Just a reminder at this point in the term particularly of recognising what's holding you in your learning...Whilst theories yore meeting and frameworks for structuring your thoughts into writing might be new, you, your practice, what you know are not. Your embodied histories, your experiences are what shape you and also what hold and support you...not holding you still or fixed in any way, (think non-positivist) but offering you a layer of skin if you like that allows you to take on other layers, to grow, to shift, to change, to be vulnerable because you have a rich bodily knowledge of experience to draw on.
I've been reading (and largely disputing) theories of improvisation in dance being about 'newness' and finding new material. I believe nothing is entirely new, but met through different relationships. Your relationship with the MA may be allowing you to meet things you have not encountered in the same way before, to develop a new language (from that which you already know) in order to articulate your thoughts in a different way to a different audience perhaps, to reflect on how you respond in different situations (but you have encountered other situations before). Improvisation for me offers a way of revealing what the body already knows, in different relationships with its current environment. So the people, places, climate, culture may be new, and so the responses I find in my body are not ever the same, but allowing myself to enter into a relationship with my current environment, to be vulnerable within that, opens new possibilities for me to learn.
What does my body know? what experiences does it hold? how might these be revealed in different ways through encounters with shifting fluid environments around me?
What does the environment of the MA offer you in terms of new relationships to engage with, through the literature, discussions with each other, reading the blogs...what do they reveal of your knowing? What's holding you? What do you know in order to be able to not-know, to enjoy the vulnerability of unknowing?
Referring to Adesola's blog this week...trust yourselves, trust us and enter into discussions, relationships in order to reveal, to challenge, to grow.
Thanks Helen for stimulating a new way of thinking in a different perspective. I persoanlly felt that being engrossed in understanding new language, trying to structure my ideas and constantly aiming to better my drafts, feeling inadequate and vulnerable..I forgot to think about 'MYSELF'. I feel that was holding me to to suffer in silence. However, as You said, having little hope and Trust pulled me thorugh this journey. Thanks once again Helen.
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