the simultaneous study of movement and writing

"Scripting the Body" is an inter-disciplinary curriculum that was developed by Arianne MacBean through DURFEE Scholarship. The curriculum explores the relationship between the language of movement and language of text, their interconnectivity and infinite reflective possibilities. Scripting the Body Master classes, led by Arianne MacBean, have been commissioned by Scripps College, The University of New Mexico, Highways Performance Space, and by the National Dance Education Organization.

In Spring of 2001, an article on the curriculum was published in The Journal of Dance Education, the official publication of the National Dance Education Organization. The article was re-published in the California Dance Education Organization’s NewsPost in Fall 2002. The article first moves through a philosophical exploration of language and performance theory and then into a personal account of how these ideas affect teaching. The essay culminates in a selection of writing and correlating choreography assignments that can be used by modern dance composition teachers who wish to enrich their daily curriculum.

Below is a selection of material from the article entitled, Scripting the Body - the simultaneous study of movement and writing.

As a modern dance composition teacher, I have often found myself existing in that slippery space between the act and the art of both writing and dance - dabbling in both as avenues to both. I have found myself decidedly unsatisfied with the typical "dance the haiku poem" assignments that I grew up doing in composition class, yet eager to incorporate writing exercises into performance studies. I always keep in mind that my goal as a composition teacher is to lead students towards a certain kind of awareness, which utilizes the system of language, its signs and signifiers, as a model for art making. The model of communication, imaginatively manipulated, can shed light on the machinations of the choreographic playing field. It can also enable them to affect how audiences read their dances.

Most students of linguistics focus on the arbitrary nature of the way in which we, as a culture, understand language. However, as everyday writers and talkers, we understand language to be fixed and commonly understood. Yes, there are certainly slippery spaces within text. But I think we ALL can agree that modern dance is one of the most ambiguous, fleeting and arbitrary of all art forms. Can we then, as teachers of modern dance composition, teach our students to utilize textual anchors in order to contextualize their dances so that all is not simply left to ambiguity? Unless, of course, ambiguity is your intention as a choreographer (you will always get those.) In this case, I always say, "If ambiguity is what you want then that is what I want to get as your reader. Don't let me hang on to one little thing." This is a challenge I throw out to my students precisely because it is one I take very seriously.

But the question remains. How do we move forward towards a new understanding of movement language? Scripting the Body is my attempt at answering this question. It is a course curriculum that I first began to develop with a DURFEE Scholarship in 1997, while I was an inter-school MFA student in Dance and Critical Writing at The California Institute of the Arts. The grant funded the development of this curriculum for a summer course I taught to adolescent girls living in the Los Angeles inner city. The course focused more specifically on how the lines between body language and spoken word could be blurred. We spent a lot of time exploring body image. We discussed feminine identity and the consumption of stereotypes through media.

When I was developing Scripting the Body course work, I wanted to create a curriculum that helped choreographers to position themselves in relationship to their work, their world and their art form. This curriculum would encourage students to gain perspectives on themselves, their environments and the way in which they relate to language as a tool that helps them move through their lives. But most importantly, I wanted to create a curriculum that not only taught choreography students how to create dances but also taught students how to be responsible for their dances - the way they are responsible for their words. If they can do this, they will undoubtedly have more awareness of the audience's potential perceptions of their work and therefore be able to control these perceptions more acutely. Scripting the Body helps a choreographer to create work that she/he is connected to from the ground up and some might say from the outside in; always keeping in mind: who, what, when, where, and why - or the grammar of their work.

For correspondence and reprint requests, or to book a Master Class, contact Arianne MacBean, Chair, Dance Department, Oakwood School, North Hollywood, CA 91601 or call her at (818) 773-3380.