‘The idea that something new might happen is completely obvious…’: A conversation with Andrew Morrish

In Andrew Morrish’s 40-year career in the arts he has been a performer, teacher, facilitator, mentor and advocate for a range of practices including improvisation, performance, dance education, dancetherapy and dance research. From 2008 until 2013 he was a Visiting Research Fellow in the Drama Division of Huddersfield University (U.K.) In 2016 he was awarded the Dance Fellowship of the Australia Council for the Arts (2016-2017). He now lives in the far south east corner of Australia where he continues to practice as a performer, teacher, coach and researcher.

‘Don't educate them out of educating themselves’: A conversation with Al Wunder

Al Wunder's biography, in his own words: I had four lucky breaks that precipitated my becoming a teacher of improvised movement theatre. Between the ages of eight and fourteen I broke my right leg four different times. In 1962, I began modern dance classes with Alwin Nikolais as a physical therapy. His choreography and improvisation sections of class inspired me to teach and perform professionally. I spent eight years studying, teaching, choreographing, and performing with Nikolais.1970 saw me move to the San Francisco Bay area where I opened a dance studio teaching Nikolais dance technique and improvisation. In 1971, I joined forces with Terry Sendgraff and Ruth Zaporah creating The Berkeley Dance Theater & Gymnasium. My focus was to create a way to teach dance technique through improvisation. I met my Australian wife, Lynden Nicholls, in 1981 when she came to study Motivity at Terry’s studio in Berkeley. In 1982, I moved to Melbourne, Australia where Lynden and I set up a dance studio. My focus changed from teaching dance technique improvisationally to teaching improvised movement theatre performance.Over the next thirty years I developed a pedagogy that inspired professional and non-professional performers to create improvised movement theatre pieces. In 2006, I self-published a book, The Wonder of Improvisation. In 2017, a documentary was made by Michelle Dunn, The Wonder of Improvisation. In 2021, a book was written by Hilary Elliott and published by Routledge, The Motional Improvisation of Al Wunder.

Playing with time to escape time and space: Slow Music Improvisation in an online space for Mindfulness

This article is an exegetical look at a series of improvisational concert/performance/co-creations that started in the lockdown of March 2020 in New Zealand. This informal series of livestream concerts has continued to develop since that time, with a range of collaborative performers. This article serves to unpick some of the creative practice and conceptual framework that outline this series from the point of view of individual creative reflection and mindfulness. This series of events were designed to provide space for shared improvisation as a tool for mindfulness in uncertain times. It was also designed to provide some collective moments of reflection through a shared remote experience. But at the core, this series is in exploring ideas of slow improvisation. Working in a purely online context utilising the limitations of video and sound sharing technology to create specific new performative experiences. As a part of this process we as performers are places into a situation that works between individual awareness (as you are in a space by yourself) and collective experience (as you perform together online). This experience is very intuitive and the participants are forced to embrace the uncertainty of the environment and technology, and recognise the spontaneity of improvisational experiences that are mediated through the experience of shifting time, and the disembodied nature of Zoom to create music that has a sense of release and connection.

Improvising With The Great Flow of Qi: Innovative Applications of Tai Ji Quan To Contemporary Performer Training

Tai Ji Quan (TJQ) is generally viewed as an effective means of achieving the spiritual unity of the body. This article aims to discuss how TJQ as a mindfulness-based practice can be innovatively applied to contemporary performer training, especially in the form of improvisation. This unique way of movement training is based on the motion principle of TJQ: consciousness guiding the qi, the qi guiding the body, then the body forming the shape. Practitioners are expected to improvise with being aware of qi, and are therefore able to stimulate spontaneity in improvisation, and to achieve the moment of integration of the body and mind: doing and being. 

Improvisation - Dancing With Complexity Fear and Trembling

Movement improvisation is a transformational practice that offers embodied understanding of complex systems and relationships. Group improvisation helps develop a capacity to respond to complexity, the unforeseen and the unforeseeable with increased creativity and cooperation. These are the kinds of “creative, complex and collaborative competencies” (Montuori, 2014, p. 20) that are needed for systemic health today. When we practice improvisation together, not only does it promote mindful movement (Eddy, 2016), it also offers powerful ways to establish and affirm, in the flesh, an ontology of mind that embraces mind, body, heart, soul and world as one interconnected and unified whole. Wholeness, in this sense, is not only saine (French for healthy) but also provides access to information we need to navigate the challenges of co-existence in the twenty-first century in ways that support life, and honour our highest potential as intelligent, sentient, social, and creative beings. Mindful movement may, in fact, be one of the critical ‘technologies’ needed in these “liquid times” (Montuori, 2014, p.1). Movement improvisation is worthy of particular attention because it offers the opportunity to experientially practice, study and explore relationship, ecologies, and creative engagement.

Meeting the Body-Space A Score

This score is an invitation for the improviser to attune themselves to the space they are in and enter into a relationship with what surrounds them. It can be used as a performance score or as an exercise to synchronize body, mind, and spirit before one. It was developed through many explorations during the year-long quarantine of COVID-19 as I sought to develop an active relationship to my living space.

Improv, a Venue for Values Teaching Kindness

The improvisation classroom is an ideal venue to teach the virtue of kindness.  Using explicit games which foster a change of perspective instructors can both model and teach life lessons.

Harnessing the Wild Horses of Neurosis Contemplative Performance Pedagogy

Developing organizing principles for training actors in improvisational forms, Worley turns to Asian philosophies and Tibetan Buddhism for contemplative approaches and some hints at alternatives to the usual audience/actor relationship.