Waking Up London Bridge

I decided to take my work onto London Bridge at rush hour, as the place for my first experiment for 'Waking Up the City'.


I carried out some workshops with 4 dancers around opening up the senses. Before we could go out onto the Bridge I wanted my dancers to be perceptually aware whilst performing in order for them to be really present in their experience with the senses.


I adapted some exercises from Lisa Nelson and Viewpoints. I included a lot of walking around the studio, with changes in direction, levels, speed, asking them to concentrate on different senses. The workshop provided a development into perceptually aware movers, whereby they were able to really tune into all their senses by building this strong relationship to the space.

The walking carried through into the choreography, as the piece was going to be on the bridge alongside a fast moving traffic of people. We did exercises using improvisational techniques, such as exaggeration, retrograde, size, quality, and change of planes, which would help us understand the body on the bridge and also how to completely reverse it. 


We also did a flocking exercise, which is inspired by the group dynamic of birds, where there is no leader but a heightened sense of when to move. This exercise really exaggerates the notion of the stampede seen on London Bridge, but also contrasts it by demanding the group’s full perception for it to be carried out effectively, for this reason I decided that this could be a useful exercise executed on London Bridge, hopefully showing people an organic, unplanned relationship to the space and the senses, that ignores the ‘status quo’.

Another exercise I wanted to carry out on the bridge was a choreographed piece, guided through the space by the senses, with specific gestures that interrupt the ‘urbans'.

Here was the first attempt of waking up the city involving both these exercises: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8VgKeQniBs

Here is a few pictures, for more, please see my flickr account:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/77909775@N02/sets/72157629211328350/

The filming and photography was done by James Booth.

The choreography for the first piece was done in the studio, where I worked with contrasting pedestrian movement with stylistic expression that crossed different planes of the body. I also worked with shifting through the senses, by incorporating touch, pause and different speeds, so the dancers could have a dynamic relationship to the space.

The piece involved quite rather evident gestures, such as ‘come here’, inviting the audience to look at the view. I then went onto London Bridge on my own, where I could adapt the movement to really fit with the sensorial offerings of the Bridge and the flow of the ‘urbans’.

When teaching the choreography to the dancers I chose to do it in the studio, this was because for 2 of the dancers it was the first time we’d met and I wanted to do some exercises that worked with opening up the senses, so they could understand the essence that I required in the movement. Also, it was important that when they performed it, they would really feel the transportation from studio to site.

For both of these pieces, I felt more time was needed for the dancers to really engage with the senses, and be rather than just performing movement. This was evident in the flocking, it asked a lot of the dancers to create a new expressive relationship to the surroundings and to the group, really pushing their senses and perception, which often got lost to self-indulgent movement or to a leader that guided rather than working as a whole. This piece ended up being more beneficial as a task for the dancers, rather than for the passersby. The piece was rather alienated from the ‘urbans’ as it was orientated around the dancers and their experience. However, what I really found worked, were the beautiful movements where the dancers found instances where they were experiencing themselves and the surroundings.

I would like to work even more with senses, and develop a greater relationship to the bridge I use for my final project. I invisage having moment where the dancers are interweaved with the spectators and they stop and look, or touch or react to the senses which are usually ignored, tempting the spectators to do the same.

M.J.B

Tuesday 20th March