Improvisation Research

In the introduction to the Oxford Handbook on Improvisation in Dance, I elaborate improvisation as a wide field of practices and argue that improvisation may be considered “as a way of going about things for it has no inherent content”. As a “way of going about things,” we can think through the scope of improvisation as it entails entering a convergent space in which creative process and performance are one and the same generative occurrence, and in which the work evolves processually. In other words, in improvisation, thinking and doing, planning and executing, blur through a process of, at times, compositional, but always, in-the-moment decision making.

Often structured by various frameworks, be these shared movement techniques, compositional practices, tasks, scores or the like, in-the-moment nature of improvisation foregrounds irreversibility. This is a risky thing, for improvisation involves entering a space, often with others and believing something (even if that something is “nothing”) will happen. This something, in somatically based forms, is commonly developed through (inner) listening, initiating, responding and redirecting within more or less open terrains of possibility. This entails a willingness to be vulnerable and assailable, enabling the improviser to follow routes and note emerging pathways – to catch and respond to that which becomes apparent and sparks the imagination. This happens in real time and foregrounds how and what we (can) perceive is fluid. Open to each context the improviser seeks to let go of fixity through a deeply seated receptivity to self, others and the world.