Anna Halprin

I admit that I had never heard of Anna Halprin until a few weeks ago.  She is a pioneer of post-modern dance, and at over 90 years old, is still dancing and teaching workshops.

A native of Marin County, California, she and her late husband worked with a kind of structured improvisational approach to dance: RSVP cycles.  Resources (what the performers will use), Score (instructions for the performers), Valuaction (how the creator of the score changes it according to what kind of outcome they wish to see), Performance (the doing of the score).  Her husband developed this approach to creating work through his job as a landscape architect, and he wanted people to be able to work together.  In Anna's performances, Anna wanted dance to be authentic movement, and she wanted people to be able to move without stylization.  She has created scores for many kinds of people, including those that we might not immediately think of as dancers, such as the elderly, and those who have been marginalized, like those who are HIV+.  Because these scores are not set choreography, the performing of them changes every time.  

We have been creating our own scores, using task-oriented performance.  The score must start with a task—a thing to be doing.  Move chairs around the room.  Close the blinds.  Sweep the floor.  Open and close (whatever is in the room).  One of Anna's task-based scores is to tear paper, and another is to take off one's clothing and put it back on again, both of which have appeared in her Parades and Changes since the 1960s.  In this, we are discovering what we value as dancers, audience members, and choreographers.  Do we wish to see more order in what we create?  Do we wish to see more chaos?  How can we make our score more complex... and is that the same as complicated?  

We have also began exploring the idea of getting emotion into our scores.... how can we evoke a certain emotional response in both the dancer and the watcher without saying, "Do this task while feeling sad"?  Our scores must be objective: Carry this chair and sit in it for 10 seconds.  Anna Halprin believes it is a cycle of a mind-body connection.  Her work with cadavers, exploring the kinesthetics and mechanics of the human body have given her great insight on how the body moves physically, but she has also explored the distinct relationship between the postures we take and how we feel.  She writes her scores objectively, in that she does not prescribe an emotion or feeling for her dancers; she gives them body positions, tasks, and stage directions (or just directions, and many of her works are site-specific).  From those instructions, she lets the dancers feel their own emotions according to the actions and physical positions they take. Our feelings can inform our body positioning and of course, our body positioning can inform our feelings.  A gesture, such as putting one's face in one's hands can evoke a feeling of shame... but a feeling of shame can cause someone to put their head in their hands.

Personally, I value seeing honest emotion on stage.  The emotional work I have done for dance before this has been quite intense and transformative.  Anna's approach seems simple, and yet it's very difficult.  Some emotions are scary and seemingly uncontrollable.  In order to be authentic with the audience, one has to be authentic with oneself. 

Here's a little KQED Spark episode on Anna Halprin and her work.