Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 2 Days until Social Movement by Molly Rose-Williams

November 15, 2018

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Please join us this week as we engage with Molly Rose-Williams and her the collaborators for Social Movement, which premieres on Saturday, November 17, 2018 at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley. Purchase your tickets here.

Today we hear from collaborator Ky Woodward-Sollesnes.

Ky Woodward-Sollesnes is a dancer, dance-maker, and an improviser. She got her undergraduate degree in dance from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She is a mentee of KT Nelson’s mentorship program Round Antennae and regularly makes/presents work in the Bay Area, most of which are different versions of the same gay duet. She teaches creative movement to kids at ODC in San Francisco and is a substitute classroom teacher for Oakland Unified School District. She lives in Berkeley, California.

What has surprised you about the process so far?

We have this toolbox of improvisational scores. Some we started practicing earlier on, some we’ve spent tons of time exploring, and some we’ve just practiced for a few minutes at a time. I knew that we understood how to work together and make it interesting for those specific scores but I was surprised to find out that our developed language translates to other, maybe even all, potential scores. Through the repetitive practice of throwing ourselves into an imaginary world of imaginary confines and imaginary necessities we’ve learned how to listen, propose ideas, follow, be funny, and create meaning together regardless of the world.

What is your favorite improv score?

Right now, my favorite score is one that Molly recently introduced to us called helping/hindering. We all try our best to help one person based on what we assume they need. Our assumptions are completely arbitrary. That one person has a separate agenda that they are desperately committed to. So far the score has been totally confusing; the group sometimes loses sense of who is helping who altogether. It’s really good stuff.

Dumplings or tamales?

Dumplings.

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Related posts and websites:

What is "Social Movement?" by Molly Rose-Williams

Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 5 Days until Social Movement by Molly Rose-Williams (Chelsea Boyd Brown)

Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 4 Days until Social Movement by Molly Rose-Williams (Jesse Wiener)

Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 3 Days until Social Movement by Molly Rose-Williams (Galen Rogers)

mollyrosewilliams.com

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One response to “Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 2 Days until Social Movement by Molly Rose-Williams”

Karen Gallagher

Nov 17, 2018 at 9:37 pm

This evening I was treated by a friend to the opening performance of Social Movement.
Thank you very much for an evening spanning the joys, sorrows, troubles and triumphs of being human. The troupe of performers engaged their audience for over an hour and led us through such familiar terrain in new and comforting ways. To see the movement increase and decrease, to see individuals take up a train of thought through movement, to see four individuals mesh as one, to receive the security of concerted movement juxtaposed with random, spontaneous movement, to watch as music became the medium that bound human movement together…..all this and more was mine to imbibe in! I came away feeling quite nourished on a soul level; fortified by the medicine that sound, lithe bodies can bring to a space. Thank you so very much.
In addition, I would like to share that my work as a movement artist was further inspired by tonight’s performance. I teach and perform the art of eurythmy; a movement art that stems from out of the wisdom of the human being, the human as physical, spiritual, social being. It is taught in most schools with Waldorf education. In eurythmy the sounds of speech are made visible, as are the tones expressed in music. It serves the ongoing understanding of what it means to be human, which in essence is living word, living music.
Throughout the evening of Social Movement, there were positions and gestures of head, arm, leg, body, that all reflected soul qualities in a human’s experience. It was fascinating to watch these eurythmic elements being grafted into the choreography and improvisation of your work. The sequence done by Molly in her soliloquy was highly captivating as well. The endless repetition of backward somersaults effected a palpable change in me as I watched this ongoing movement. From intrigue, to satisfaction and comfort, to sadness and despair, to horror, her choreography seemed to ring utterly true to the human condition. It was brilliant!
If ever you wish to know more about eurythmy, do explore. There are elements that would find a good home in the work I saw tonight, and there are aspects of it that may be of use to your ongoing study of dance, movement, and its place in our world today.
Best wishes,
Karen Gallagher

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