Artist Prompt: Movement Ritual

At Dia, our education department works closely with artists. These artist-designed prompts encourage people of all ages to connect with their surroundings as they relate to the body and find ways to be creative within the home. 

Movement Ritual
Designed by Mollie McKinley

Time to complete: 15-20 minutes

Supplies: Your body, music, comfortable clothes

You can listen to the instructions here, or read them below.

Introduction 
In the 1960s, a group of dancers, composers, and artists began to use an empty church in downtown Manhattan as performance space, which they named the Judson Dance Theatre. This community of artists were interested in breaking down the rules and forms of modern dance. They worked in a style known as the avant-garde, a French phase that means unusual, groundbreaking, or experimental. Their experiments created a totally new kind of dance, called postmodern dance. This dance style is also known as “movement.” 

Some of the dancers and choreographers from the Judson era include Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Trisha Brown, and Steve Paxton. I’ve enclosed some links for you to look at that show some of the work by these dancers, and ones working today who make work in a similar way. 

To set up:
1. Clear a big space in your living room, bedroom, or out in your backyard so that the furniture is pushed out of the way and there are no objects on the floor to slip on. Get a family member to help if you need to. This is your new dance studio! You can wear whatever you like, but comfortable clothes work best. 

2. Warm up your body with some stretching. Any stretching routine you may have learned in physical education class is fine, or follow this one. Stretching is important, so you don't hurt yourself. Make sure you take some deep breaths as you warm up. 

3. Now get your music set up. You can use headphones; place your phone in a cup to make a mini-speaker; or you can use a smart speaker if you have one.

4. Now that you’re set up, we’re going to try dancing/moving using some of the principles of the Judson Dance Theatre choreographers. We are going to try using their use of rules and games to help us discover new ways of moving. 

To begin:
You’re going to improvise your dance/movement. (Improvisation just means that you are going to move spontaneously, without rehearsal.)

Use the following three rules as you move:

1: Use all of your body to move: your feet, your toes, your arms, your hips, your head. All of it. You don't have to move all your body parts at the same time.

2: Use as much of your new dance studio as possible, don’t just stand in one place. Really explore your space with your movement. See if the space can be part of your dance.

3: Imagine that your everyday movements can become dance moves. Think of the gestures you use to brush your teeth: opening the cabinet to get your toothpaste, moving the brush back and forth across your mouth with your forearm, even walking in and out of the bathroom. When you take away the bathroom and the objects, can just the movements of your everyday rituals become a dance? Try repeating them and see what happens.


Improvise using these rules for at least 15 minutes.

Tips: 
+If you’re feeling shy about dancing, that's okay. Work alone for as long as you need, perhaps in your bedroom if you can, getting comfortable moving around with more confidence. 

+If you have limited movement in your body or use a wheelchair, that's great! Do what you can; even the smallest rhythmic movement or just vibing with the music is great. Even wiggling your shoulders slowly to the music from your bed is great. Small, subtle movements are encouraged. 

+Your dance does not have to look a certain way, and there is no right or wrong way to move.

+Try making up your own rules. Remember that the Judson community was a group of rule-breakers, too.

Additional resources to watch: Trisha Brown’s Watermotor / Trisha Brown Dance Company / Descent by Kinetic Light / Exquisite Corps / Richard Kennedy's Quarantina Operetta Mask ON 

Mollie McKinley is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores relationships between the body and nature, often through tableau performances in remote landscapes. She also works with sculptural materials such as salt, glass, and earth, pursuing transmutations of time, erosion, and light. She is a former codirector of the School of Making Thinking. McKinley is an artist educator at Dia Beacon working with the Arts Education Program. She currently lives and works in the Hudson Valley and New York City.