Blog 2

The Idea of pedestrian movements has been around for forty years and has been developing ever since. In the majority of contemporary dance theatre there is always some form of pedestrian movement as it can sometimes be more powerful to watch than just watching physical work on its own. As within my section with Lauren and Sammy the simple idea of moving someone's face away to force them not to watch something is a clearer view on dominance and control of someone's life. For example Steve Paxton from Judson Dance theatre and Grand Union Believes...

“He believed that even an untrained dancer could contribute to the dance form, and so began Paxton's great interest in pedestrian movement. After working with Cunningham and developing chance choreography defined as, any movement is dance; Paxton's interest in the boundaries of movement was ignited. Paxton is one of the most influential dancers of his generation whose approach has influenced choreography globally. He attempts to be remain reclusive, except when performing, teaching and choreographing internationally.”

When it comes to the stylisation of body as art in relationship to pedestrian movements and physicality then the use of repetition can be a powerful tool. For example the penultimate scene in “Fractal” where the girls are now taking dominance over my character there are movements that are used within previous scenes and these highlight the change of role reversal and is more powerful as the repetition links it.

Trisha Brown also from Grand Union and Judson Dance Theatre. Also believes that narratives can be shown through basic pedestrian movements...

“Brown's rigorous structures, combined with pedestrian or simple movement styles and tongue-in-cheek humor brought an intellectual air that challenged the mainstream "modern dance" mindset of this period."


Now with this in mind we must start asking why this is being brought into our work of “Fractal”, as well as pedestrian movements for some of the funny scenes or aggressive scenes there is also some very physical work to show sophistication for example in Karine and Tolu’s piece going into Ashley and Joes piece to show the two differentiations of their characters.

One of the important things with the creation of our piece was to keep the idea of minimalism and repetition for example our opening ritual of the piece and how with the repetition of the ritual it highlights the exclusion of Frankie from the community and her role within the piece as a whole.