The purpose of this modality is to show the difference between Sourcing and Performing. How can we connect to our source, anywhere inside of us, and physically express it? How can we understand this source and perform it or show it to others?
Participants are asked to “dance” alone (solo) for two minutes from their source in front of other participants with the help of a random music they choose. The rest of participants are audience and observing. After two minutes, the roles change. The person who was “sourcing” is now the audience and all the rest participants have to perform and show this source to that one person who was sourcing before and is now the audience.
With “connecting to our source, anywhere inside of us”, I mean that this can happen in our body, emotions or thoughts, by sensing the source and going for the free expression of it through movement. The key is in letting go, in not caring if somebody is watching, and going for a totally physical experience of the source. It’s about experiencing it and not performing or showing it for others.
The rest are watching, sensing the source of the person, and are not focusing on the movement in a physical sense, but on what it is really about. When we watch one person in the space in free expression of their source, we observe our inner activity and we can feel, or get an image, idea, thought in our mind. Then we take this information as our working material and we prepare what we are going to do and how we will perform and show this source to the person we are watching. This time, it’s not about experiencing it, but about performing – showing it to the audience.
A good exercise for young or adult performers, in order to understand the difference between dance as an expressive performance for approval and accolades and dance that is drawing on authentic, creative, expressive and emotional movements that are coming out from within, from the current personal state of the body-mind-spirit. This is also a good exercise for confronting and overcoming your shyness and for practicing “the other issue”, the issue of others watching you.
This is a good starting point for improvisation, to always understand that you are dancing from what is there in the moment, from within, from your inner emotional state, from the given circumstances and your personal experience of this, from what inspires you in your current environment.