Imagination

How do you imagine? If you were given a picture or scene where are you?

Though this concept is not new, as I work on creative expression and interpretation from roles I see how important the awareness and ability to use the different types of imagination is.

We have two types of imagination, 1st person and 3rd person.

In the 1st person I am in the scene/place picture. I explore the world that I create and imagine. I feel, sense, even take part in it. This type of imagination has a deep inner connection to the inner self, me in the moment. I am immersed, aware of my inner impulses and find my way by feel. As I use this type of imagination it is emotional and alive. I would describe it as intense and real. Yet it does have some limitations. I have only one, my own perspective on the image. As it is based on a feeling of me in a situation, for example in improvisation, I find I am hardly aware of what I am doing physically except for its feel. Remembering steps or organising space around me is very tricky.

In the 3rd person I am on the edge looking in. I have a great view of what is going on. I can sense and transpose myself into the scene, but the emotional feeling content is much less attached and its intensity is low. By being outside, I can organise the space, rearrange, move to different places with ease, and view it from other perspectives. I find this makes it more variable and flexible. Personally I am less affected by what actually happens around me and can affect the scene myself.

Both types of imagination are highly valuable. In the first person I am immersing myself embodying and feeling, working from sensation and experience. This helps immensely with role playing, finding impulses, moving with presence. In the third person I am able to create, sculpture with my mind the world around me, organise and arrange. Depending on your definition of choreography, this is where the third person view excels. Having an overview of a scene, seeing relationships between people and objects and being able to affect and compose like a sorcerer.

They also both have their weaknesses as stated above.

It is important to know which type of imagination you are using when trying to find expression in movement. Dancing a role or feeling is definitely 1st person based. Yet I find there is more to it than just that. Dance is different from acting in that it abstracts ideas. These abstractions can be quick to change from one picture to another, one feeling to another within moments. It is because how we move is less concrete and low in gesture.

A concept from Hermann Schmitz that I find addresses this adaptability for expression is thinking of a picture, feeling or idea in terms of atmospheres. Atmospheres are defined by Schmitz as spatially ‘unbounded, poured out and placeless, that is, not locatable’, they are moving emotional powers, spatial carriers of moods.” In essence, the feeling and sensed emotion of a space based on living moving feeling pictures. My thoughts are the benefits of thinking of atmosphere in imagination would be that I can change from one thing in the scene to another on a sensual level. I feel how it is to be in the moment within my surroundings (real or perceived). I can associate, move from idea to idea (rock - water - leaves) and change, develop the scene with freedom.

A theoretical example: Eg. a rainy day. How could you imagine this?

(just one of many possibilities) 3rd person: you see the rain, dull light, shadows. It’s falling everywhere and there is a softness to the picture. Where a person stands or what part of the picture (the rain) not specified, but say I was to transpose this into movement. I would have the different types of rain, maybe a connection to mud and softness, perhaps that it goes on and is constant and the darkness is something that in my body I would feel and reflect.

1st person: I am present in the scene. I feel the raindrops falling on my body, splashing, wherever I go there is no end to it. Mud squishes under my feet, as I move, I enter shadows and darkness perhaps feeling its weight. I could be the clouds, I could find movement to do with raindrops, splashing.

Atmosphere: The rain is everywhere, it has a damp smell, they dynamic of raindrops and their sound I put into my movement. The dull light I transpose through dampened movement as a development I can embody little streams and pools, change from spreading in the room to a small object like a damp log on the side of a road.

It’s a thought process and something that I am experimenting with.

I would be interested in comments as to how you imagine? What situations do you use different types of imagination?

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Small update to the fantasy of touch solo choreography: