The coaching will centre around what I call, choreographic improvisation. This is a practice and a method I have evolved for guiding the attention of a dancer to her dancing, to the making of her movement. It focuses on developing an availability to initiate movement from any part of the body, at any speed or level, with any force or direction, for any duration… at any time.

The warm-up focuses particularly on the breath, on the engagement of weight, on noticing sensations and an awareness of beginnings – the emergent process of movement. This method for ‘preparing the body’ is about undoing fixed pathways and un-holding tension. It is also about training the attention to shift easily around the body.

I will offer concrete tools for generating movement from any part of the body, for example, ‘moving in an outward direction from only one surface of the body at a time’; ‘increasing, decreasing or maintaining the space between two bones’; or ‘constantly changing the speed, effort or direction’. This work is explored through partner/touch work and in solo exploration.

These tools are firstly about giving dancers ways to make movement. With practice, they inform a dancer’s decision-making process, leaving their mark on her perception, becoming ways to notice the movement being formed. They are concrete tools to pay attention to the act of dancing, and give a vast palette of ways to be interested in how things are constantly changing.

As a practice, choreographic improvisation can deflect the dancer from their habitual movement pathways, enlarge their range of movement choices, and place them more solidly in the present. It is about dancing.