Malcolm Manning
Perceiving Choices

Perceiving Choices perceptual principles and improvisation as tool for composition Composing dances is about making choices. About how dancers organise their own bodies and their compositional relationships to their environment and others co-existing within it. These choices can be set before the performance or made live in front of an audience. They can be made by the dancer themselves or by someone else. Whatever the case, it is our perception that presents us with the elements from which to choose. The more fine-grained the perception, the more elements we can choose from and the more subtlety we can employ in combining them. In this workshop, the body is our starting point for compositional choice making and improvisation is our tool. This is a simple back-to-basics study of how we choose to move and place ourselves in space as time passes, taking perceptual skills as the base. We will explore how we make choices inside our moving and also observe each other's choices, in the process gaining some clues as to how they can be read. The working pattern will be first to explore and clarify a particular perceptual principle or focus in relation to our own movement, and then take this into a group situation and see what emerges. The intention is that what you learn through your experience in the workshop can later inform your choices in making choreography, no matter what genre or style you work with. It can also form the basis for performing improvisation.