Habits - Susanne leading

The basis for this research was how can we use awareness of our habitual movement/sound/text/performance relationships as a resource, moving into how to go against them, thereby having more possibilities (colours on our palette) to play with.

-We (Boris, Susanne, Barbara, Yoann, Domenico, Hanna) started off with a sensations warm up in couples- 1 giving sensations to move/make sound, 1 receiving/producing. We then worked as a group on timing, speed and duration, noticing which patterns/habits the group fell into in this exercise eg. long duration, medium speed, close proximity.

-we listed any habits we knew of ourselves in movement/sound/text/performance mode/ group relationships, then shared them with the group. After this we listed 1 or 2 habits of each person in the group and shared these too. Sometimes the habits other people noticed were a surprise to hear!

-Habit solo explorations (Susanne, Domenico, Hanna): taking one or more (internal or external, not group related) habits and going deeper into them, exploring how rich or boring the habit can be. Where can it lead me? What feelings/thoughts arise?
We concentrated on play/exploration and the witnessing of that, rather than thinking about "making a piece". This fragile state needed watching without expectation, or a feeling you have to produce. The gaze of the other helped us stay true to ourselves rather than triggering. We found that the more you discover, the more the audience gets (of course)!

-Non-habitual solo explorations: playing with the antithesis of your habit, or something(s) you do not usually do. Challenging yourself to try, and perhaps fail, but try anyway eg. me trying to talk more clearly, directly, and as myself, not a character.

-Change, sustain/develop, comment: Domenico suggested this game to break habitual patterns. The watchers could call out change when they saw a habitual pattern emerging, or develop when they saw something inhabitual. The comment option was to break D's pattern of saying text only when still and facing the audience directly, but would work for other people too.

Part II: Beginning of Danscentrum Jette residency (Susanne,Yoann, Agostina,Boris,Barbara) - I used the same warm up around sensations, then we worked on habit solos. We didn't get to the non-habitual stuff.

It was the start of an exploration that could go a lot further but we ran out of time. I would like to continue at some point with our interactive habits- exploring our habits in performing relationships, going deeper into them, and learning which ones we might want to override or break sometimes to open up other possibilities!