: 15 minutes for stillness . In the original score the participants share sitting meditation. We invite whatever meditat

The title kind of says it all, but maybe it'll help to substantiate it. I've noticed "emotional weather" in many social contexts, where commonly known incidents - negative or positive - have cultural ripples, in which people tend to "infect" one another with brightness or dismay, tension or ease, whatever it might be depending on the circumstances. Actual weather, like the first warm sunny days of Spring or extended gray and chill in winter, can have ripples like I mean. Cultural events, like unexpected gestures of deep decency or diplomatic crisis and breakdowns, or the release of a new album by a beloved group. Whatever kind of thing it might be, all these things can lead to a small undercurrent of emotion in many people, and the mutuality of these small changes can register between them, reinforcing the sense of ease or unease, all without the people experiencing them explicitly recognizing that it's happening. One context where I get to explore g

Many people are acquainted with the notion of conventional musical scores, which describe what musicians should do to perform a song/piece. No matter how specific the instructions, it can't be perfectly complete. It's always necessary for the person performing the score to make choices of their own - particular emphases and cadences and whatever it is that establishes what the performer expects is best to realize the piece. At the other end of the spectrum, improvised pieces can have scores also. Those scores don't generally use standard notation, but instead describe some parameters of the piece in some way, leaving many aspects up to the participants. This accumulation score is one such movement improvisation score. I don't recall where I first learned about it, nor do I recall the exact instructions I received in the various times I've been exposed to it. The ones below are my own take on it, but I expect they're similar to those that many others have also